The French Workshop — Restaurant in Town of Hempstead

We visited on a hot day,looking for some quick snacks and a cool drink. There were no customers at 1:30. The place is clean and the desserts are well displayed. There are many options to choose from though I felt the prices where high. Service: it's the main cause for the ** rating. There were 5 people behind the counter and not one of them greeted us. They were busy talking to each other. We proceeded to peruse the delicious looking display of sweets, carefully making our choices as each dessert was in the $7 a piece range. After mentally making our choices we kept on looking over at the 'gathering' of employees at the front to see if anyone can help us with our order. Finally, a nice young lady greeted us with a smile and asked if we'd like some help. We got the chocolate lava cake, creme brulee, chocolate chip cookie, mini chocolate chip cookies, mille feuille and a chocolate croissant. The desserts where packaged nicely in tasteful boxes. Nothing was crammed together, which is a pet peeve of mine. Again with the service, can you guys hire a more sour bunch? The black (I used black because she might have been Jamician, Haitian and not African, so relax) young lady who helped us was at least friendly and seemed happy to help, but the young blonde girl at the register, not a single smile, no greeting, just a 'that will be $24.36.' We dug into the chocolate chip cookie in the car...It was loaded with chocolate chips, and fairly large, and here is the but, but they didn't taste the way a chocolate chip cookie would. It wasn't bad, but it was just not what I would expect a choclate chip cookie to taste like. It was very dense and cake like. I enjoyed the crispy edges tho. I prefer my CCC to be soft in the middle with crispy edges. The creme brulee, it was creamy and the vanilla cream was tasty, but the sugar was burnt, not caramelized, which in turn made for some bitter tasting bites, which was disappointing becaused it's really the essential part of the dessert. The mille feuille: again the pastry cream was delicious, and the layers were not soggy and stayed firm, nothing to rave about, probably the best out of the bunch. The other items I didn't eat but were given out to friends, but they said it was good. All in all, it wasn't worth the visit. The bad service is a big turn off and why would I support a business that doesn't care about how I would like to be treated when I enter their establishment? I vote pass on this bakery, save your money on better service...

THIS WAS AN EDIT FROM TWO YEARS AGO, THAT RECEIVED NO REPLY. I GUESS THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT THE POSITIVE REVIEWS.

I went in today a little bit before 4pm to get some sliced bread. While waiting at the counter a young man came up to ask me what I wanted. I asked him what the 5 breads on the shelf were since they weren’t labeled. He looked at me and didn’t say anything. Instead he turned around and looked at the young woman at the register who was ringing someone up. I didn’t say anything and just waited because clearly he didn’t know what the 5 breads were on the shelf, even though he works in a bakery where this same bread is sold everyday. At one point he did look up and looked at me while pointing at the focaccia to say “rye?” to which another employee laughed at him and said “did you just say rye? That’s not rye!” and he just shrugged his shoulders. This made me wonder why this person pointing out his error didn’t just tell me what they were so I could order and leave but I guess that’s not part of their job description. So, I had to wait for the woman at the register to finally tell me what they all were so I could order since no one else really wanted to help me. I paid the young woman and said I didn’t need a bag, she said ok but never told the guy slicing the bread. When he was done I then told him I didn’t need a bag, he plopped the bread on the counter and went to walk away. I said to both him and the woman at the register “thanks have a nice day” but neither one of them said anything to me or even bothered to lift up their heads to look at me. I worked as an assistant manager at a restaurant very close to this establishment for nine years in my twenties and never would I have acted this way to a customer or been so utterly incompetent enough to not be able to answer a simple question about what was being offered at my establishment. The whole experience was embarrassing to the establishment and that’s to literally say the least. As I’ve seen from the comments below it’s clear I’m not the only one who is noticing the poor customer service here and unfortunately I will also be another person to no longer return to this business. Good luck because with that front end staff you’re...

I’ve been to this location numerous times and yesterday I stopped by to pick up a cake for a friends 25 wedding anniversary. After selecting the cake I told the associate about the Happy Anniversary greeting that I wanted on the cake. The associate like always went inside to the chefs with you cake and shortly came back to inform me that they couldn’t write the message as they were out of chocolate thins on which they wrote the greetings and that if I wanted the cake I need to buy it as is. Somehow since this just felt strange I spoke to another associate and explained if he could tell the Chefs just to write on the cake without the chocolate thin , the associate once again went to chefs and comes back to me and says that the chef can’t do it because they are just too busy. So basically it was not that they were out of the chocolate thins to write the message, they were just busy and didn’t want to do it. I told the associate that I was happy to wait as long as they wanted me to and the associate said that it just wouldn’t happen. This establishment expects clients to pay $ 45 for their cakes( which is a choice one makes ) however refuses to write a greeting message, i simply left and would not give my business to anyone no matter how good their products are who does not know how to treat their clients. The owners of this location need to better train their staff to be more courteous and respectful of their clients. There are many other options Marth’a , Paris Baguette etc who have excellent baked goods who are not as expensive and more importantly more customer friendly than the folks at this location. Spend your...