Bonjour Brioche — Restaurant in Toronto

Service issues galore, and baked goods are not good. I would give zero stars if possible.

Went with my wife and 2 kids (9 and 4 y/o girls) on a Saturday at 1:30pm or so (This morning, Sept 3 2016). I was excited to try the place that many have voted as having the best croissant in the city. We waited 20 minutes or so for a table, which is fine for a popular spot. Sat down, and a waiter with a good demeanor came to take our order. That was where the joy ended.

We ordered the Mediterranean Salad (Special of the day), the spicy bacon sandwich (another special of the day), and another sandwich (prosciutto and butter on baguette). We sat and waited for (and I am being generous here) 20 minutes, with ZERO attention from anyone, at which point I gently asked if they knew if it would be much longer for the food, since it had really been a while. The waiter told me he would check, and came back a minute later to tell me that the food would likely be another 15 minutes at least!

So, basically it would have been at the very least 35 minutes to get two sandwiches and a salad. Needless to say, we immediately changed the order to get a baguette with butter and jam on the side, and a pain au chocolat. The baguette was absolutely terrible - light and dry center with zero taste. The pain au chocolat was oily and had an almost wet texture. My younger daughter didn't like it! She eats croissants from Loblaws that are day old and likes it, and didn't like it.

I am not an expert on all food, but when it comes to bread and other baked goods, I am an extremely harsh critic. I am originally a Montrealer, who also lived 11 years in Manhattan, and I am a baguette (and other French and European pastry) fiend. I have lived in Toronto for 6 years now, and I have found TWO places that carry baked items worth anything in the city. Ma Maison, which has THE BEST croissants in the city, and Mabel's on Roncesvalles carries a baguette called the Ubashi, which is great.

Well, I asked to speak to a manager because I was not a happy guy. She came over, and I wanted to know how much anyone had told her prior to telling her why I was displeased. So I asked her what she knew, and she said, and I quote: "I heard you had to wait a little bit for your food"? I could not believe that instead of coming over with apologies, she actually tried to tell me that the 20+ minute wait that I had until the point that I was told that it would be another 15 minutes at least, was "a little bit".

I told her that her managerial skills were lacking, and that I just wanted to pay and leave without discussing any further, to which she very flippantly told me that I didn't have to pay. I didn't argue....

If I could give a ZERO I would!!! We drove 1 hour to begin a great anniversary day celebration starting at what we thought would be a great little French restaurant. It was a cold and rainy day, once we were seated we could feel the cold draft from the door… I politely asked if we could move to a table that had just cleared. No problem said NATHAN (apparently a part owner as he said). We ordered a quiche and Benny, after 30 minutes of waiting for our food and seeing other people come in after us and ordered and received their meals with some even finished and left. We inquired about our order… 10 minutes later at 40+ since ordering, NATHAN brings our food and I asked, NATHAN is this typical to wait this long for food? Well guess what NATHAN answered me? “ we’ll you’ve been grumpy since you came in… we tried to please you with all your requests” WHAT REQUESTS?????? All I asked was to move tables… oh I’m sorry NATHAN for disturbing your peace. And the best part … some girl from the table beside us turns and says “oh I work as a server at another restaurant and sometimes it’s busy” oh WOW thank you girl at other table for the advise and opinion that no one asked for! Thank you NATHAN and thank you BONJOUR BRIOCHE for ruining what was to be a great morning by being unnecessarily RUDE and having ZERO CUSTOMER SERVICE SKILLS. Here’s what Grumpy does… good news travels but bad news travels even faster! I’ll make sure to let as many know of your TERRIBLE and RUDE attitude. To top it off we just returned from Paris last month… not even in Paris were they as RUDE as NATHAN. If NATHAN really is a partner in the business, he couldn’t have more than 1% into it. For the sake of your business just buy him out! You don’t need this type of TOXIC attitude representing you. All he had to do was apologize for the delay. What he chose to do is say I’m grumpy (which I wasn’t) so that means delay my food????? NATHAN YOUR A...

Update on September 28th! We went back there and it was amazing. We were served by the super friendly Stephanie. And we even made friends with the ones seated beside us.

I went there with my son and we had a latte, a hot chocolate and an omelete du jour. It was all perfect.

We're so glad as they are located nearby from where we live. And we will definitely return there many times.

Original post 6 months before:

Food was really good. We plan to go back there. But we had some unfortunate things happening to us. If we were only served by the lady who welcomed us at the door...we'd have had a great time there. She was very polite. We believe the problem was with the tall blonde server who attended us during our meal. She didn't seem to be in a good day. Not smiling, not being empathetic. And to make things worse, she brought us the bill but we didn't ask for it.

The bill was brought by the owner, we figure, and it had a probable other order in the bill. Probably that was the back of the bill, but it was facing it when she handed the bill to us. We thought it wasn't our bill, because that was the order we saw. Then the tall girl went back to our table and showed us the other side of the bill, as if itwas obvious. She didn't even apologize for it, as if it was our fault.

Anyway, as I mentioned, we will return. It wasn't the best experience. In Paris they were more polite than the tall girl. But we want it to be a good place to go as it's nearby our home. And we believe it will be nice the other times we return. Hey, tall blonde girl, I hope you have a nice day. Don't worry, things can always improve in life, just adopt a positive attitude. That is a constructive feedback, and we recommend this...