Kolache Factory Store No 4

After a trip to the airport this morning (2/‘11/2016) I stopped by the Kolache factory at Shepherd and Westheimer. It was 602 am by my cell phone and 605 am by my car clock. No one came to the drive through speaker. I drove around to the window and it had some ghetto looking cardboard covering the window. The attendant removed the cardboard to reveal a smudge ladden glass window. She did not acknowledge me with a «good morning» or any other obligatory greeting. She only said «drive around.» I offered that I only wanted 1 item and there was not anyone tending the drive thru. She then informed me she would have to put the money in the register and prepare for the morning. If a business advertises operational hours as 6am-​2pm, I expect them to be open and ready for customers at 6 am, not counting their money and to ready the cash register. I drove out of the drive through and went to Dunkin Donuts.

This is solely on the horrible customer service just experienced. Do NOT get the milk from here! Picked up a few kolaches for my kids before school along with two small choc milks. Dropped my middle schooler off and on the way to drop off the other at Elem school, she says «ewww mom, try the milk!». Can you say CHUNKS in the milk and it smelled awful! Called KF to let them know… no apologies just a «well what’s the date on it?» What difference does it make if I’m telling you it’s spoiled, mind you the sell by date had expired so it never should’ve been sold in the first place. Get back to the drive thru window, handed the lady 1 of the expired milks, and she asked for the other in order to give me a refund. I mean, was she going to drink it? Again, no apology for the HUGE inconvenience nor any worry or concern that my children could be sick from the gulp of spoiled milk. Yea, we won’t be going back to this KF, and I’d advise anyone to not buy milk from this location.

Not as much selection then the other locations I have been. This place has a drive thru window. Place looks rundown a bit. Kolache are fresh! They will warm it up for you! I love the potato, egg, and cheese. Bad thing is the coffee is not hot it’s more lukewarm.

I came to this location this past weekend on a Sunday morning to get breakfast for my brother and his wife, who were visiting from out of state, and had never had a kolache in their life.
This location does look a bit run down from the outside but I decided to come to this location because it was nearest my house and I’ve enjoyed their food in the past.
This store is located in the Randall’s & Churrasco’s parking lot in the Upper Kirby/​Montrose area on Westheimer Road. Plenty of parking available and this place also has a drive thru!
I ordered my food in the store because I wanted to see all they had to offer. Walking in the store I noticed it was a bit older and run down. Not dirty, but this location gave away a kinda small, outdated, fast food feel. Definitely not a place I would want to stop and eat in. There are a couple tables inside and a few tables outside as well.
There was only one family ahead of me that morning so service was quick. The cashier lady was friendly and wrote each type of Kolache I bought in my one dozen box without me even asking (being from NYC I am definitely not used to thoughtfulness like this).
I’ve tried the potato/​egg/​cheese Kolache and the sausage/​egg/​cheese kolache but my favorite by far is the Ranchero Kolache which has ham, egg, cheese, and jalapeño in it– soo good and spicy if you love spicy food! And make sure you get it heated up!
The only other Kolache Factory location I have been to is in West U and honestly their kolaches somehow tasted better. Kolache Factory as a whole is fairly good but not sure if I would come back to this particular location.

Pretty decent kolaches, still looking for a shop where the bread is a little sweeter. I like that this location has a drive through which is really convenient and theyre appropriately priced. I came in on a sunday morning and it looked like they were out 30% so clearly people like this shop.
I tried 5 different varieties. The only one I didnt like was the potatoe cheese & egg. It was kind of gross… the eggs tasted like the liquid kind stored in cans for middle school dining halls. The potatoes were hard. I threw most of it away. Besides that, the brisket was sweet and delicious and the philly cheese steak had a nice kick to it. I’ll probably come back for those but hold off on any of their breakfast (anything containing egg) variety.

It was ok. I used the drive-​thru. I ordered an egg sausage cheese kolache and pecan coffee. I don’t know, I just felt like the egg needed to be less uncooked-​like, if that makes any sense. I mean it wasn’t raw but the consistency was just odd.

