D'avant Bakery — Restaurant in Palisades Park

Comprehensive Cafe Review: Baked Goods: Fantastic. Come here all the time for their breads and desserts and have yet to encounter anything that doesn't taste fantastic. I love trying out new seasonal flavors. You can tell this is a dedicated bakery, not just a "its just flour, sugar and eggs" kinda "bakery".

Drinks: Terrible. Coffee is as burnt, bitter and gross as you'd expect, iced drinks are as sweet as straight sugar. Pretty much expected from a Korean cafe though, it's common to see places that offer large drink menus to be the type that just follows a standardized recipe than actually consider the taste and quality. They offer tons of interesting and fun, seasonal drinks, but I have yet to have a single, good drink from this cafe, whether its coffee, tea or ades.

Atmosphere: Visually, the cafe is stunning. Their dark, "industrial" theme works very well. The metal and stone decorating, brick walls, stone floors, and dark colors give a very professional and sleek vibe.

In-Person Dining: God awful. This truly is more a bakery than it is a cafe. They focus on quality of their baked goods while being extremely lazy about their drink quality, and visually the place is stunning but dining is at maximum discomfort. The stone seats and benches are made to be as uncomfortable as possible, seating is extremely limited, uncomfortable. Their individual tables are uncomfortable, thin pieces of metal and extremely tiny in size. The music is extremely loud, making conversations hard to hear and concentrating difficult. The bakery is also very popular and busy, so its often packed and hectic, and tables and floors are always dirty whenever I come in. Internet is limited and cut off at 2hrs, if not earlier.

This is done on purpose. This is a bakery, with a cafe extension. They do NOT want people to dine inside, they are here to sell goods, not service (which is seen in the multiple reviews criticizing their terrible and lazy customer service). They even charge for water. This all speaks out not-so-subtly that they do not want customers to stay and relax. They have designed this place to be as unrelaxing as possible to dissuade customers from staying more than 10-30min. To be honest, I'm surprised they even offer outlets in the dining area.

Overall, this is a fantastic bakery and a terrible cafe. Their main product is selling their baked goods and they are extremely successful in that regard. They deliver quality goods and have good marketing and design choices. Attractive packaging, stylish interior, and professionally-made advertisements. But the cafe portion is just an extension of this business to make extra money, but not something they're willing to seriously invest in. General, public consensus is that the dining experience is less than ideal and very unaccommodating. Customer service is...

My wife and I were regulars here. They do have great tasting pastries, and drinks but was extremely appalled by today's experience. Unfortunately I was at work when this all happened.

My wife bought a few items and ended up spilling the drinks she bought. Usually when a customer drops or spills a drink in the store, in my past experiences, one of the employees would tell the customer that they will take care of it even if the customer offers to help. Then they always offer to make a new one even if the customer isn't a regular. Instead they just stood there.

Despite my wife having to hold a cake, pastries and two drinks by herself, they didn't bother to give her a bag for the drinks so she can safely carry everything. Yet my wife felt it was her fault so she offered to clean up the mess she made. One of the employee coldly replies an employee is going out to clean the mess and throws her a small rag to clean up two drinks.

I used to help out my parents at their bagel store and if there are only one or two customers waiting in line I go out. But today at that moment, they had one customer waiting to order and another selecting pastries. They have three employees by the counter and all of them just stared at my wife blankly. Not even an are you okay? This is extremely rude and unprofessional.

To make matters worse one of the male employees coldly told my wife, "don't drop the cake," as my wife walks out the door.

Oh yeah if you look at the photo the -4 is a four dollar refund for the price difference of the cake. It's just about 2 cents but it really shows how well trained their employees are. They literally refunded her exactly $4. Like I said it's just 2 pennies but after that experience this small detail really irks me.

They could have one of the best bakeries in town but this type of service will end up ruining...

While looking for a bakery with some breakfast options that opens early, I came across this spot. They had a nice amount of seating. It can get pretty loud with more than half the space occupied.

They had a good varieties of ready-to-go baked goods, both sweet and savory. As more customers purchase them, they will bring out more freshly-baked items from the back.

We bought Hot Dog Roll, Croquette, Matcha Cream Croissant, and Snow Strawberry Croissant. They were all very tasty, but Croquette and Matcha Cream Croissant really stood out. Croquette was very popular, everyone seems to get a few. The inside was creamy with lots of veggies, almost like a creamy version of Cole slaw… So good! Matcha Cream Croissant was big and heavy! It had loads of matcha cream filling, and covered with matcha chocolate which was extra awesome.

Needless to say, we were very happy with our first visit. So, we went back a few times after that. We also tried made-to-order items Bulgogi Rice Bowl and French Toast.

The Bulgogi Rice Bowl was tasty, sweet and comforting. The only thing was that they didn’t provide spoon which made it a bit harder to eat… French Toast was good too. Not overly sweet like other typical American or French kinds. The “creamy custard sauce” was watery. It would’ve been nice if it was more creamy…

On another day we went back for baked goods, they didn't have much out yet, and as we waited, they were kind of slow in getting baked goods out... They were several customers waiting for specific items like croquette and matcha croissant, and they didn't come out for a long time... I wish if they have a better system to have the popular items ready and out in...