Le Pain Quotidien — Restaurant in Town of Hempstead

Update as of 12/2. Upon reaching out to Le Pain via email, I’ve received a quick response.

The district manager who reached back out was understanding of the situation and provided a response in which I believe was above and beyond.

I’ve gone ahead and updated the overall rating as 3/5 and service stars to 3/5 as I believe the service that was provided via email by the manager was superb made me feel better about providing feedback in the first place.

As for the food, I’ve updated the rating to 4/5 as everything else I orders, such as the Belgium Brownie, Canelé, and lattes came out great. The only downside was having the sandwiches come out lukewarm.

As for Atmosphere, I’ve left it as a 1/5, as the energy felt chaotic. And some people were fighting over chairs.

Overall rating - 3/5 as Food was good, and service provided by the district manager was great, but the service at the location and the atmosphere wasn’t great.

Original Posted 11/30 I’ve been to this location a few times already and I’ve had great service in the past.

However, I recently went to the Le Pain Quotidien on Black Friday. Service was horrible. Cashier named Destiny was working at the register. Seemed like she didn’t want to be there to begin with.

I was deciding on what to get, and wasn’t familiar with one of the desserts. I didn’t know what it was called, so I described the object, and she seemed annoyed that I didn’t know what it was called.

I was also deciding on what coffee to get, and was initially going to get a macchiato, and seemed annoyed that I switched to getting a latte instead.

I’ve worked multiple retail jobs before, and I understand that holiday season is hectic, and I admit, I was feeling under the weather, and I was in a brain fog, and there was a line beginning to form.

However, if you’re gonna be a cashier, it’s your job to provide the customer with a positive customer experience with friendly and courteous service, which none of that was done. Instead I left feeling with a sour taste.

I would’ve ordered more if service hadn’t been rushed.

Furthermore, I ordered 2 sandwiches. Had it warmed. A bunch of coffee orders came in and coffees were being called out one by one. Someone else who came after me also ordered a sandwich. There sandwich came out first. After a few minutes of waiting, I asked where the sandwiches were, and they were just sitting there after being warmed up, so it was essentially pointless to warm up the sandwiches.

If service continues to be like this, I’d go to French Workshop from now on. At least they know how to treat their customers with patience...

I'll start by saying that I just came from a 1 week vacation in Aruba, a Dutch Island nation. I had Dutch mini pancakes almost every day for breakfast, and 10 months prior I was also in Aruba and had it every day for breakfast, so I consider myself an expert on Dutch mini pancakes. We arrived Sunday morning between 11:30 & 12, the place wasn't busy, maybe at most only a third of the seating was occupied. I ordered 2 orders of the Dutch mini pancakes, an order of Mini pancakes @ Le Pain are 15 pieces for $12, it's on the very expensive side, I paid $11.50 for 28 pieces in Aruba at the Dutch Pancake House, eating in Aruba is expensive, compare those prices, you know Le Pain is a more expensive spot. My order came out at room temperature, not even warm to melt the butter (I get the sense that they pre-made it and just waiting to get served), too puffy compared to the ones I had in Aruba, it came out with syrup already on it, which I didn't see until I asked for syrup, the waiter told me that it already has it on it, I asked for extra syrup which is an extra charge. I rate my order a 1 star except for the coffee, my coffee was good, coffee would be closer to 5 stars. Our other order was the Sunny Side Breakfast Bowl, it tasted pretty good but for $15 I thought it should have had at least 2 eggs instead of just 1, 4 stars for taste, 1 star for value. The other order was Prosciutto Manchego on a French Roll, I only had a bite of it so I can't really say much about it except that it was okay. The service was lacking, our waiter didn't even come back to check on us if we needed anything else, he only came back to take the dishes away. 1 star for service. 5 stars for ambiance. Almost forgot to mention the Cafe Au Lait, @Le Pain it was more like cappuccino, it was good but I'm not sure if it was cafe au lait. I've had cafe au lait in New Orleans more times than I can remember and it didn't look anything like cappuccino. Overall I like this establishment, this is a critique, I don't want this place to fail, maybe if someone who owns/runs this place reads this they can improve, room for improvement on service and value, and most of all, serving those pancakes HOT and FRESH, you can't make it and let it sit there.

I'll be back...

If i could rate this place with 0 stars l would. I visited this restaurant yesterday for my lunch break with my husband, first thing we noticed it was no host at the entrance and staff looked stressed and messy, we had to wait for a host to come and talk to us, we wanted to sit outside, the host looked confused and started asking the staff who was attending outside, we sat and waited there around 15min and nobody came, other customers came in and they were sitting and attended right away, not sure if it was because they were sitting inside, which i think there is no reason why they would attend inside customers first. the place wasn’t packed at all so its not an excuse for that either, 20 min passed and i told my husband to leave cause i only had 1 hour to eat something, we decided to go the restaurant next door that its called true food kitchen and i cant be more happy that we decided to leave this place. The attention in true food kitchen was amazing and the food was fresh and incredible. This place definitely lost 2 customers and got a bad review. Service is the most important thing in a restaurant…What a...