Hillcrest Little Bakery — Restaurant in Little Rock

If you prove to them what their hours are, maybe they’ll serve you, but it will be with serious attitude and no sense of ignorance.

We ordered to go, better not to deal with a staff that literally doesn’t know the hours of operation.

Apparently rude is good for thee, but not for me.

I can’t thank the owner of this establishment enough for reaching out and seeking to understand what happened here - kidding. This absolutely did not happen. I guess staff follows leadership.

Despite what you may read we walked in at 7:57 (57 minutes after the Internet said they were open, the door was open and the place was full) and were told bluntly: you can stand here but we won’t be taking orders for 45 minutes. This was when she told me they opened at 8.

45 minutes??? And you “open at 8”?

I might have tried to figure out what was happening when people were walking in at 7. Also. Who opens at 8 but doesn’t take orders until 8:45? So much confusing here.

I said to the skeptical barista, “your posted hours state you open at 7, it’s almost 8 and you won’t serve until 9?”

she literally goes, “Where did you see that? Show me.”

This wasn’t polite. It was condescending and rude.

I showed them, she then looked at the 7 other people standing there and said, “we open in three minutes.” I absolutely said, “well, now you do”

another customer made a rude comment and I walked out - I’m not even going to justify the statement about the door. Ridiculous.

Mistakes are made by all. Especially me.

The mistakes weren’t the issue.

The quality of food (the sausage biscuit is like eating a hockey puck with tasteless cheese), the inability to coordinate hours on what was likely to be one of the busiest days of the year (opening late on a day war memorial opened early was a weird business choice), and then chirping customers were the bigger issues.

Your hours were inconsistent across many platforms, but the way the issue was handled is the problem.

The perpetual issues at this place remain and it’s more obvious to me, now, why they do.

You can spend your money anywhere in this town, I’d pick a different local business to support.

I doubt you’ll regret it, unless you just get really lucky here. In the last few years we’ve had one good experience, even outside of this disaster. It’s just not worth what you pay (prices here are high, in these times it’s a bold choice to offer rude service and inconsistent quality), often you get bad and slow service, half good half warm half crispy food, served with a bad attitude from top to bottom. There’s better food and service all over.

We want to like this place but they just constantly give us reasons to pick other local places. Reviews across all platforms are pretty consistent, trust them. When you manage to get good food here, you can pretty much count on cold service, but most of the time you can count on it all being a bit cold.

Thinking of helping the owner out by filling the photos with the content that fills reviews about the staff. I’d love to think the problem is me, but it seems it’s...

TL;DR: Generally uncomfortable with the level of attitude I got when I asked about the correction to my order. The vibe here is judgemental for a reason I wasn't able to figure out. Obvi won't be back, but not stressed about it.

I like to try places 3 times before fully committing to an opinion, especially one that's potentially disappointing. Last time I visited HLB I felt rushed while ordering and upset with the way the staff treated me.

The only thing I ordered was an egg on a biscuit with bacon. The person who took my order said asked if I wanted fig spread on it. I like fig, so I said yes. It took 20 minutes to get out to me (ok) and was missing the egg (just fig and bacon). I asked if the egg was maybe missed by accident and if I could have it, and was told (by the person who took my order 20 minutes prior) that "I didn't order any egg, that just looks like a fancy biscuit" in the rudest way possible, yelled from across the kitchen, involving everyone in the area... super rude and unnecessary.

After that, I was given the silent treatment after I insisted in please returning the order for a correction, waited another 25 minutes for the new order to come out, was completely ignored and not checked up on or given any updates. I sat quietly, definitely not trying to start any fights over a damn egg because that'd be seriously so stupid...thus why I'm just really confused. I would have been happy with an egg on the side real fast, but I wasn't asked for my opinion, the person seemed really flustered and upset that I was interacting with them and ran off into the back for the rest of the time I was present.

I'm just upset to say that I left feeling like the place was run by high school mean girls without customer service/ critical thinking skills, or any sort of empathy. It was just really really strange energy that last time. I'm sure they're nice, but might not have been feeling it that day. The only good thing I noticed when I visited was that I heard a different staff member softly ask "where the egg biscuit is" about 20 minutes into the remake of my order.

I replayed the events in my head and thought I was not rude in any way, reminding myself that politely asking for a correction to an order is inherently not rude. Maybe they have a different recounting of events, but regardless, the communication skills exhibited by the staff that day...

I know that many people have had good experiences here, but in several experiences here, it's hit or miss. Very inconsistent and it seems like it's day to day on whether they're running a business or playing restaurant, like a kid with a lemonade stand. The food is ok and overpriced, which is kind of a hallmark of Little Rock restaurants. Poor Little Rock folks have gotten so used to low quality/high prices, they expect it and don't get out of the city much....Service is really dodgy. On more than one occasion, when the line is out of the door and no one is getting food, I've been told they've been having a bad day and to overlook them. I understand this is a dilemma for all restaurants right now....but this was before COVID. Today, I ordered a biscuit, bacon, eggs, with avocado online. I was charged for the avocado, then the cashier insisted I pay an additional $1.65 for the avocado, because I wasn't really charged online (I was). For a dry biscuit with a tiny egg, a strip of bacon and $0.50 worth of avocado, I paid $11.

I'm glad Hillcrest has "kind of" a breakfast option - if they decide to be open today, but what I really wish is that someone would open restaurants in Little Rock that offer the same basic food options you can find in much smaller cities and where service and quality isn't the kind where you have to just be "thankful we have anything at all" and put up with it. We're not on an island - even though, sometimes it...