City Limits Bakery and Cafe

Great local café! Similar to panera (but a little more expensive and a little slower, but they do make their food fresh so that’s always good.) They have an extensive menu. We enjoyed paninis for dinner, then decided to get dessert. The paninis were great and our chocolate croissant was good (but not amazing). It was fresh though, and they heated it up for us and brought it to our table with two forks. A nice touch! We wish they had wifi though.

My all time favorite salad, sandwich, and soup spot. This place will let your taste pallet know how shitty Panera bread, Bread and company, Zoe’s kitchen is. This is quality, local food you gotta respect!

City limits is a friendly, casual, and wonderful restaurant. I love the Tomato bisque with grilled cheese. The Caesar salad is yummy too. The food comes out quickly. It has a walk up counter to order your food. The bake goods are wonderful too. This is a great family place that has a cool local vibe

This is a pretty good place to get some breakfast food.
City Limits is located a bit out of the way in Bellevue, as you have to drive into a neighborhood area, and over the train tracks to get here. However, the somewhat isolated location (It’s a random strip mall surrounded by suburban houses) provides good parking spots. It’s located very close to the train tracks, so if you are sitting outside when the train comes by, it might get a bit loud, however there are only a few seats outside. It can get a bit busy in the morning, but the line moves pretty quickly.
The people seem friendly. I wasn’t blown away by friendliness in my few visits, but I wasn’t turned off by them either. It’s a standard friendly affair I guess. I’ve been here a few times so these reviews are based on a variety of visits.
Onto the Food (Vegetarian for the most part, hence only vegetarian options discussed)
Tomato Basil Soup: Probably one of the better soups I’ve had in a while. I love the taste, the consistency, and the pieces aren’t too chunky. I got takeout, and they had it in a styrofoam cup that has an inside lid (I don’t know what it’s called, but the lid if fitted inside of the cup instead of over it, helping to keep more warmth in), which meant my soup was hot even after a 15 minute journey home. The soup comes with a bread that is allright.
California Banini: Essentially an egg and cheese bagel, the sandwich tastes pretty good. It’s better than the fast food options available in the area for sure. I also believe the eggs were just egg whites, I don’t remember tasting egg yolk in the sandwich. You do get a choice of bagels if you ask them.
Egg and Cheese Croissant: Pretty much a straight forward, egg and cheese on a croissant. You get a choice of eggs, and I believe more topping if you choose, but I didn’t want it to be complicated.
Vegetarian Delight: A Sandwich, that I found to be disappointing. It’s bread, hummus, cucumbers, and onions. It just doesn’t stand out, and the cucumbers tend to be the main focus of the sandwich. Tasted pretty bland to me, since the hummus wasn’t really standing out, and the onions were few and far in between.
I think this is a good place to try out for breakfast, but I didn’t love their regular day options. It seemed a bit flat to me. The breakfast «baninis» end at 10 am. I love the tomato soup here, so that’s probably going to be the one thing that brings me back. The breakfast food is good enough that I’ll order it when I’m there. I’ll recommend it to most people if they want to try a new place for breakfast.

Decent local place. As others said, like Panera, without all of the franchise feel. Service was good. Order and pick up at the counter. Clean and roomy. Good for groups and with kids. We had the half sandwich and Salad/​Soup combo. Good food if your in Bellevue.

Great little restaurant close to home. I have had the Greek chicken panini, the Italian combo and a Reese’s cookie. All were good but the cookie awesome. :-)

Love the turkey cheddar melt and the turtle brownies are awesome when they have them. My husband is all about the Cobb salad. They have yet to disappoint me.

I know everybody seems to love this place but both times I’ve gotten attitude on trying to order simple things. i. e. An iced green tea. I basically ended up making it myself. Maybe I’m being a princess, but how difficult is it to make an iced green tea.
I really would love to love this place, but no wifi. What??? I’d park myself here regularly to work if they had wifi & yes that means I would be eating & sipping the whole time.

Absolutely the best grilled cheese around… soups are amazing also!

Panera on steroids is what I like to call this place; except City Limits has better quality ingredients and a more appealing menu.
I am a huge fan of the soup and salad combo, I have tried almost all of them my favorite are the cream of asparagus and lobster bisque. My favorite salad the standard Cesar salad (love their dressing for this one). Although all their salads are great and made with fresh products so it isn’t like a regaled salad from panera, these ones are much tastier and way more fresh!

Obviously a great place because it’s always packed. Nice café atmosphere, and a nice menu with a variety of options. Their soups are really good. The sandwiches I’ve had have been ok — not amazing but not bad. Prices are reasonable– comparable to Panera
What would make it 5 stars for me? Use of local and natural ingredients, and more outlets for those of us with old laptops to plug in!

I’ve been going to this place for years; good sandwiches, great salads, and love their bagel sandwiches. I’ve decided, however, due to their consistently unfriendly staff I will find somewhere else to get my deli fix in Bellevue. There’s seems to be a high turnover rate because I see new faces a lot. I’m guessing it’s not a happy place to work because its sure not a happy place to dine.

