Lou Mitchell's Restaurant

If you want the typical breakfast diner place to go to, then Lou Mitchell's is the place to go, nothing fancy shmansey, and the food a AWESOME!! It's not expansive, but the food is great quality! and allot of it!

If you want the Chicago breakfast experience and to feel history, then this a good place start in the morning! Especially if you have a family and on a limited budget.

My thoughts are, there was my self, my husband, our three year old and a 14 month old, my mother and my mothers fiancee, my kids aren't your quiet bunch but do behave relatively well, and we were visiting Chicago and needed a place to eat breakfast and on a budget, so after looking on here and other web sites there were all mixed reviews, but the good weighed out the bad, and thought why the hell not! lol! I am so happy I followed my gut instinct on this one, the waitress we had was really friendly and after the my girls ate there breakfast, the waitress brought out some ice cream for my kids to have, which was so nice of her!

GET CASH FROM THE ATM BEFORE YOU EAT!
(They don't take Credit or any type of card only Cash)

If you are not really into the diner experience and more upscale restaurants then this may not be for you, but if you don't mind and just need somewhere to go eat, then this is for you! Food is good, service was great, and all for a great price! I think for all of us we spent less then $45.00 for four adults and two kids. PARKING - There is a parking lot around the corner of Lou Mitchell's, the guy discounted us because we were eating at Lou Mitchell's, and after we ate and walked to the lot he brought us our car.

I don't know who this person is who said that there was poor service here because I've been going to "The Original Lou Mitchell's" for about 5 years now and I've never experienced poor service. No employee would ever expect a customer to get their own coffee even the busboys or girl would give it to you. As for the cashier I've seen her help out as well. The omelets are very good, they have so many varieties they can even make them with egg whites. One more thing if there was such bad service why would there be lines of people out the door? Come on free donuts as you walk in and Milk Duds for the ladies and children who can beat that.

Lou Mitchell's has good coffee, they serve it with heavy cream instead of half and half. However, the man behind their carry out counter has very poor customer service skills. I was encouraged by someone at the register to start getting my own coffee rather than wait 10 minutes for someone to get it for me. I started doing this when no one was available to help me at the counter. Then, even when the man who runs this counter was there he would have me walk over to get my own coffee while he stood at the counter doing nothing. Others who work there noticed this and said something to me about it, but obviously there must be a culture of poor customer service here because he was not at all concerned about who--including his boss--saw him treat a customer this way; clearly he saw nothing wrong with this behavior, because he still would try to make small talk as he sent me off to get my own coffee. I don't recommend this place.
The coffee is very good but the food is not memorable and needs lots of salt (the omelettes do anyway). There is a Mitchell's (called "The Original Mitchell's") in a strip mall just off Armitage near Clybourn, 1953 North Clybourn, that is what this Lou Mitchell's calls a copy; they are of no relation to each other.

PROS: Coffee
CONS: Outrageously poor customer service, overall culture of poor customer serv