PAUL Ren'ai — Restaurant in Da'an District

The sandwiches are great here, which is what is sad about writing this review. They have delivery, which is great—very convenient, and much appreciated as somebody who lives a long way away from this restaurant, but who occasionally craves a nice, crispy baguette.

Unfortunately, their service for customers who order delivery is seriously lacking. Over the past few months, multiple orders have come either with incorrect items, or simply with items missing. I understand that mistakes happen, but I have never had this issue with any other vendor on the delivery platform that I use.

Orders that are incorrectly fulfilled are frustrating, but the delivery platforms have generally been understanding and simply offered a refund on those items. Today, however, was a bit different. I ordered a sandwich, which was estimated at a 50-minute delivery time—long for a premade sandwich, but I know they sometimes take their time at this location, so I planned ahead.

After 20 minutes, I received a text from the delivery platform, "Paul can't get to your order right now, so it has been cancelled. Sorry for the inconvenience." So I go to check and, sure enough, all record that I ever ordered has been wiped from my account. This means, of course, that there's no way to register a complaint with the store via the app.

When I tap back in to see if there's a way to contact the store via the app, however, I note that they are already accepting orders again. So apparently, if some counter worker doesn't feel like bagging up your pre-made sandwich and leaving it on the counter for the delivery driver, they feel empowered to wait until your lunch break is well underway, then cancel your order. But, having cleared out all the detritus, they'll also happily accept orders from the next person who comes along to the app.

I'm sure if you go to the restaurant it's a very different experience. I highly doubt that customers sit down in the restaurant, order, wait 20 minutes, and then have a server come out to tell them that things are a bit busy, so they'll have to leave, only to watch new customers being seated as the original customers exit the building.

You're busy, I understand. But so are your customers. Either treat the people who are using the app the same as your physical customers (we are, after all, paying higher prices to offset the cost of the delivery service), or just don't offer delivery. As an international chain, you should be able to do better than "delivery when we...

A bakery chain that provides a brasserie-like experience but slightly struggles with the service and does not have restrooms.

We visited this branch of Paul for breakfast - the atmosphere of this bakery is great and rather compares to a rustic brasserie and the food choices are very positive.

At entering the café, we were told that we can only stay 90min even though the cafe was almost empty. However, it took over 60min for the staff to serve us the breakfast we ordered. The food overall was very good and the cafe made a clean appearance. Most breakfast deals include coffee refills which is really great.

The key issue we observed was the slow and unorganised service. The scrambled eggs we ordered were cold until the bread/ baguettes arrived 25min later. And then being told to leave after 90min seemed inappropriate to us. Further, another issue we observed is that the cafe does not offer restrooms - you need to leave the cafe and enter the nearby office block - which could be seen as a red flag for some.

In summary, a lovely cafe in great location, serving good quality french inspired food with service that requires...

We walked with literally 4-5 tables available with 1-2 tables without reservation signs at 3pm. The staff took our names and advised us to wait. We waited first in line the. A group of four came and kindly told the staff their reservation is at 4pm and whether they can get seats immediately. So we witnessed the staff gave the party of 4 seated right away. We started ordering some takeout then the staff came to interrupt us by asking whether we are switching to be take out and not dine in. We inquired the intruded staff the wait time and she went like will be another 15 min wait time. The overall experience of this place is strange seating priority policy regarding the order of walk-in clients as well as no manner whether to interrupt whether we are having conversation with their other colleague at the assigned take out area. They paid no attention to us while we waited on side for dine in but inly cared when we could switch to take out so they can serve less customers. Guess carrying a French umbrella doesn’t bring us closer to Paul’s French root. What a bad encounter in this summer...