Le Café Cent-Dix — Restaurant in City of Ithaca

We recently went because they advertise on the Downtown Ithaca Gift Card as a restaurant accepting THE Downtown Ithaca Gift Card. When we gave them a gift card loaded with $50 Cent Dix acknowledged they are supposed to accept it as a form of payment and tried swiping it… they were having technical issues with their system (likely due to their recent reopening) and at any other establishment this would have been a non-issue resolved with the simple solution of the restaurant confirming the value of the gift card they advertise as taking, and then figuring out the technical issues with the third party Gift Card vendor and their system after the customer left…. But of course this was not the case and a reasonable solution could not be achieved at Cent Dix. If you’re list as accepting a local gift card (which you initially acknowledged you’re supposed to accept before backpedaling), please don’t try to get me to believe you didn’t agree to do that and you no longer have to accept it even though you initially were trying to fulfill it’s known role as a payment method for YOUR restaurant. And IF the third party gift card vendor did list you without your permission, you need to sue them, not treat your customers with such contempt. The owner of this restaurant was mocking us to his staff and other customers in addition to refusing to deduct the value of the gift card they list as taking from our bill…the cherry topper, them threatening to call the police because we insisted they answer the question of why one of the following two solutions we were proposing would not work for them: Solution Option 1) confirm the value of the gift card, accept the gift card and then resolve it with the Downtown Ithaca consortium in the morning since there was a prior agreement there to be advertised as accepting the card. Solution Option 2) charge us in full and collect the gift card we tried to pay with, and refund us the additional $50 we had to pay out of pocket when the technical issues with the gift card and your system have been resolved. Instead we were berated and publicly humiliated, being gaslit as if we were ridiculous for trusting they would accept a form of payment they list as accepting. The only answer the owner would provide on the “why” was “I’m not going to do that, it’s too much work”. My advice, close the restaurant again and fix your poor management and your waitstaff’s poor table side manner before reopening to serve average at best...

Well this is slightly a hard one to write because I’m feeling fairly cranky about the dinner. Love the menu. They don’t do reservations but we arrived early since we were headed to a show and even at 5:30 when they open there was a line. They did make short work of the line getting people to tables and telling you how the menu worked. I had a Soleil Rose which was great since I love tart drinks. We decided on a bunch of things we wanted to try and ordered bread, celery root, raclette, onion soup, pâte, and fries. That was six things but not an entrée and the waiter then did some guilt thing that tables were only for people ordering entrees but that he would be nice to us and not move us to the bar and let us stay at the table. I said we would be fine moving to the bar but he kept at how nice he was being to let us stay at the table and sort of guilted us into adding the gnocchi, an entree, to split at the end. I was pretty precise about which dishes we wanted as appetizers and what we wanted as our mains but that didn’t even come close to happening. They brought them probably in the order they got prepared and I’m certain they forgot the fries and brought them as our last dish while we were part way through the gnocchi (we wanted them with the French onion soup). So boo on them and the service. On the up side the food was great and the frites were perfection. Of the dishes I listed the only one I wouldn’t recommend is the gnocchi. It had great gnocchi and the squash puree under it was nice but the topping and mushrooms had so much salt I had to scrape them off. And I think salt is fine and loved the salt on the frites. This was just strangely massive. The sourdough bread was crusty and thick with great tooth. The butter was lovely and I think not salted. The onion soup was perfectly balanced with a lovely rich flavor but remained light. The celery root salad was creative and light as was the pate dish. In the end I would have liked the bar better since the table was wide but short which is to say I was quite a bit further away from my wife across from me than from the people to either side of me at neighboring tables. The food is good enough to go again but I’ll be more insistent about food order and if it is just two of us we’ll sit at the bar. Oh and pet peeve on the tip thing. The receipt had that bit where they do the math for you to help and it was for 20%,...

The conduct of this restaurant and its owner is possibly fraudulent and beyond condescending.

This restaurant is listed as accepting gift cards that work at a variety of restaurants in downtown Ithaca. Because the gift cards do not work at every restaurant in Ithaca, they must have agreed to accept payment on these cards in return for the advertising offered by the cards. The advertising, indeed, worked, as my girlfriend and I went here because they were listed as accepting the $50 gift card we had.

When it came time to pay, they refused payment on the gift card because they said it didn't work on their system, an issue that they claimed they would work out with the downtown Ithaca gift card the next day. Even more absurdly, they refused to accept payment in full on my credit card, subject to me leaving the gift card, them working out the technical issue with the card, and crediting that amount back.

Instead, we were treated to an hour of condescension, total denial of responsibility for the fact that they are voluntarily advertising their services through the cards, and cavalier assurances that while our frustration was understood, there was literally nothing they were willing to do. I have, candidly, never been treated with such contempt in my life.

Businesses need to take responsibility for their advertising, and if you voluntarily hold yourself out as accepting a certain form of payment, you have to take it. Especially if $50 is as trivial a sum as they made it sound when they were mocking us.

I'm happy to believe that ultimately, this is a problem with the Ithaca gift cards and their systems, and the food was good. If indeed the Ithaca gift cards are using their name without their permission, I'm also happy to accept that that is where the fraud is (though obviously that's something for them to work out with the gift card people, not a loss to be absorbed by customers).

This may not be a problem for everyone. But their treatment of us was absolutely unacceptable and beyond the pale for any restaurant. They...