Le Bab Charles de Gaulle — Restaurant in Bucharest

I've had increasingly bad experiences at this place, and today was the last time I'm ever going here. The location is great and the food is usually quite good, which is why I kept going back. The service is usually nice too. However last time I went here, a few months ago, my husband found a rubber band in his sticky toffee pudding. The staff apologised, they took it off our bill and we wanted to believe mistakes happen to everyone and we just happen to be unlucky that night. I went there again today for lunch, sat on the balcony (table 94), the place wasn't very busy since it was the middle of the week. I ordered a lemonade, a HUMMUS ZA'ATAR and a CHEESY PULLED PORK CRACK MONSIEUR. Initially they got my order wrong and brought me a regular PULLED PORK CRACK MONSIEUR. I politely pointed out the mistake as soon as the dish was brought to the table and the server apologised and came back several minutes later with a CHEESY PULLED PORK CRACK MONSIEUR. I paid online, even left a tip, and left. It was only home that I realised they never took the regular PULLED PORK CRACK MONSIEUR off my bill, so they double charged me for both the CHEESY PULLED PORK CRACK MONSIEUR which I indeed ate AND the regular PULLED PORK CRACK MONSIEUR which I did not have. Of course it is on me that I did not properly check the bill before paying it, but given that it was a slow time of day, there's really no excuse for this kind of a mistake. Additionally, as mentioned this was not the first time I've had this kind of an experience here, with staff making mistakes and it's just such a...

4 month UPDATE They changed. YAY😍 I’m really glad to be writing this update. Now I can confidently say that the atmosphere, service AND food are good. The food was really delicious, the crunchy potatoes with cheese are a MUST! The service was good, Cristina was very lovely! Definitely shot up to one of my top favourite places to chill, eat and hang out🥰💞 PS I still recommend making a reservation to have your experience run smoother!

Older review Le Bab, Le Bab, Le Bab.. I really liked you guys at first sight. You made a great first 10-min impression with your cosy place, aesthetic decor, and beautiful balcony in one of my favourite places in Bucharest. But the agonisingly long wait (almost an hour) for the disappointing food… it felt like a stab in the back🥲 The food looks great, don’t get me wrong. But the taste.. what is that? what happened? It’s bland and tasted like cardboard. Okay so I said to myself “the main brunch was a fail, but maybe the dessert is better”. Please tell me why was my overpriced brownie aka Sticky Toffee Pudding hard as a ROCK from microwaving it? it’s sloppy. I couldn’t even put my fork in it, so i left it as it was. Come on, you guys. You have so much potential. I really want to come back but fix the food for crying out loud! and the staff.. they can try to...

The food is very tasteful and the ambiance would have been 100% great if… the staff would not have been so disrespectful. For an 11 people reservation we were told the day of the visit we could’t choose the pre-order according to our own liking, that it had to be one of the 2 menus (that were not mentioned when we first made de reservation) that paid 175 or 275 lei for the food per guest. I told the staff member that i think that would be too much food to which she responded “yes, there may be, but we have to make our ends meet at the end of the day since we are a small business”. She then rudely added that she thinks the order i intended for my guests is stingy and that my friends and i would fill half of the restaurant so i better agree with her proposal (in fact, even my “stingy” order was too much for us to finish. I can’t imagine how many leftovers would have been if i ordered the pre-established menu). At the end, when i paid the bill, the staff member told me angrily that the tip isn’t included in the bill, as if he was expecting to tip him more than i already did. Rude! The staff clearly needs some basic...