There kolache was fresh. it was in the wrong slot because it end up being spicy but good! Glad I purchased a drink. They was fast to check me out to… the funny part though is they had a sign that say «please don’t open milk unless you purchase it first for coffee»…lol. people are so bold now days

Why aren’t kolaches available across the United States? I always stop here when I’m in Houston but I’m glad I don’t spend more time in this city because I’d be eating these addictive things all day long. Great, now as I write this silly review, I want one and I can’t get one because I’m not in Houston. Grrrr.

One thing I like about this store is they have chicken casdia kolache, it’s amazing amazing, never find it at any other store. Plus it has great outside sitting area, for relaxing morning, and people watching.

The food quality has gone down here. I’ve worked in Shepherd Square for over 7 years and the food isn’t the same a few years ago. My favorite is the Italian chicken croissant. The chicken filling has been mushy textured the last 3 times I’ve ordered and the breading isn’t cooked with a crisp. The workers are nice and prompted there with service most of the time. They have a pretty good selection of coffee from Katz coffee company. Sometimes they run out of kolaches at 11 am. and they are opened until 2 pm.

I LOVE the chicken enchilada kolaches! Often times they are out of the chicken enchilada whenever I try to get some. I was able to snag two chicken enchiladas & one ranchero on my recent visit & I was very disappointed. The cashier didn’t nuke our kolaches long enough so I had cold kolaches but we were already driving to our next destination by the time I realized this. What’s worse than a cold kolache? A kolache with sections of raw dough! YUCK! Never thought I wouldn’t enjoy the yummy goodness of a chicken enchilada kolache but I was definitely let down this weekend! My stomach won’t be returning to this location for cold semi-​raw kolaches anytime soon.

Bless this lady’s heart. My husband and I are on diets so we decided to split a kolache. I guess we went at closing time. They were locking the doors and turning the lights off. We ordered one and she gave us four. :) so much for our diets. They are yummy, though. We had the Ranchero.

Kolaches are one of my favorite things in the world thanks to this place. My mom used to take me here every now and then before school way back in the day. Now my family always has to bring a box of them when they fly out to San Francisco to see us. The sausage & cheese ones are absolute perfection — can’t live without them (and I don’t even normally like sausage…)
The reason I’m giving 4 stars instead of 5 is because there are some that taste straight up funky so you really have to know what to order and/​or try to not experiment too much.

My first time trying kolaches, so I don’t have a point of comparison to what good is, but we tried a few different varieties and they all tasted like microwaved after school snacks (think Tostino’s pizza rolls).
Added a star for fast service and nice counter staff. Otherwise, this is a 1-​star place, no need to be back.

I came here for an attempt at kolache redemption after the Kerrville debacle. The dough? Still insipid and mushy, but now it had the mushiness of a dinner roll rather than the mushiness of wet toilet paper, which was a real improvement. And the hot polish sausage tucked inside was actually kind of tasty. After I threw away the dough, I actually ate the sausage. I was hungry, though.

I love Kolaches and this place has a huge selection! Fruit, sausage, ham & cheese, sausage, spinach, bacon, cream cheese, sausage & gravy, bbq, pepperoni & mushroom, Italian Chicken, Philly Cheesesteak, chicken enchilada, chipotle chicken, jalapeño ham & cheese, etc. I wanted to try everything! Runs about $ 2/​each. Wished they had Kolache Factory in Dallas and San Antonio, but I guess Austin is close enough. YUM!

This is one of the few locations I’ve seen that has a drive thru window. The wait seemed long with only one car in front of me, but if that was a concern I should have gone my ass inside!
The Ranchero kolache taste better here than at the locations on the northwest side of Houston (looking at you Cypress, Copperfield, and Willowbrook. Maybe those location are all owned by the same franchisee).

