Haute Dolci Blackburn — Restaurant in England

Place is situated in the town centre where unless you have parked in the main town centre car park or walked from Morrisons super market, it can be a bit difficult to find a space when it’s busy.

The place itself is clean, and well decorated.

Prices are high end and their likely competition I guess is Kaspa’s and Heavenly Desserts.

The menu is poorly structured and difficult to understand. You get two books to decide on drinks, milkshakes and on stuff like Waffles, Crepes etc. If you’re hoping for a straight up 2 page menu with easily understood labels...this place is not it.

Food and drinks arrived quickly and are very well presented. They also give you free ice water in nice cups which I felt was a nice touch. Also the napkin and cutlery is laid out for you, unlike Kaspa where you have to go find your own.

Things start to go downhill from here.

Food came promptly, and we ordered 9 full sized desserts. Visually it’s Instagram food, for others it’s just well presented food. So if you like to feed Insta, this is perfect. The waiter also came to ask if everything was ok, this was a nice touch. BUT...one of our waffles felt slightly chewy and burnt on one side, despite telling Yasin several times this was the case, any other customer respecting establishment just says sorry I’ll swap you out, it’s not like we complained after having eaten all off it. Err no, not this place. They argue they made it the same way as the others and we felt fobbed off. Which I thought was poor customer services. Why ask if everything is fine if your not going to do anything about it. You can order 99p fries from McDonalds and if they didn’t meet customer requirements they swap them out, no quibbles in-fact this is the first such establishment I have ever come across where they believe a verbal acknowledgment / explanation is sufficient for such things.

The banana loaf with the toffee sauce was dry, the sauce was lukewarm and in a few minutes it went all stodgy. Imagine dry cake and cold toffee sauce. Pic posted.

I cancelled an item on my order and replaced it with another... they still billed me for the cancelled item. I came home and the Mrs noticed on the receipt so I called them back. He offered a refund but I didn’t want to go back to the place after 10pm. So the other option was come back whenever and look for Yasin and he will sort it, if he’s not in ‘they will sort it out’, an email to acknowledge this error would have been nice and would have saved me some embarrassment going back in and verbally trying to get £7.60 back for an order I placed historically. At least I got a verbal apology this time unlike with the waffle. I am also surprised he made this error, because I explicitly told him I cancelled and the people I was with made a joke about it. I’m not overly disappointed with this mistake, we are human and these things happen. But it’s how they dealt with it which leaves a lot to be desired.

To summarise, some of the food was nice, looks fantastic, more visuals over substance because I feel all these dessert places are generally the same, but that’s just my opinion. It’s slightly on the expensive side and I’m not convinced you get better for your money. If your kids don’t care your being served Madagascan vanilla ice cream with your cookie dough, and they generally don’t finish their food, a cheaper alternative is recommended. If you do care that it’s Madagascan this is the place for you.

Service is poor. Staff need to be trained on how to meet customer expectations, exceeding expectations is a long way away especially if they claim to be up-market and want to charge the highest prices in town. And yes Blackburn has at least 5-6 very good dessert places already.

UPDATE: Popped in for my refund the following day and was initially fobbed off with as I’d already paid for the desert they would only be able to honour the desert I was overcharged for and NOT a refund even though they overcharged me. That is SHOCKING!! Needed some stern words and a phone call from the store staff to someone else to get...

I had planned my sisters surprise baby shower here. Initially when choosing this venue I was put off by one staff, but I didn't let her ruin it for all the other staff. I'm glad I went ahead with it anyhow.

Organising this was hard work however the event planner of Huate Dolci (Aisha) was very helpful throughout. I'm very appreciative of her for taking my opinion and views on board, she really understood how I wanted things and made it her priority to get it just like how I expected - If not better. She sorted the balloon wall, canapés and decorations, easing the stress off my shoulders.

The room upstairs accommodates upto 40people. However in my opinion more than 30 would get really crowded. I had 24 guests and we had just enough space for all the games and activities planned.

Everything was picturesque from start to finish. We had our own personal waiter on the day, Romana. Couldn't have asked for a better assistant, she was so patient and understanding even when her manager was pushing orders from us. She remained calm and collective and allowed us to continue doing our thing even though her manager was was giving her the eyes 👀. She put no pressure on us to hurry and allowed us our time. Romona is an asset to Haute Dolci and we would be happy to be served by her in future

One thing that annoyed me the most was that haute agreed to provide melted chocolate and nuts for a nappy game - however a day before the event when we were going through it A different staff member said that they could not accommodate for that even though its a dessert place. Her excuse was that microwaving takes time and the melted chocolate costs a lot for them to waste... So I had to go buy my own chocolate which was fine but annoying at the same time as booking haute and paying for the event/service wasn't cheap and melted chocolate is readily available at haute. At the end of the day we are paying for a service so we expect our needs to be met without any excuses.

Another thing I noticed was that there was a lack of communication. We had explained everything before the day to the event organiser but then On the day when I arrived I had to explain everything again to someone I hadn't met or spoken to before. Which was a waste of time for me because I should not have to repeat myself. Last thing you want is to explain how you want things on the day of the event when you have already done so. Just for future reference it would be nice if one or two people deal with everything and they can delegate to their staff.

Another positive was that the manager out of the kindness of his heart made a personalised helium balloon for my sister that we took home, they also did other cute things without us having to ask which made it more special.

Conclusively (as this has turned into an essay) I would definitely recommend Blackburn Huate Dolci, I would probably use this venue again without a doubt. Everything went smoothly, staff were really understanding. We had the venue booked from 4 - 8pm, we left at 8pm - however they were not pushy for us to leave, they allowed us an extra half an hour if we needed it. We were very greatful for this.

I have attached some picture from the event below. Hope this review has...

I would like to start by stating that I did not have the opportunity to try any of the food due to the service upon our arrival.

I visited your restaurant on Saturday the 18th November 2023 to celebrate a birthday, with members of my family, 13 adults and 3 children.At first contact, the host seemed overwhelmed with the number of guests and told us we should have booked for a party of this size. There were 2 booths on the ground floor available and I stated that we were happy to be seated separately if it were more convenient. We were then greeted by a second host, whom again seemed overwhelmed with the number of guests in our group. She continued to state 'we should have booked', which I found growingly upsetting as we have never needed to book to eat ice cream/desserts in a dessert store before. Lubna continued to open the gate to seat us upstairs, which was completely empty and evident to me that the store had the capacity to host us but was reluctant to. She then proceeded to walk us to our table and and then stated the following; 'please mind your children and don't let them touch any other tables as they are clean'.

This was an absolutely unnecessary and an offensive comment. We have never been the recipients of such comments regarding our children in any facility or circumstance, never mind a dessert store.

We chose to leave the store as it was unacceptable for me to sit and pay for a service where my children were not welcome. I spoke to the area manager by phone.He apologiesed for the hosts behavior and told me he believed this may have been due to cultural differences as she was from Kuwait. Again I find this unacceptable as this is not a culture differences, I'm sure they have restaurants and children in Kuwait.

We went to another dessert store 2 miles away, they had no issues accommodating our group even though they were at full capacity and both floors were in use. They happily served my children and made them feel welcome.

The experience left us upset not wanting to return to this establishment again. My children witnessed what had happened and I did not like having to explain to them why we had to leave. If it was not for another store accommodating us, our evening would have...