Madame Matisse — Restaurant in Santa Fe

Three year old review that got buried probably because I used the F- word. Updated because y'all deserve it.

When Madame Matisse opened it was bumpy, but it was new so that's expected. When they'd been in business for a while and still didn't have their pastries ready until well after they had opened their doors for breakfast, you let it slide because the food was good and the service was friendly and inviting. But service and quality consistently slid with every visit well before the pandemic. At one point, I ate there regularly, but I stopped going because the quality of the food was no longer worth the money. As a last-minute decision of convenience, we ended up back here.

Madame Matisse used to have my wife's favorite latte in town (half-caff, soy latte). Waitress this time couldn't understand "half-caff" so we explained it. They have no soy, so my wife agrees to almond. It's presented to her as a "vanilla latte". We then ask what was actually in the coffee, because my wife didn't order a "vanilla latte" and she can't have dairy. Waitress finally says their almond milk is vanilla. If you're using flavored milk, that kind of thing needs to be said during the order process. Who knows if the coffee was actually half-caff - it was pretty disgusting so my wife didn't drink it.

Madame Matisse used to have the best french onion soup game in town. This time, my soup is liquid black pepper. There's onions in there - I can see them and I can feel them in my mouth, but I can't taste anything but black pepper. Brew a pot of coffee, but replace the coffee beans with pepper, then make soup with that water. If you had given me my soup in a styrofoam container and told me it was hot and sour soup from the worst mall-Chinese-joint I would've probably just said "Yeah, it's pretty bad" and kept on eating it because I've had worse hot and sour soups (I'm looking at you, Chow's Contemporary Chinese). But I didn't order hot and sour soup, I ordered french onion soup.

My kid orders a pasta dish. It arrives. It looks nice. But I'm staring at it and I ask, "What did you order?" "A penne something something," he says. I'm looking at it. My wife is looking at it. Finally I ask, "Where's the pasta?" because there's no pasta in the bowl! The kid is shifting things around with his fork. His mom also does a double-checking dig at it. No pasta. All the stuff that goes on the pasta is just sitting in the bowl like a soup. We have a back and forth with the waitress who tries to tell us the pasta was under the sauce. We move the sauce around to show the waitress that there is, indeed, no pasta. And let me clear something up real quick. When I say this was a bowl, I don't mean a deep bowl or a large bowl in which one could somehow miss the fact that there was no pasta. This is the type of bowl they use to really emphasize food - large in diameter, but with a massive rim and a relatively shallow and small-diameter well. The only way we would have not seen pasta "under the sauce" is if there were only two pieces of penne in there which would have been an issue in itself. What we had was a big-rimmed bowl of sauce.

Madame Matisse, I will miss the restaurant you once promised to be. But we're over. I'm not sure what happened. Santa Fe really needed what you were promising. Maybe you got too focused on your new place on Canyon, but you were barely pulling off one restaurant. I'm sad to say you're now just running two different restaurants that don't share a menu, but do share poor service and food quality and you're fortunate that Santa Fe is a captive audience without...

We were excited to try this 4-star review restaurant, but our experience was pretty underwhelming especially when it came to the drinks and overall service.

We ordered a white chocolate latte ($7) and were served what was basically warm white chocolate milk with a thick layer of foam, no espresso. When we asked about it, the server told us that a white chocolate latte does not contain espresso . We tried to explain that a latte is espresso with steamed milk, but he brought out a container of white chocolate milk powder and said their “white chocolate latte” is just powder and milk.

At that point, we didn’t want to argue, so we asked for a regular coffee. He then brought out what he called a “café latte,” although the menu only lists “latte” and attempted to educate us on the fact that a cafe latte is milk with espresso. He later admitted he doesn’t drink coffee and asked us for recommendations on where he could try the lattes we speak of. We appreciated the curiosity, but for $7, it was disappointing especially when an actual espresso-based latte on the menu was only $5.50.

Aside from that, the restaurant was uncomfortably hot inside no AC on a warm day and our water was never refilled. The food was okay, but not memorable, and definitely not worth a 4-star rating. The server was polite but clearly needs training in both...

The French Pastry Chef is great. Their turkey & avocado sandwich is the best I've ever eaten in my life. The bread is tasty, flaky, and lightly grilled. It's delicious. However, I must sadly admit that the service needs improvement, and the and unreliable with operating hours. I drove up to Mme Matisse's at 2:20pm in the afternoon this week. The store is advertised as closing at 3:00pm., and the sign in their window says just that. I stood at the door, and it was dark. She was bagging up pastries to take home and my presence wasn't acknowledged. I asked her if they were closed, and the woman (owner, I believe) had everything bagged up, and grunted something, avoiding any eye contact, looking past me. She then took a bundle of bags right past me, locked the door, and loaded up her car in front, right next to my vehicle. I stood there, feeling weirdly invisible. She drove off. There was no acknowledgement of my presence as a customer or explanation for closing early while a customer stood there. It was disappointing. But if you're there, try the turkey &...