Le Pain Quotidien — Restaurant in Washington

Not sure what happened with our experience here. When our server came over after we were seated, she said our food was almost ready. We had to tell her we hadn't ordered anything yet and would like menus. She apologized and brought them quickly.

Then my wife began her order with an entrée, a coffee, and then a dessert. The server repeated it back and said "two" entrées. We had to specify she was just having one (why would you assume two?). Then when taking my order - entrée, coffee, and dessert as well - she repeated back the wrong coffee. I had to repeat it two more times before she got the right one, and I was even pointing on the menu in my hand to show which one.

Several minutes later my wife's coffee came out, and it was great. The server told me they were still waiting on my cappuccino and I had to state for the fourth time I ordered the mocha.

When my coffee finally came out it was the wrong size, but after giving the order four times I was just glad to have it. The mug/bowl was cracked all the way through and chipped, some of the porcelain had actually fallen out of the largest crack. Thankfully none was in the drink, the edge wasn't too sharp, and it didn't leak. Our desserts came out with my coffee which we thought was a little odd - but since it's a bakery we didn't give it too much worry. But at this point we still had no silverware, so I got up to ask the folks at the counter for forks. The person I requested forks from relayed my request to another worker behind the counter, and then neither of them did anything. All three of us waited (with them steadily ignoring me) until our original server came out of the kitchen a few minutes later. Then they told her we needed silverware, she got a set, refused to give them to me, and walked with me back to our table to set them down herself.

At least with the forks we could begin our dessert, and we had finished them long before the time our actual meals arrived. The entrées were rather plain, but we were offered salt and pepper. We accepted, and the server brought us a set. Sadly, the salt was nearly gone and we had to split what remained. The pepper was completely out. We decided to just eat and leave as soon as possible as we weren't really enjoying our lunch by this point.

We had finished everything by the time our server came to check on us, and we asked for the bill. After another long wait, the server came back again... to check on us again? And we had to ask for the bill again. When we did finally get the bill it was incorrect. It took even more time to get it fixed before we could finally pay and leave.

Dessert and the coffee was great, and the meals had promise if we could have had some seasoning or sauce of any type. But it was definitely not...

3/18/24 Updated to add:

Stephen, VP of Operations, personally reached out to me via phone and email. We had a good conversation and positive outcome from this unfortunate experience. I thank him for his response.

My hope is that the company will fix their website order form so that ordering is more user friendly, reflects better accuracy to prevent errors like this, and aligns with other restaurants of this caliber.

I am pleased with the outcome of an unfortunate experience and will not be out $233.

The company did not ask I modify the review. I did it because it's the right thing to do when a company does everything they can to right wrongs.

3/16/24 We unfortunately did not get to taste the food but I bet the Uber driver that the restaurant used to third-party deliver it enjoyed the $233 worth of bakery items. When I ordered directly from the bakery's website, there was no indication of them hiring Uber Eats to deliver the food at the time of the order.

Be warned that when you order directly from the company's website, not only is the website order page not user friendly, it doesn't auto-populate addresses which resulted in an address error therefore us not getting our order. I did include the name of the hotel we asked for the food to be delivered since the address bar didn't auto populate. The order form page needs to be fixed to reflect the user-friendliness of other website order forms.

We did not order directly through Uber Eats but this was the delivery service chosen for us by the restaurant.

We've been given the run around thus far about what to do with our order that the Uber driver didn't return to the store nor delivered to us. The restaurant told us that once it's out of their hands, they can't do anything and to contact Uber. Uber says that it's not their fault and to contact the restaurant.

I'm sure the food here is great but this experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Hopefully resolve will happen soon with the general manager. I think this could be remedied in the future for other customers by tightening up and fixing the website's order form to make it auto populate addresses so exact locations of hotels, business, and other named addresses auto populate when you put in the name of the location. Also, give more accurate delivery times. For example, do not have an 8am delivery slot available if you open at 8am and actually cannot deliver until 9am. Also, the way the layout is for ordering items could be more user friendly. In the meantime, I...

My friend and I were in town for a few days and decided to try this place on a whim. The server single handedly ruined the experience for us both. He barely said two words to us, while he worked with other tables that had sat down well after us before he even greeted us or gave us menus. We had to ask multiple times for items as simple as water. He took our order without bothering to write anything down and he didn’t even ask me how I wanted my eggs (no surprise, they didn’t come out how I wanted them). We had both ordered sides of fruit with our meals and when they were delivered we realized one had kiwi in it. My friend has a kiwi allergy that we had forgotten to mention prior to ordering. We called over the server and explained the error and asked if he could take her side of fruit back to the kitchen and replace it with one that the kitchen was sure to have not cross-contaminated with kiwi. He simply said “you won’t die” and walked away. I understand that we’d forgotten to mention the allergy upfront but the behavior was inexcusable. Cross-contamination can happen very easily -especially when the kitchen isn’t aware of an allergy - we proposed a simple solution and our server didn’t care enough to ensure that she didn’t have an allergic reaction. He even went so far as to snatch our cards out of our hands when we went to pay. Food was not worth the money but the experience ensured we will not...