Basque Boulangerie Café — Restaurant in Sonoma

I have always have had interesting experiences attempting to order here, and today was no different.

The online ordering appears to be impossible. If you click the order online button it brings you to a menu. If you click items on the menu, you can add them to your cart. Once you are ready to check out, there is nothing for you to do because there is no checkout or view cart button on any of the pages that I viewed.

After spending 20 minutes attempting to place an order online, and not being able to use the cart or find a checkout option, I decided to call.

I called in to place an order, employee answered and asked if I could please hold. 6 minutes later they asked how they could help me. I asked if I could place an order. The employee immediately said "let me go find a pen" and then put me on hold. I waited for an additional 9 minutes (for a total of almost 15 minutes) and then hung up.

I tried again 30 min later. The same employee answered and asked how they could help me. I indicated that I would like to place an order for pickup, and was placed on hold again for 23 minutes (just wanted to see how long it would take). I hung up after 23 minutes, for a total hold time of 38 minutes.

If they were busy they could have stated so and asked me to try later. Instead they indicated they could place my order, and then put me on hold for a total of 38 minutes (or longer had I not hung up).

The bottom line is the food is great but ordering and picking up your food has always been an ordeal. The staff are great, but the business is disorganized and the experience inconsistent, and has been for years. This is not due to the pandemic, this is a problem that has existed here for a long time.

If you attempt to order in person, you will immediately discover that the wait time is unnecessarily long, the business is chaotic, and employees constantly mess up orders, which creates a feedback loop of people trying to get their orders fixed, interrupting the employees almost nonexistent workflow, making it slower for other people who have yet to order or are waiting on their food.

Half the time I order from here the food is wrong, but the other half of the time the food is so good I continue to go back for more.

My advice for the business is to make a more straightforward and functional online ordering experience, and to streamline the order pickup process.

The combination of having a nonfunctional online ordering system and a chaotic in person order/pickup makes it so I only end up attempting to get food here very occasionally.

The food is great when you can get it, but the fact that it takes so much time and effort to order, regardless of wether it is in person, online, or on the phone makes getting food here a chore and not...

Our family has been going to Basque Boulingerie since it was Sonoma French. We are going back to the ‘70’s here. I have not been to Basque as much lately as I do not eat carbs anymore, but I do still swing by to pick up bread for the holidays and special occasions for my extended family and friends to enjoy. I forgot about the so-so experience we had the last time I picked up bread about 6 months ago. I remember my family being underjoyed about it. They said it wasn’t as good as it used to be. And then I forgot about it until yesterday; Christmas.

A few days ago I picked up a pull-apart loaf and a few sandwich sourdough rolls. Ever since the ‘70’s my family has been freezing Sonoma French/Basque and reheating the bread when we want to enjoy it. It always came out crispy and chewy as if it were just baked. But this time (and last) it came out kinda dry and crumbly. Not the same bread we have enjoyed for decades.

I took a close look at the pull apart pieces as it is what we had reheated. The texture and the way the bread looks and feels is totally different than what I remember. The bread is crumbly, like cake. And the air pockets are small and uniform, like cake. There is not a sheen to the bread where the individual pieces were pushed together like there used to be (the adjacent surfaces used to be almost smooth. Now you pull them apart and they look like…cake!). There was no crisp to the crust. There was no chew to the bread. It just isn’t the same.

I remember being in the bakery a few days ago: the feel was different. There was zero focus on the bread it felt. It was morning and there were only a few loaves on the shelves. It was more cafe and less bakery. No one greeted me or said hello. No one asked me if I needed anything. There were employees standing around. I wanted a pull apart. The only one they had was in the day old bin. No worries. We were going to reheat/bake it anyway… I had to ask to pay.

Anyway, the bread, for lack of a better word, sucks. There is zero love in it. No effort. It is as if the bakers didn’t bother proofing it more than once to let the gluten form and create the crispy crust and chewy texture that made the bread so wonderful. There is zero time put into the product. Maybe the quality of the flour is different? Whatever. What I got is for the birds, not for my memories of what Basque used to be like.

So, I will not be going back. And I do not believe they will care given how things felt in the store a few days ago. It is a bummer because only those of us who remember how good it was will care. And I think we are few and in...

Very important info They are the only bakery left in town and they definitely are showing that they know this, especially when they sell very hard bread, they down graded the taste of pastries and foods.

*onto the bad review * Why do I even bother with this place? So I have a history of getting hair in my food from this place multiple times and just bad service. So Im asked to buy pies from here for Thanksgiving, oh great here we go. Well two days ago I ordered two mixed berry pies to pick up on Thursday (today) to have with family. I get here, and they dont have it, I ask what happened and they state that they called everyone that placed an order to pick it up today. I told them that they never called me and they are just standing there with a blank look. Turns out that they sold my order, then someone claims that they called me, so I pulled out my phone, show them my call history and asked them to show me. They couldn't even tell me the number they use to call people and it turns out again, my name was never crossed off as "called." Wow, really!?!?!?! So then I order a medium hot chocolate while seeing what pies they had left over, wait for the drink, leave, and as Im in the park I decide to drink my medium hot chocolate but it felt like nothing was in it. I open to see very little whip cream and only half my cup filled????? Are you serious????? Who does that!?!?! I highly dont recommend ordering from this place, I do recommend to check your food for hair (just incase) and to check any drinks with lids to make sure they actually fill up your cup. But hey, at least they are sorry, pshh...