City Limits reminds of a Panera but with a touch of southern hospitality. I now live in Chicago and am reminded of how great the people are in Nashville. Everyone here is so nice and helpful. You can tell they really put in a lot of time and effort into this place. There’s tons of fresh sandwiches, paninis, and salads to choose from at this local spot.
My family enjoyed the spicy chicken panini, while I decided to go easy and get the veggie delight sandwich. But save room for the chocolate chunk cookie. It’s one of the better ones I’ve had at that price point ($ 2.50).

3.5 star review — I went in for breakfast one day and had the huevos rancheros bagel. I was a little bummed they were out of plain bagels, so I got the everything bagel. It was a little too crunchy, but it was still pretty solid. Not wowed by anything here, but wasn’t let down either. My date didn’t quite care for her bagel, she thought it was too crunchy/​overdone as well.

This is a place I visit fairly often for weekend lunches, but decided to go for breakfast on a recent Saturday morning. City Limits is essentially like a locally owned Panera.
For breakfast, they offer a decent selection of pastries, bagels, and sandwiches. I could tell the Saturday morning breakfast crowd consists mainly of regulars, as I was the only customer they didn’t greet by my first name as soon as I walked in the door.
Lunch and dinner menus include a nice selection of soup, salads, and cold or hot sandwiches. My favorite soup is the chicken enchilada, and the roast beef panini with horeradish is my favorite sandwich.
Good deli.

My family has been eating here since it opened. We particularly like eating lunch here on Sunday.
Each item we order is always good and we often try new menu offerings. The tea selections are superb whether you are drinking cold or hot. The bakery area has wonderful variety and so far we have always liked what we purchased.
Give this local owned and operated place a try. You won’t be disappointed. Don’t be shocked when a large, fast moving train comes by during your visit. A major CSX track sits directly behind the building!

Very lucky to live right down the road from our favorite restaurant. Best service and excellent breakfast sandwiches and pasties. Then the lunch/​dinner items are always fresh and tasty. Pricing is very fair. We will be back again (most likely today).
jf

Bellevue is lucky to have this little place.
I have been going to City Limits for years, even when they had their other locations. I have never had a bad experience with service or food. It is truly a local place. The employees are always friendly and remember you (and your preferences).
It is a place where I feel comfortable going solo, grabbing a chai freeze (try it, truly amazing), and catching up on work. It isn’t uncommon to see teens having lunch, moms with toddlers playing games while having a cookie and milk, and some older ladies playing some card game that I don’t know what it is.
The food is always amazing, fresh, and fast. It is a little pricier than Panera, but it is worth it. The salads, sandwiches, and soups are all good. They do let you sample soups too, which is always good. I haven’t ordered soup lately, but if I recall they have at least one vegetarian soup a day.
I have ordered yesterday’s bagels a few times, just a bag of bagels for a great price. I recently discovered their breakfast and love it, especially the huevo ranchero bagel. On weekend mornings the wait is a little longer, but totally worth the wait.
The desserts are always great, just standards you can find anywhere else, but always good. I don’t drink coffee, but my friends have said it’s great. The chai freeze is a huge selling point for me.
It is also in the same center as Pizza Perfect. I enjoy having dinner at City Limits, then heading to Pizza Perfect for a couple of games of air hockey.
I think the only downside is there is no wifi, and also when it rains a lot the lot looks flooded.

It took us a couple of years of living in Bellevue before we discovered City Limits (that predated my discovery of Unilocal). It’s one bookend of a building along the railroad tracks on Old Harding Road (the other bookend is also an excellent restaurant).
The checklist of what is good there is pretty long. Service is great. Even on a busy Sunday, they keep people moving at a decent pace. Food is very good. Desserts are awesome. Bagels are great. They have both indoor and outdoor seating.
There is really no good reason to not go out out of your way for City Limits; and if you are passing by, or on your way to the Natchez Trace or some other point west of Nashville, this is a great place to stop for breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, coffee — whatever.

Love that this is in my hood! Such a better option than Panera — especially the salads. While I wish I could indulge in the sandwiches (some of them look SO good, but, alas, no GF breads), I appreciate that the salads are all made with high quality ingredients and some of them are really creative. I had the spinach salad yesterday, and while it doesn’t look like much, the dressing is SO good and the ingredients go together so well that it’s definitely more than the sum of its parts. Boyfriend had the cranberry chicken salad — he seemed to really enjoy it. Their coffee selection is nice, but as a tea drinker (who prefers unsweetened and uncaffeinated beverages), there wasn’t much to choose from. I’ll go with water next time.
It gets busy at lunch (especially on Sundays, since the other good local option, Cottage Café, isn’t open) and so service can get slow, but the food is good and they don’t hurry you out the door or anything. Huge asset to the neighborhood.