The French Baker SM Lanang — Restaurant in Davao City

My wife & I wanted to take our friend out for dinner to celebrate her new job. We decided on coming to the French Baker SM Lanang. What a DISAPPOINTMENT it turned out to be. This was our Fifth and LAST TIME ever dining here. In the pass visits the food was always good, but never Great. The service has always been Slow, but they were friendly and eventually got the job done.Tonight was a Total Disappointment!!! The service, if you want to call it that, was Horrible. Slow, Inattentive and Unfriendly. For drinks, we ordered two mint lemonades, an ice tea and a brewed coffee. Our dinner order was soup bread bowl, fish & chips, pork spareribs and chicken with mango salsa. My soup bread bowl and my fish & chip arrived at the table together, approximately 20 minutes after being ordered. Our four drinks came 5 minutes AFTER that!!! I, being polite, wanted to wait until the other two meals arrived before I started eating.My wife and our guest's meal took an additional 10 minutes to arrive. This is just Whole Inexcusable!! Our "Server" offered no explanation or apology as to why service took SO LONG or why the food arrived to the table separately & with such a gap in time. There were only three parties in this restaurant when this took place, NO EXCUSE for such POOR SERVICE. The food was also subpar. My fish was undercooked, the pork spareribs Way Overcooked and the 120php brewed coffee was burnt to point of being bitter tasting. If this is the type of "Service" & food the management want to put out to the customer and consider acceptable, then they should do all of Davao a favor and just CLOSE THEIR DOORS for business. ⭐ONE...

I've given three stars but it only deserves 2.5.

My family and I visited here twice in August. The first time was reasonably good, but the second time was poor. The time of the visits were midday (udto).

The food is OK, but nothing special. On our second visit one of us ordered a lasagne but it didn't arrive with the other three meals. We had to chase it up with the waiting staff, who were slow, even though the diner wasn't busy. Eventually it arrived, but by then the rest of us had finished eating. Even after chasing it up, the food took another 15 minutes to arrive. Let's not pretend that each serving is made from scratch. It's a few minutes in the microwave.

The ambience is pleasant, as are the staff (even if a bit slow).

What I don't understand, and I see this at other eateries in the Philippines, is that the waiting staff do not remove the empty plates from the main course, either before or while serving desert. The table could be full, with hardly any space for the desert dishes, but they just do not take the used ones.

Maybe it's poor training, possibly a lack of common sense. I'd like...

I wanted lunch and thought that the menu outside "The French Baker" looked interesting. It must indeed be a very popular place. More than half of their dishes was sold out already at lunch time. I ordered their home grown French duck dish, while wondering where they were growing the ducks. It came with rice and sauce on the side. I poured the sauce over the rice and tried to cut a bit of the duck. It was strange hard and almost impossible to cut. It turned out that only the outside was fried, while inside was frozen. I was obviously not aware that French duck is frozen duck. I kindly asked the waiter if I could have it fried a bit more, because I would prefer it warm duck instead of frozen. The plate came back. This time the duck was not frozen anymore and they gave me new rice, but without the sauce. I asked for the sauce as I am not a big fan of eating plain rice. They told that they had not more duck sauce and gave be barbecue sauce instead. So now I know that French duck is frozen duck with...