Four Forks Kitchen

Four Forks Kitchen sits on the end cap of a strip center on Mineola Pike, a family-owned breakfast and lunch spot that opens at seven, closes at two, and does it seven days a week. There's a drive-through, a small bakery case on the counter, and a menu that doesn't try to surprise anybody. Eggs, skillets, wraps, pancakes, burgers, a grilled cheese on Texas toast. Three of us came in around 9:45 for brunch, and the kitchen held up its end. Some other things could use a little work.

The Vibe

The room is clean, bright, and still has a new look to it. Sage green walls, a whitewashed plank counter, a galvanized windmill blade hung over the kitchen pass-through, and the four-forks logo built out of woven rattan on the dining room wall. Black ladder-back chairs, light wood tables, exposed ceiling painted black. It looks good.

It is loud and quiet simultaneously. The open ceiling, hard floor, and bare walls give sound nowhere to go. We heard our own voices bouncing around and wondered if we were annoying others with basic conversation. A few acoustic panels overhead would fix it. May not seem like much, but it was first thing I noticed when we sat down.

You order at the counter, find a table, and they bring the food out. That's where operations cracked. Nobody brought silverware. We got our own napkins. My daughter's strawberries didn't come out on her pancakes, and she had to walk back to the counter to ask for them. Counter service lowers the bar on attentiveness, and I'm fine with that. It doesn't lower the bar on delivering what was ordered. That's three misses on a table of three. I expected more.

One thing I had wrong in the moment: I thought they'd forgotten the cookie my daughter ordered from the bakery case. They hadn't. They hold it until you ask, then warm it up before it comes out. That's a nice touch. It would be a nicer one if somebody told you about it at the register.

The Food

My Meat Lovers wrap was stuffed. Sausage, bacon, cubed ham, scrambled egg, and cheddar packed to the edge of a griddled tortilla, with no filler doing the heavy lifting. The home fries come as seasoned cubes, and they were cooked exactly how I like them, crisp on the outside and a little soft in the middle. The serving size is plenty ample too.

The breakfast sandwich, sausage on a biscuit, is bigger than you'd guess, with a folded egg that hangs well past the bread and cheddar melted over the side. The verdict from across the table was good, nothing special. My daughter's buttermilk pancakes had a good consistency, three of them the size of the plate, and once the strawberries showed up, they were fresh.

The cookie came out warm, which helps. My daughter thought it was really good. I thought it was average. She's the one who ordered it, so her vote probably counts for more.

Nothing here is reinventing breakfast, and nothing needed to. It's classic food, cooked right, in generous portions.

The Bottom Line

I went back and forth on this one, because the food is decent and I'd eat that wrap again. But I wouldn't drive far out of my way for it, and between the service and the noise, a simple meal was harder than it should have been. These are fixable problems. Somebody needs to own the handoff between the kitchen window and the table, and somebody needs to hang some panels. Until that happens, Four Forks is a solid stop if you're already in Hebron or headed to the airport hungry. If You're Nearby.