Had a mixed experience at Paris In Town. After passing the corner cafe many times, I decided to stop in and check it out!
The cafe itself is small, beautifully decorated and the smell of fresh pastries mixed with the aroma of coffee is INCREDIBLE. The glass pastry cases display such a gorgeous variety of goods. Needless to say, I was excited to place my order and do some work on my laptop.
This is sadly where things go south. The two girls taking counter orders were rude, and seemed annoyed that I approached them to say hello and place my order . They had been leaning on the counter chatting and browsing on their phones. Before I could finish ordering, the one not helping me loudly goes "SO YOU'RE ALL THIS TO GO, YA?". Shocked, I responded that I hoped to stay, and do some laptop work. She let out a disgruntled noise and said I'd have to wait, get a seat, and re-order from the server. The original woman taking my order chummed in, "YEAH, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT!" . I figured they both must be having a bad day, and decided to wait. But, lucky for me, there was an open table and o was able to sit right away.
It took some time for my server to great me and ask for my drink order. I was mid-sentence ordering my pastry and he walked away. I thought this was odd, but they were busy. About 10 min later, he deposits my drink and walks away as I was trying to order. After another few minutes goes by, I finally got his attention and ordered.
Both the iced caramel latte and my meal (onion soup with an apple tart) were wonderful. The pastry was pretty perfect, in fact.
However, service was AWFUL. Never checked on how anything came out, if I needed anything, wanted to order more. As everything took a while, I was able to look around a lot and see that I wasn't alone. It seems like every table around me had a similar experience. Having to stop servers to ask for utensils after food was already dropped, asking for water, asking to order more, asking for plates to be cleared. But, when you looked around, you could see servers leaning on services, talking to each other, or on their phones. The servers just didn't seem to want to be working.
People were coming in asking for tables and the servers and two women behind the counter were rude to customers. One server even laughed at couple looking for a table, and said "yeah, no. We don't have any tables, you can sit outside". The couple talked amongst themselves and decided to dine elsewhere.
I work in hospitality, I was SHOCKED. Guests should never be treated like I witnessed today. It's one thing for a person to have a bad day, but impossible for the whole serving staff to have a bad day resulting in bad attitudes, and poor service.
In my opinion, the front of house staff needs to be retrained on restaurant basics and especially basic manners. The front of house is doing a major disservice to the back of house staff that creates amazing dishes, as well to the owners of the Cafe. The delicious, incredible menu here deserves way better. read more