Amélie's Uptown | French Bakery & Cafe — Restaurant in Charlotte

This is a long one… First obvious context. When I review I consider 3 elements of my experience: atmosphere, service and food. Less obvious, I have worked across the street from Amelie’s for more than 10 yrs, and I LOVE French foods, and honestly, I’m not that hard to please. You’ll have to trust me on this because after reading this review you will doubt me.

Sadly, Amelie’s consistently disappoints me. My biggest gripe is with their ordering, food collection process - it’s confusing and customers end up asking each other questions (“where are the napkins?” You’ll find them across the wide open space far from the cutlery) because the staff seems oblivious to the general confusion and doesn’t set or manage expectations. A few years ago they did a process and space remodel, but alas, it’s still confusing.

Nonetheless, the food used to lure me in despite this frustration with process and staff’s oblivion. But even that has become ‘meh’- not the pasties mind you they are amazing— Sometimes heated halfway through, sometimes flavors fall short.

Fortunately for me and my French-food-obsession there are multiple French restaurants in and around CLT. One that excels where Amelie’s flops, is Chez Marie Patisserie in South Park. They also have amazing pastries, and win on service, attitude and food as well. Plus it’s a darling little space to sit and enjoy life. I don’t work there, I don’t know anyone who works there, I’m just a fan of...

We had a tea there this past weekend with about 40 women! Amelie's did a wonderful job with helping us with the they had an elevat and the display of food! The sandwiches, fruit tray, all of the pastries were on point and gobbled up by all lemonade. Our private event was held downstairs we had senior citizens, to 8 year olds there. One of the reasons that we picked this location was for the ambiance this location offered. Another reason was that it is handicap accessible with an elevator that will take you to a lower and easy access coming into the fro t on a very busy uptown street. Our event floor was held on the lower floor. The elevator was not in working order, which was disappointing because we felt one of our attendees would not be able to get down the stairs. Let me tell you that some of the nicest Amelie's employees were on both sides of our guest helping her down the stairs and they came back and helped her get up the stairs when our event was over! Yes, that elevator needs to be fixed, but they made everything work out. For us, that's huge plus!! Thanks to all that made her truly feel like a Queen that day. Now those spicy chicken. Salad sandwiches and pecan tarts...made us holler for more! We will be back. Everything...

Well, I think I’d be willing to come back here to give it another try with such high reviews, but the food honestly wasn’t that great. Maybe I came on a bad day. I love French bakeries but I was just disappointed. The Americano I got was super weak. I went to an Italian bakery right after I visited here, and the americano coffee was just night and day. The quiche was completely out of balance and not mixed well. I was getting whole bites that were nothing but bacon crumbles with no egg which made it extremely salty and chewy. I ended up just busting the whole thing up and mixing it better. I love meat in a meat quiche, but that bacon was just completely overpowering. Also, the cheese on top was like leather. I could not cut through it with my fork and I had to wrestle with it to get through. It was like it had it had been reheated multiple times or it’s just the wrong cheese to be putting on top of a quiche. French bakeries do not use as much sugar as American bakeries, but both my orange cream puff and my blueberry tartlet were over the top sweet. American baking style sweet not French. This place was within walking distance of my hotel, so I think next time I will just get a pain chocolat if I get a chance to come back when...