Mmmm belly bombs. Actually was quite impressed with this location, having had some mediocre experiences with the location on Memorial. First off, they were still warm, the bread wasn’t so gloopy/​heavy, and the internal fillings again were hot, eggs tasted fresh, and a nice spicy kick from the jalapenos. Service was exceptionally fast, and helpful. They also have a drive through. I figured one Kolache Factory was as good as any other, and I was wrong this one is pretty darn good.

There are two things that I can count on at this location:
1) The staff is going to be rude
2) My order will be wrong
The last time I went (the last time, for real) I ordered bacon, egg and cheese kolaches, which I adore, but I got potato and egg instead. Almost every time I get anything from here, something goes wrong and I am met with sighs and rolling eyes when I tell them what they gave me isn’t what I ordered.
Sorry guys, I gave you chance after chance, but you ran out of chances.

This review is written to the annoying tune of Kesha’s «We Are Who We Are» because unfortunately, this location pretty much is what it is and you have to accept it.
No matter which location was your first experience with the Factory, this one basically looks like the homely-​ugly-​smelly-​weird (your choice) sibling of whoever you had a crush on in high school. Most locations of the Factory are in nice shopping centers or strip malls, the logo by itself even looks slick as you drive towards your warm slice of awesomeness in the morning on I-​10 (I really like that location in Memorial.)
So from the outside you basically have a run down looking structure getting the evil stare from Churrasco’s, wondering why this claptrap is sitting in the middle of its awesome parking lot. Randalls and Cold Stone also join in the epic stare-​down because, this little odd intersection of Shepherd and Westheimer is not exactly River Oaks-​ish but its still nice; its not exactly Montrose-​ish; and its not exactly Upper Kirby-​ish, although you can refer to it as being in any of those distinct neighborhoods and nobody really minds. But what it is, it does not fit in with the shopping center of Cold Stone, Randalls, Churrascos etc. So that is either instant charm if you like it, or you kind of shrug your shoulders and walk in anyway because you are hungry.
You walk in and its dirty. Not dirty like a prison cell or one of those supermarket romance novels, just dirty like it looks like it had not been cleaned in … a day? Two days? I kind of want to go back later today and see if anything has changed — I just imagine when I review a place the manager/​owner sees a batsignal in the sky and instantly rushes to a laptop to read my thoughts. But this morning: the entire place was in need of a cleaning, maybe some of those divorced mops from that Swiffer television commercial want to have a party and clean — who knows.
The line consisted of one person in front of me and the cashier was having … issues for lack of a better word. I thought «Great» in a completely non-​sarcastic way, before saying it again about twenty more times while I waited in an entirely sarcastic manner. I have seen cashiers high before, she was not on drugs or drunk to the best of my knowledge. I don’t think it was mental disease so maybe it was just defect. She had a hard time managing the machine. I had to carefully check my receipt, which you know is always fun when you think a few kolaches are going to cost you $ 400 down the road. Annoyingly she kept tapping my credit card on the counter, which means I either get annoyed really easily when I am hungry (probably true) or she was beng a bit of a jerk because come on really, who does that with someone’s credit card? There was a person behind me who could have taken a cell phone photo of my card face and gone on to charge some really nice things he is not entitled to in life just yet. I call party foul on this cashier — this was not a totally rad cashier in any sense of the word.
On to the food, the D-​list celebrity of the review since it is so many paragraphs deep in the review.
The ranchero kolache? Awesome. Not just awesome, but awwwwwesome. You have to draw the ‘w’ out. Yummy. Not just yummy, but yummmmmy. It was good. I think you should try it.
This is my least favorite location of the Factory — the one on I-​10 is all kinds of win; the one on San Felipe is of lesser amounts of win; the one on Kirby is of still lesser amounts of win but still at perfectly acceptable levels; and this one ranks about a hair below the minimum requisite level of win required to officially win.
Two stars is harsh because the actual kolache was good, so this is a high two stars, almost at threesies. Consider me Ross and you Rachel — we are going to take a break — and I will check back and give you a gold star if you have earned it.