The Optimist Cafe

Very nice and laid back.  No rushing you through the ordering process and no speed serving to clear you out for the next customer despite being in season.  Good selection on the menu and prices are what you expect for a nice sit down meal on the cape.  Food was good and everyone was happy.  The structure itself is also unique and rich in history.  We plan on making this a regular stop when we are down on the cape.

Decent food and good service.  Kids meals should come with more than one strip of bacon.

You indeed have to be an Optimist to dine here, as evidenced by the fact that every time we go back here with Ma and Pa Crank, the wait gets longer and longer and longer on both ends - ordering and delivery. The food has always been mezzo-mezzo at best, and no so hot when it's not so hot for being delivered late, so the Cape-seasonal-induced waiting - which seems fairly universal in-season these days, but that gets you no brownie points from yours truly - makes this an avoid-as-long-as-Ma-and-Pa-Crank can be persuaded to pass it by.

My sister keeps insisting there's no good restaurants on the Cape these days, and insofar as she has a point the Optimist is a good case in point. A lot of places open doing just fine, but the seasonal pricing and pack-em-in, shoot-em-out attitude seems to take over just about every place. And in the meantime, the old school places like the (old) Marshside and (the original) Jack's Outback get re-imagined when their original proprietors step aside, and you end up with almost no options for a locals breakfast-and-lunch place, certainly none that are affordable.

Yes yes I am sounding  like an old crank these days, but every time a place like the Optimist declines I become more of a pessimist.

Two stars for the glass half-empty, then. (Or in our case, the coffee cup.)