Hy-Vee Market Cafe

Loved the breakfast burrito! Also the pulled pork nachos.

Excellent, fresh dishes in an upscale setting. Small selection of beer and wine can be purchased in the liquor store and served in the Café. Whatever is left can be recorked and taken home. Great addition to Boone!

I do not really get the point of adding this to the store. Essentially I get the same food I would get if I go into a normal Hy-​Vee with the classic cafeteria style food service (like the east Hy-​Vee has in Ames), but now I have to wait for an additional amount of time and tip a waitress for serving me. That being said, tried the place out for breakfast, the staff was friendly and nice, food was good, and the prices are very reasonable.
I guess to sum it up, if you’re in Ames looking for a sit down restaurant and the local Hy-​Vee grocery store is the first thing that pops into your head, it’s a good place to eat.

I wasn’t expecting much from this restaurant when it opened, but I’ve only had good experiences here. Some of the dishes I’ve enjoyed are the chicken cheese quesadilla (uses real grilled chicken breast, excellent salsa on the side — found on the appetizer menu), Cobb salad (too much blue cheese, ask for it on the side), Asian chicken salad, salmon dinner, grilled chicken sandwich, and the burger. The burgers and chicken sandwiches are customizable with bacon, fresh sliced avocado, cheese, or sautéed mushrooms. The buns they use are large, chewy, and soft. The fries are excellent. They also have gluten free bread and buns. My best friend is gluten intolerant and prefers the bread to the buns. She really enjoyed the monte cristo on gluten free bread.
We have gone here for breakfast twice. The Sunday brunch buffet was awful, over-​crowded and over-​priced. We chose the buffet because the wait for food off the menu was over an hour.
However, we got breakfast off the menu (not the buffet) on a Saturday and it was awesome. Lots of tasty, hot, fresh breakfast food for a great price.
I would say the new Hyvee Market Café is as good or better than many of the local sports bar style restaurants in town. The décor is clean, there’s a great bar, and plenty of TVs to watch sports, if you like that.
Another bonus is that you can get carry out of many menu items and you can do grocery shopping while you wait for dinner. The food is usually ready in 10−20min. If you order in store.
Give it a try!

Stopped in for breakfast. This is not your old Hy-​Vee deli! Service was very attentive. The food (we ordered off of the $ 1.69 al a carte menu) was solid. Coffee, just $ 1.29, was frequently refilled. The atmosphere, from booths to tables to televisions to the bar, was definitely a nice leap upscale for Hy-​Vee.
Any downside? If you were a fan of the basic décor and cheaper prices of the old deli, you’ll probably not be as pleased as would be a new customer. Be prepared. This transformation is scheduled to happen at all Hy-​Vees. The other Ames location is about to have an even larger version called The Grille. Their goal, I’m guessing, is to not just have higher profit margins, but to also extend the operation well into the night.
I think I would have liked to have had a separate outside entrance. The more sophisticated vibe is undermined a bit by having to walk by cantaloupes on your way in, but I’m sure they’re hoping you’ll buy a cantaloupe… It might take some time before folks will think of going to Hy-​Vee for an evening cocktail, which I think is their hope. That said, I do believe the café could work very well as a sports bar alternative. And just think, you might even earn Hy-​Vee gas points.

First let me say that I have been patronizing HyVee for about 35 years now. I like the wide, well-​lit aisles, the scrupulous cleanliness, the decent product supply, and the extremely friendly customer service. I can’t even begin to estimate the number of meals I had in their old kitchen area and the number of hot food items I would get to go from their hot case when I finished shopping and wanted to bring some ready-​made lunch home with me. So this is, by no means, an anti-​HyVee screed. This Market Café, though, strikes me as (at best) an attempt to fix something that wasn’t broken, or (at worse) a cynical attempt to jack up prices. The quick to-​go items like their great pork tenderloins are no longer available from the hot case, unless you buy one in the restaurant; the price went from 5 to 8 dollars. True, you get fries with the tenderloin now, but I neither want them nor (I’m not as thin as I used to be) need them.
Also, the restaurant has removed the old tables that they used to have in the kitchen area, where my wife used to occasionally wait for me with a cup of coffee while I did some shopping. The other day I was doing the weekly shopping at the HyVee, needed to tie my shoes, and couldn’t even find a place to sit down.
Moreover, my wife and I went to try their Sunday brunch a couple of weeks ago and had a terrible experience. We had been told by store employees that the brunch came with prime rib, and that was the only reason we were going. Just to make sure, though, I called HyVee the evening before and asked whether prime rib was going to be on the brunch buffet. A nice young woman checked and said no, they were carving roast turkey and ham instead. I would have preferred prime rib, but I like turkey just fine, and if anything my wife likes turkey more, so this was not a problem. We arranged our schedules accordingly, passing up a chance to go to other places earlier, and drove to the HyVee, only to see when we got there that the only thing they were serving was ham. I asked where the turkey was and the carver said «we’re not doing turkey today», but he was at least nice enough to send another staffer to find out what was going on. She was gone at least ten minutes and when she came back said they could put out some smoked (not roasted) turkey, but it would «take awhile». We didn’t want smoked turkey and we didn’t want to wait, and neither of us like ham, so we left, wasting a round-​trip by car and the time we spent sitting around waiting for information. Surely it’s not asking too much to have employees at least give out accurate information. Also, if you’re going to charge 15 dollars for a breakfast bunch, put out something a little better than just ham and standard egg-​type stuff; back when Olde Main had a Sunday brunch, they had prime rib, ham, another hot dish, and a whole lot of other stuff, including desserts, for about that price.
When we got home I sent an email to the store complaining about this, but never received a reply, an example of lousy customer service that is rare for HyVee.
Bottom line: sometimes, newer is not better. The Market Café offers higher prices, less convenient dining, and food that is not all that much better than what was available previously.