Tartine Sycamore — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Used to be better👎 The ingredients and taste have totally gone DOWNHILL. Things look great, though most pastries are too dark - the French would say burnt.

The banana cream pie whipped cream tastes like grocery store. How easy is blending grocery store heavy cream + sugar + vanilla which makes a superb whipped cream!??

I always got the quiche which was buttery and sublime. Today I got it and (see pic) it’s really a spinach pie not a quiche. Very little egg which used to be a highlight - it was sooo buttery and full fat cream-creamy🥰 At least the crust is still kinda special and super flaky. Menu says Gruyere cheese and my first bite I thought what is this? It tastes and has the mouth feel of cheap plastic American cheese!

Whaa!?!

On the way out I mentioned it to the manager who was totally cool..explained that they make in-house…which IS the problem. A baked goods restaurant is NEVER going to do good cheese let alone Gruyère, which is best aged.

Sadly, the owner probably wants to make more money. They’ve raised prices as everyone has, but also DROPPED TASTE… The owner knows full well how to make sublime food because he did it for the first couple years!😒

Shame. Won’t bother anymore :( The now 3-ish stars it has on Google reviews is for good reason.

The setting is still wonderful and I love this little block it’s on although the secret’s out these days.

Oh, and the waiter outside doesn’t carry a cleaning towel, instead I watched him use the partially used napkin from the dirty used dishes a customer had left behind to barely wipe the...

Everything was perfect at Tartine as you would expect. But I have a word of warning so you can avoid the confusion we experienced today. Close to the Tartine front door is a walk up window. This window is NOT Tartine! However they sell coffee and pastries so it might not be clear to you like it wasn't to us. We ordered two croissants and coffee at this other non-Tartine establishment and then sat at the Tartine outdoor tables and ate. My husband even said to the lady at the walk up window, y'all hooked us forever when we went to the Manufactory in San Francisco, so happy you are in LA now, we visit here often. The lady replied, that's great! :-| Literally the only way we learned of our mistake was that I decided to buy coffee beans so I said, hey, let's go inside and see what kind of beans they sell. I asked the employee at the counter what coffee their order window used for cappuccino and he said, oh, we don't have an order window, that's another company next door. Wow. Ok! That explains why they sold "spam and cheese" croissants at the walk up window rather than the expected jambon! Anyway, the other establishment was good but Tartine is perfect. Believe it. Here's a photo of what we ended up buying and taking home from Tartine (morning buns, plain croissant, jambon croissant, apple butter hand pie). And (not pictured), a...

After three years of steady, almost religious patronage at Tartine, today I handed back my nearly full punch card and told them I won’t be coming back. The one dish that kept me loyal was their Ham & Cheese Croissant Sandwich. From the beginning, I explained that I didn’t like runny yolks, and the staff kindly accommodated me by preparing it with their “folded egg” — essentially scrambled eggs. That version became something of a quiet favorite among my friends and even my mom, who visits me often in LA.

Today, however, a manager I had never seen before, who introduced herself as “Serena,” flatly refused to make the sandwich that way — even after I said I was happy to pay extra.

My previous visit had also left a bad taste: another manager came by to remind me, somewhat abruptly, that the turnaround time was 90 minutes — exactly one hour into a visit where I was quietly eating breakfast in a nearly empty café.

It’s unfortunate that a place with such genuinely kind staff — from baristas to runners to cooks — is managed by people who seem out of touch with what keeps loyal customers coming back. The guy behind the coffee counter today, for instance, has always been nothing but gracious.

In a city where everything comes at a cost, I won’t pay for something I don’t enjoy. Goodbye, Tartine! It was good...