Grand Café Plaza — Restaurant in Haarlemmermeer

My boyfriend and I were here earlier today. The food was quite nice. I had chicken satay and my boyfriend had a rib eye sandwich. At first, the service was quite ok. We were shown our seats and our order was taken quite quickly after we called down a waitress. The food also arrived at a reasonable time. However, after we are our food, we wanted to order lemon meringue as desserts. We ordered with a younger man, who was very nice. After we waited for a little over half an our, my boyfriend tried to get the attention of one of the waitresses. She was chatting with another waitress and started pointing at him and laughing. We then got the attention of a brown haired waitress asked her if she could check on the desserts as we had a plane to catch. She said she would check it, and never came back to inform us whether the desserts were being made or not. After another half our, we had to call her back to us to cancel the desserts since our plane was leaving. Just then, the nice waiter whom we ordered the desserts with came with our order. We had to decline however as we didn't have the time to eat them. We ended up waiting approximately for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The waitress then made a face, and practically threw the card machine down in front of my boyfriend and stood next to him with her arms crossed clearly unhappy about how WE inconvenienced THEM by waiting over an hour for our desserts and then not being able to eat them. Considering the fact that this is a cafe at an AIRPORT , where people have to catch planes, it's quite unbelievable how unprofessional most of the staff we encountered behaved. My boyfriend and I are very understanding when it comes to the service industry as we have both worked in the field for several years. Delays in food can happen occasionally, and we would never blame service staff or leave out a tip because of something like this. But in this case the service ended up simply being bad, and unprofessional. Rather than a simple apology, we got attitude. I've worked as a waitress, hostess, and restaurant manager for years and I honestly would have fired this waitress on the spot. In general, it was very busy during our 2 hour stay there, with around 5-8 waiters. None of them actually came to check on our table, but we're never rude when we called on them. We were satisfied enough with the service even then, but this attitude...

English.

Terrible service! Had a waitress standing 5 metres away who didnt notice me for the first 10-15 minutes. This because she was casually talking to a colleague who was not working. Standing with her back to the cafe and all the new people coming in. Finally a colleague came by and helped me.

Oh and what also is very inconvenient is that they do not have a portable pin machine. For al they people in a hurry its annoying, because first you get the receipt and then you need to walk with them to be able to pay with a card.

Ordered the croissant with salmon & cream cheese, which was a deceit on itself. Almost no cream cheese to be found and it tasted like cheap salmon they sell in the supermarket. That on a small not fresh croissant.

Tip: just order a beer here, that almost impossible to screw up. Maybe they can handle that.

NL

Slechte service! De serveerster die nog geen 5 meter van mij afstond kreeg het voor elkaar om pas na 10-15 min te komen helpen. Dit omdat zij eerst heel gezellig met een collega die geen dienst had stond te kletsen. Met haar rug naar het cafe toe zodat ze niemand zag binnen komen en niemand haar aandacht kon vragen. Uiteindelijk door een andere wel attente collega geholpen.

Wat ook heel irritant is, is dat ze geen losse pin automaat hebben. Waardoor je eerst je bon krijgt en dan nog met ze mee moet lopen naar de kassa om te betalen. Niks mis mee, maar het is gewoon onhandig voor mensen met haast (die er genoeg op schiphol zijn).

Had de croissant met zalm en roomkaas besteld, wat ook een grote grap was. Er was zo goed als geen roomkaas te vinden en de zalm smaakte naar de goedkoopste zalm uit de supermarkt. Dat allemaal op een matig smakende croissant.

Tip: bestel gewoon een biertje dat is bijna onmogelijk te verkloten, misschien dat ze dat wel goed doen.

Hopelijk doet het cafe management...

QRCodes I understand that during covid separation of people was important. Maybe even still after covid where a lot of staff remain displaced - & by that I mean forced back to prior countries as they were not cared for by their newly adopted ones). But now that’s years ago now & but that hasn’t stopped some venues thinking it’s okay to carry on this way. Obviously it’s cheaper for the owner, but that price discount doesn’t seem to be reflected in the prices that I pay. If anything the prices of everything has gone up - dramatically. Much faster than the increase in ingredients. So I can only think the remaining staff are getting paid far more. But I very much doubt that. So we have reduced service where we are now forced to select food form a website that looks like it was made in 1998. One that has no idea the 100’s of years of design, development & refinement that’s gone into the crafting of real physical menus. So we have a Lack of design promoted by a lack of service, literally. Again separating us from some of the few human interactions we have outside of Barry...