Lona's Lil Eats — Restaurant in St. Louis

They used to be AMAZING. One of my 2 favorite places in STL. I've been going there since they opened & until a few months before the pandemic they were stellar in quality & service.

BUT, shortly before the pandemic, we were getting inconsistent food orders: missing sides/ingredients, cold/tepid food, wrong ratios of ingredients, etc. (not frequent, but did happen) The pandemic grants every business a pass on quality & employee retention, as we were all scrambling to adapt. Sadly, the consistency of orders & flavors went downhill, & customer service was rude/dismissive, at best, from newer employees (long-time employees like Zoe were still on top of things).

We took a break from going, returning in Jan 2023, hoping time & training would even things out w/ the newer crews. Sadly, it didn't. We again got a bad order, w/ wrong ingredients, ripped wraps, & missing sides. I called & spoke to then-employee Zoe about it. He sent a gift certificate & made it right. We were so disillusioned, tho, we didn't return until 2 days ago, Jan 2024.

2 days ago, I called to order a pick-up & the (new) woman who answered was very rude, & directed me to their website to order, even tho the gift cert. says call. I check site, confirm I can't order online, & call back. Same woman begrudgingly took my order after letting me speak long enough to explain about the gift cert. (she kept talking over me). She had a hard time taking my order (2 wraps, made just like the Big Thai Chicken Wrap, both with clear rice wrap, 1 with chicken, 1 with smoked turkey, both with eggplant sides) & kept trying to change what I was saying, speak over me, etc. My partner heard all & was bewildered as well. When she repeated back the order, it was NOT what we had JUST confirmed, so I asked to make sure & she was SO RUDE in her tone & reply. She didn't state anything about no longer accepting cash...

We get there & same woman (middle age, glasses, long light brown hair in pony tail, mom jeans, condescending tone) at register. 1st thing she says is 'OH, you're the gift certificate order' like it was both an inconvenience, problem, & something beneath her. Total for the 2 wraps/sides: $29.46, gift card was $25.00. I brought $10 cash. She was so rude telling me they no longer took cash & repeatedly asked me if I had ApplePay, Venmo, etc., as if I was an alien for not. She sighed & said 'I GUESS I can go check my purse to see if I have change...' & left room for 4-5 minutes (the tip jar had a bit of cash, so odds are they emptied it to a till for safety earlier & could have found cash to change a $10 bill—her tone, what she said, & what she did made it clear she was making an example of me for only having cash). And yes, I could have left the $4.46 as a tip, but A. this was a replacement for a botched order I already tipped for in the past, & B. she was SO RUDE I didn't want to give her a cent. She eventually returned, AGAIN condescendingly asked if I was SURE I didn't have ApplePay/etc. Then patronizingly said 'it's okay, you just keep that,' w/ a little hand shoo/waive. I just said 'thank you' to avoid further delays & belittling.

I then realize I was given wrong order (1 wrap, different side) & go back. She all but implies I'M wrong. Another younger employee CHECKS THE TICKET on the bag like a normal person. Wrong order! My order was right where other employee put it & told rude woman previously. Rude woman was so resistant to accepting accountability for her mistake.

To top it all off? Eggplant was undercooked and wraps were SMALL and had NO peanut sauce on them! [AND the total was high for the order (24.50+tax =/= 29.46).]

I called today to speak with Zoe bc of this, but rude woman answered (!) & said he no longer works there, with a tone that implied something happened. That stinks. So, I'm amending my longstanding 5-star review after thousands spent here over the years.

Lona, come get your crew in check, please! If you can maybe see if Zoe is available/willing to train your new shoddy crew, that might be a good start, but right now you...

I really do love this place. I get a Big Thai Wrap every time I visited Soulard Market and I was super excited when I found out they opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The giant rice paper wraps are fantastic. It's a great alternative to the tortilla, which for me has always felt a bit too heavy and distracting when eating a wrap. The thin rice paper allows one to focus more on the fresh ingredients and lovingly prepared homemade sauces in the wrap's interior.

5 star sampler is excellent. As are the spring rolls and sides. There are very few restaurants where I would gladly eat anything on the menu. This is one of them.

My only critique for this place is really about the dining experience. I understand the owners are new to the brick and mortar side of things so I'm not detracting any stars from this review. They operate like a fast gourmet place where you stand in line to make an order, grab a table, then wait for the food to be prepared and delivered to your table (like Noodles & Company). The problem is that the line moves very slowly (due to only one register) and then it takes a while for them to prepare the food (undoubtedly due to the care they put into making it). The total time between entering the door and getting food can get pretty long during peak hours. Additionally, I have not had much luck with calling in takeout, it just doesn't seem to flow well with their current system.

Anyhow, I'm sure they will figure out ways to streamline the dining experience as they enter their second year in the brick-and-mortar. I highly encourage you to try this place, it is truly...

Ordered then sat at our table for almost an hour watching everyone else get their food even people who ordered way after us. Finally had to get someone's attention and ask if they could check on our order. 10 minutes later they brought us spring rolls on accident that we didn't order so they asked if we would like them. The waitress came back again and we could tell she had no idea what our order was so we had to ask if they wanted to know what we ordered and we gave them our order again. Another 10 minutes went by and we finally got out food with no apology or anything. My mother liked her food and my wrap was ok but kind of bland. My wife⁰n't have a symbol for spicy but was too spicy for her to eat and even I couldn't eat it bc of how hot it was. After all that we finally asked what and they said it was the computer. They did offer to comp us more appetizers or something and we asked if they could do a dessert but they didn't have any so we said not to worry about it. I understand it's a healthy eats type of place and the food wasn't horrible but also not great and on top of the service and them wanting to just ignore the problem and act like it didn't happen I won't be going back. I hate writing bad reviews but we were there for 2 of our birthdays and ohappenedverall there were very few positive things about our experience and if they would have just came up and said "hey we had an issue could we please get your order again and we will get right on it" but they just kept walking past and acting like we weren't sitting there waiting for food and for that we won't...