Response to owner:
David, I'm genuinely surprised by your response. I went out of my way in my review to compliment your staff, who were kind, attentive, and did their best to help us. My criticism was specifically about the food we were served.
I certainly don't need to be "educated" about whether I enjoyed a meal. I described exactly what I experienced: my quiche was heavily browned on the outside, cold in the center, and had a dry, spongy texture. My son's pancakes were doughy and wet inside. Those were our experiences that morning.
Regarding the sauce, I said it tasted like curry to me. If it contained no curry, I'm perfectly happy to correct that. I would actually be curious to know what the sauce was.
What I will not accept, however, is the suggestion that I deliberately altered photographs to make your food look bad. I did not. The photos were taken at our table during the meal and show the food we were served.
I actually ended my review saying that perhaps we would return and give Madame Brioche another chance. Your staff left me with a very positive impression despite our disappointing meal.
Unfortunately, your response to a customer giving an honest account of her experience has left a very different impression.
Original Review:
The people who work here are genuinely lovely. Everyone was attentive, efficient, kind, and friendly. Unfortunately, the food is a different story.
I ordered the goat cheese quiche with sweet potatoes on the side. Big mistake. Not necessarily the sweet potatoes themselves, but because I clearly did not understand just how desperately I was going to need something wet on that plate.
The quiche arrived looking VERY dark and toasted on top. I took my first bite and somehow discovered the impossible: cold on the inside, almost burnt on the outside. I'm honestly not sure how one achieves both at the same time, but here we are.
The texture inside was extremely dry and oddly spongy, almost as if the eggs had been mixed with flour. Had I known what was coming, I would have chosen soup as my side. Or gravy. Or perhaps just a glass of water poured directly over the quiche.
I asked our very sweet server if they had some sort of cream, sauce, or anything that could help. He kindly brought me a yellowish sour-cream-looking sauce. Wonderful! Moisture!
Then I tasted it.
Curry.
I was not prepared for this plot twist.
At this point, my meal and I had simply lost our connection. I do have to give the servers credit because they were incredibly nice and genuinely tried to accommodate me, but there is only so much anyone can do when a quiche has chosen this path in life.
Meanwhile, my son ordered possibly the safest restaurant meal known to mankind: pancakes. Unfortunately, even the pancakes struggled. They seemed undercooked, doughy and wet inside, and came completely alone on a large plate. We ordered scrambled eggs separately, so eventually he had one plate with two lonely pancakes and another little plate with two equally lonely scrambled eggs.
I never realized how much presentation mattered until I saw those four lonely breakfast items living on separate plates.
The pastries didn't tempt us either. The croissants and pains au chocolat on the shelves looked dry rather than fresh and flaky, and the refrigerated pies looked like they had been waiting patiently for someone to take them home for a while.
By the end of the meal, my overwhelming feeling was... thirst. Everything just seemed so dry.
It's unfortunate because the staff really was wonderful, and the restaurant itself has so much potential. But the food simply did not match the warmth and quality of the service.
Sadly, Madame Brioche will not be seeing us again for a while. Perhaps someday we'll return and give it another chance, but next time, I'm ordering something with sauce. Lots of sauce. read more