Dimes
“It was my first time having it and I enjoyed it, but I personally prefer acai bowls over chia pudding.”
“The Love Toast happens to have the best house-made tahini I've ever tasted in my life, and pairing it with honey and berries was a pretty genius move.”
“I haven't yet been for brunch, but we stopped in for a light dinner and cocktails.”
Dimes
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
8 reviews
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Too cramped!!!!
I felt like I was sitting at a little kid's table…. which I am just too old to deal with no matter how good the food. And here's the kicker, the food wasn't that great. So all in all, I didn't love eating at Dimes and wouldn't recommend it. Btw, I'm about 5'6", so if you're taller than me, you'd be even more uncomfortably squished into Dimes. To top it all off, there's no reservations, so we had to wait for this experience.
I know you're reading this review mostly for food so here's what we ordered. Both my friends tried different ACAI bowls, while I had the POWER BOWL. Shoot, I wish I had more to say about the food, but we kind of shoveled it down in order to get out of there. We actually went to Joe's Ginger afterwards for soup dumplings because we were still hungry.
Seeing it on Instagram, the spot and its food looked beautiful, which basically meant that I went out of my way to pay this cute looking cafe a visit. I'm not one to write bad reviews – I want to give people the opportunity to try places for themselves as well, but I just gotta put this out because I did not enjoy my experience there at all.
First impressions were great – just like I saw in the pictures, place had colorful, bright tables and enough sunlight that made it look really cute! Then came the service.. the waiter was just downright rude, and gave the impression that he didn't care.. no smiles, nothing. Moving on, the food. I got the lavender acai bowl, and I would honestly rather go through the hassle to buy a blender and import acai berries myself than to have that again. It was so bland, the lavender didn't go well, and the tasteless cornflakes just made it worse. I mean… I got a nice photo, but I most definitely won't be coming back.
Updating my review since they now have a larger space and the breakfast and lunch bowls are still awesome! Dimes have become one of my go to lunch spots in this neighborhood. I love the black rice bowl which I order with the pickled salmon. It's so good! And so healthy! Extra points for having hijiki since I haven't seen a non-Japanese spot serve hijiki. They serve great breakfast bowls and toasts as well. Finally, I love that they kept the old location as a deli/take-out counter. The poké bowl is just delicious!
The place looks to be about the same size as my studio apartment and the tables are on top of each other. That's pretty standard of a place like this in this area. But it is an American brunch place right in China town! I was a bit confused myself.
My party of 3 waited about 25ish minutes for a table for three and I'm not sure the food was worth it completely.
Food: Strawberry Acai Yogurt – this was very watery and seemed very heavy on the granola. I've never had Strawberry Acai Yogurt before, so not sure if it's the normal consistency
BLT – the BLT was probably the best item we got but wasn't anything exceptional and was relatively small. The bacon was very crispy.
Breakfast sandwich – mediocre – I was very disappointed with this! It didn't have much flavor – I was really hoping the dimes hot sauce would be more tasty, but it really didn't add anything.
I think this is a good place to try, but not a place to be a regular at.
Service: The service was pretty good. They made sure to check on our table to make sure we had everything, but really that was the only good part of our meal
Food: B-
Considering the wait in the drizzly weather outside, the food was not worth really worth it. Among three people, we ordered the Strawberry Acai Bowl, the Breakfast Sandwich, the BLT, and the Kedgeree. My BLT was good. The bread it came on was grainy with lots of different oats, but it was still chewy and probably packed full of gluten, and I really liked it. There was an avocado spread in the sandwich, along with a couple of roasted cherry or grape tomatoes. Everything went well together in this sandwich – I only wish it was bigger and more for me to enjoy. It was somewhat small, as was the side salad it came with. The Breakfast Sandwich that my friend got just tasted like scrambled eggs in a bun – meh. The Kedgeree was interesting – it was bits of broken up smoked trout over basmati rice (little bit of curry flavor maybe?). There was fresh pomegranate in the dish, which I thought would be strange, but it was very subtle and paired well. The disappointing part of the dish was that the poached eggs on top were wayyy overcooked – the yolk was not runny in the least. It looked pretty much the texture of a hardboiled egg. Fail. Finally, the Strawberry Acai bowl. I was really looking forward to it, as I was craving something refreshing. The bowl had acai, topped with granola, dried apricot, bee pollen, and fresh strawberries and sliced banana. Out of the three of us, none of us were impressed. It wasn't too sweet, which I liked, but there was very little acai and a whole LOTTT of granola. We ate all the fresh fruit and tried to spoon out as much of the pureed acai as we could, but we were still left with a ton of mushy granola covered in puree.
