Le Pain Quotidien — Restaurant in London

Few things to note. They automatically add a service charge. In the fine print on the menu you can have this removed. Im not entirely sure how they work this out as you'll see in the receipt it says they've added a service charge to "guest one" and "guest two". You can't be shy in this restaurant, they don't seem to be concerned with customer service.

Overall the food was ok in the end. It still wasn't what I ordered but I ate it all the same and I enjoyed it.

My friend ordered the fruit salad, see pictures.

Great if you're looking for a quick place to eat and you're not worried about a dining experience as such. My full experience below.

My friend and I are both gluten intolerant so we wanted somewhere that had gluten free options. This is a place where you have to be confident asking for the waiter/waitress if you need any information as the service is very quick and the server we had wasn't very welcoming. I got the impression this is a place that has a very quick turn around in customers so they are quick with ordering/plating/paying. We were asked if we were ready after a couple of minutes of looking at the menu and when we ordered drinks our server went to take our menus before we'd looked at food. The look I received when I asked her to leave the menus wasn't very welcoming. After ten minutes and the server still hadn't returned we had asked another to take our order and he said they do gluten free bread. The menu is slightly confusing so im not surprised my food came out incorrect. I asked for scrambled eggs with salmon (gf bread on the side) but they also serve a scrambled eggs on toast. The food turned up with no salmon. Avocado and tomato on top. Im not a fan of either so I spoke to ANOTHER server and explained what had happened. Instead of taking my food back (which i did initially think would happen), they brought me over a plate of the salmon to put this on top myself....

I recently sat in here with my Nan for a quick coffee and orange juice before our Eurostar train. Both were overpriced for what it was, but we expected that for the location. What we did not expect was the poor service. Up until we had to pay, service wasn’t out of the ordinary. It was all we expected, we placed an order and got our drinks - nothing special. So when I asked to not pay the additional discretionary £2 service fee (because it was already £10 for a small coffee and juice, plus service was nothing other than what you’d expect from a busy cafe) our waiter seemed put off and said he couldn’t change the price on the digital Eftpos machine (although we saw him type in the price, and I myself have used one before and know you can just cancel it and put in a new price very easily) and that he had to go get his manager to take the service fee off. This was fine as I understand needing to grab your manager, he could’ve been new or untrained in that particular part. What we weren’t impressed by was when he said he’d go find his manager we saw him just roam around the back of the restaurant in a circle and start cleaning other tables/organising menus. Not trying to find his employer. He then completely ignored us and moved into serving new people and what seemed to be finding anything else to do but serve us. He ignored us for the next 10 minutes as we watched him circle around aimlessly trying to find something to keep him busy, not speaking to any other employees. He then came up to us and said he tried but can’t find his manager so we will have to pay the service fee. We ended up having to pay it as we needed to get to security for our trip. I know it’s only an extra £2 but it’s the principle of not wanting to pay for service like that. Am not in any...

As a young family of five looking to fuel up for a long journey north this weekend we wanted a convenient and good quality breakfast before setting off.

This place on the face of it looked to tick the boxes and there were definitely some positives, the waiter who chaperoned us in didn’t mind that I was still finishing off a coffee from another establishment and staff were very quick to oblige with a request for tap water, but it went downhill from there.

The gentleman waiter who initially served us was very quick and short with his answers to some fairly standard questions around the menu.

Anyways we ordered the food, me and two of my kids went for scrambled eggs and salmon. At £14 a pop they were extremely disappointing. I know my eggs and these were clearly cooked on a high heat and very quickly, extremely bland and dry. The salmon was equivalent to a basic own brand supermarket taste. Avoid. My wife’s avocado toast was slightly better but nothing to write home about.

Then it came to the bill, firstly they added an extra meal to it, honest mistake potentially but I really don’t know you can make it when it’s clear how many we ordered. After correcting for it, I just asked if the 12.5% service charge was compulsory due to our party size, after an awkward exchange it turns out it wasn’t , but honestly it shouldn’t be awkward. I decided to take it all off. Despite the disappointing food if this exchange wasn’t awkward I’d have left it on as I normally do when eating out. Got some odd looks from them (yes more than one individual) as we walked out.

Overall, poor quality food and...