Service: B-
The service was alright, at best. The girl who waited our table was quiet, which is fine. They did the bare minimum to make us comfortable. One of our water glasses was dirty and she replaced it without complaint. *shrug* Nothing really bad but nothing amazing.
Ambiance: C+
I feel like this place tries to pull off the somewhat quirky/quaint/don't-care-about-appearances-because-our-food's-good type of place, but it doesn't work. My friends and I were seated at a very oddly shaped table in the front corner of the restaurant, with wooden benches along the wall to sit on. The way the seating of our table was arranged, it was like we were placed in an "L" shape, with my two friends sitting on the long side of the "L" and I was sitting on the short part of the "L." It was cramped – we were shmushed alongside the other tables against the front of the restaurant with very little room between to walk through. Luckily there was a consistent buzz of noise throughout our time there so we could still talk comfortably.
Other:
Their waiting area inside by the door is superrrr small, enough seating/space for only a couple people, and while they have a small bench outside, it was wet due to the rain. There were several parties standing outside with us as well. If you get here past 11am for brunch/lunch, you're probably due to wait a bit.
For a while now, I had wanted to check out Dimes due to the endless beautiful pictures on Instagram and Yelp. Their acai bowls looked legit and the food reminded me of health-centric food spots in SoCal. Decided to come out of my way to finally give it a try.
The space is pretty small, even though it's much bigger than their original location! Tables are crammed together so do not expect any sort of privacy. Luckily for us, there was no wait at 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon and we opted for a more spacious, orange colored table. Ordered the Moroccan poached eggs with avocado, spring salad, and the mango pitaya bowl. The eggs were delicious, especially because they were accompanied by warm melting haloumi cheese. The spring salad was pretty good but didn't seem fresh. The apples on top had browned quite a bit – underwhelming for 13 bucks. The mango pitaya bowl was good – better than a lot of other bowls I've had in the city! However, they sprinkled some stuff on the top that had an odd stale flavor to it. I'm sure it was some kind of healthy super food I'm not aware of, but they can do away with it.
What irks me the most about this place is its staff. I don't mean to be rude, but why does it look like no one took a shower? And there was a strong odor of BO the whole time I was there – I know some people don't believe in deodorant but it's hard to enjoy my food when the natural unpleasant odors of others keep trying to grab my attention. Our waiter was pretty weird, he would ask us questions while giving us these soul searching stares. Definitely seemed like someone smoked a bit too much before work. Also, he had dirty fingernails – gross. Maybe this is the vibe they are trying to achieve but it's a restaurant after all – cleanliness and hygiene should be a given. What's the point of being served supposedly fresh healthy food by people who are in desperate need of a bath and maybe some vitamins.
I'm sure I'll see Dimes' pretty self around on Instagram, but not gonna make the mistake of going back.
This is one of those restaurants that I wanna love so badly, and when I come here I try to be positive and overlook the cons. The food is awesome, I'll give them that. I've tried their different sandwiches and each time they arrived savory and delicious. Location is also a plus, in the lower east side surrounded by all this culture and conveniently located.
Now my gripe is mostly about the atmosphere. Came here on a busy day during lunch time and this place was jam packed, people were waiting in the front, out the door, standing around. When we finally got the table, I felt like I was sitting less than six inches away from the table next to me and I could hear their entire conversation better than my own. Yikes!
Pricing is fair for what they serve if you're considering NYC standards ($10-$15 for a pretty small sandwich), but come on guys we're the lower east side! Maybe bring it down a notch.
Otherwise, definitely worth trying at least once. If only to see the hipster-y arty try-hards that frequent here and their funky clothes.
I came here a few weeks ago with a girl friend for brunch. It's a very clean eating kind of brunch, not the post-drinking morning smorgasbourg you usually associate with brunch. You could come here post-gym and not feel like you're un-doing everything. The inside is very weird. Disjointed in a way where you don't ever really feel comfortable. Everything is mismatched obviously intentional, but it ends up making you feel a little mismatched inside. The brunch options are very interesting and tasty! I had the kedegree, with smoked trout, pouched egg, curry basmati rice, parsnip hash and pomegranate. Not the most filling, but enough to get me going. Food is definitely worth the trip, but the overall ambiance including the service left me with three stars.