AIBU to never go here again & tell everyone I know how awful it is?

[FrazzledCareerWoman]

New fancy "mums brasserie" type place has opened in the London suburb where I live. Think zone 3, up and coming area. Lots of yummy mummies, baby classes, mums fitness, etc around. People have money to spend.

So they open this place that is marketed as a wellness and foodie experience where you can have lunch and spa treatments while they watch your little darlings. Sounds amazing, non?

They also will have classes for the kids that are put on by external providers, and a soft play area.

Okay, fine. Me and NCT friend decide to go and check it out just for lunch.

Well, I think I'm still in shock. No alcohol at all firstly - I tried to order a glass of Prosecco and they were like "what's that"? So clearly missing a trick there 🤷🏻‍♀️

Secondly, waiting staff obviously had never worked in so much as a greasy spoon previously as they were faffing around doing very little, extremely inattentive and managed to take an hour to bring our starters and a further 30 mins for our next courses. To be fair they claimed this was due to a power cut (which lasted about 5 mins after we had already been waiting for an hour).

Thirdly, it was eye wateringly expensive. Their sushi chef hadn't started yet and so they was barely anything on the menu that was available.

Our bill was £43, no alcohol, 1 tea, 1 latte, 1 dip with crudités, 1 broccoli soup, 1 stale foccacia slice, 1 eggs Benedict with cold sauce , 1 basic salad.

I waited an hour for a “Japanese style avocado salad” that was cucumber tomato and iceberg lettuce. The bread with my soup was stale.

So you would think we were offered our meal for free after all that wouldn't you? Well not only am I ashamed to say I didn't blink and paid the full £43 when asked but the owner had the audacity to offer us "a free dish next time you come".

I feel like they are totally ruining something that could have been great! And they are clearly mental and have done zero research. Membership is around £500 a year.

Just speechless.

If the chef has walked out and you have no power you don't serve the normal menu. You stick to coffee and cakes or whatever works.

@childsplaybrasserie it is not up to your customers to offer you 'support and patience' you will never be successful if that is what you are expecting. Only offer what you can deliver, it is far better to under offer and over deliver than to over offer and under deliver. Never argue with your customers about who said what when, just apologize and move on. If you do muck up an order, even for reasons outside of your control (ie; power cut), it is your problem, not the customers, so you need to bend over backwards to put it right. Your customer can leave feedback wherever they like, it is not for you to tell them they should have emailed you. I would ask MN to remove your posts on this thread, they are very unprofessional. Good luck with your business going forward.

I agree
And paying (or potential) customers don’t need or want to know about chefs quitting or anything like that
Total lack of professionalism, typical of a hobby business that won’t last 6 months. I only hope you haven’t remortgaged your house or anything daft to do this
If I were you childsplaybrasserie I would beg and plead with MNHQ to delete but I don’t fancy your chances
Mistakes get made, most businesses have teething troubles and that’s ok but coming on here was a REALLY bad idea

Trying to keep up with this thread but I’m just on the phone to MasterCard to see if they’ll take payments in visions and dreams.

What totallywired just said. I’m
embarrassed on your behalf @childsplaybrasserie. Really, properly embarrassed. FWIW I think the menu sounds dire. The concept is good but with your attitude you’ll be lucky to succeed.

And paying (or potential) customers don’t need or want to know about chefs quitting or anything like that

Exactly. It just makes the place seem chaotic and disorganised.

The post from child's play is enough to never make me want to set foot in the place. What total smug, pretentious wankery. The calling out of the OP for something they overheard whilst she was in the restaurant is shockingly unprofessional. The food received by the OP sounds vile. If this was caused by power problems she should not have been charged. A free dish next visit just doesn't cut it I'm afraid.

The business didn’t out themsrlves first, a PP named them.

The classes actually sound good value, especially at the reduced rate.

But £12 for a raw veg salad? Maybe the “dressing which” that shows up against all salads is as expensive and transformative as it is mysterious?

But personally the names of the dishes would put me off before I got through the door.

Alas poor Tooting. Bring back the wonderful Kastoori.

This has been a very entertaining and interesting thread! The SM strategy points are particularly good.

In other news, The Sainsbury's sushi is quite nice.....I mean not like you get it in Japan clearly...but perfectly acceptable at its price point :)

As pp’s said, the owners response was quite unprofessional and cringe.

I’ve been living in Tooting for 8 years now and definitely enjoy the gentrification of the area in the recent times.

I like supporting the local businesses and the idea of a wellness + child friendly place is appealing. Everyone deserves a second chance and this thread was definitely an eye opener for the owner.
I’m catching up with my friend next week and am willing to check the ‘mums brasserie’ and report back to you guys!

This is my favourite thread in ages. Almost like MN days of yore.

Apart from all the rest of it, how is nutella toast and salted caramel stuff a "sugar free kitchen"?

I'm not anti-sugar and I'll happily have a coffee and cake in a cafe, but pretending it's sugar-free when it's not is ridiculous.

Well yes, that’s a good point BrinkPink.

Also, the word brasserie has a strong association with wine so my tip would be to specify its alcohol-free upfront on the website or with a sign on the menu in the window.

Subsume - excellent point. It does indeed suggest very strongly for me anglass of champagne (I cant drink flat wine - makes me sick and very drunk very quickly) or a beer plus good frites and a frankly rather unhealthy salad or croque Madame etc. Would be astounded to go to a ‘brasserie’ with no alcohol available whether I had some or not.

Just throwing it out there....do we know for sure that @ChildsplayBrasserie is actually from the brasserie?

Anyone could make that their username...

Such an interesting thread. The concept sounds very ambitious but very in demand if executed well. I have 2 pre schoolers and live in a fairly affluent commuter town and could see it doing well here. Once you've been to the parks and the church playgroups there's only so much you can do with babies and toddlers and i knkw people who slend loads takjng their tiny babiss to sensory classes etc. We have a play cafe here which is very popular. However I would much prefer decent, fresh food than 'raw', 'energy balls' type food which is usually style over substance and not what you necessarily want when you're chasing toddlers around all day. Also agree response from the brasserie was very unprofessional but I'm sure you'll learn from these mistakes. Really hope it works out for you.

That’s true @sheputthehamsterwhere but it would seem like an awful lot of effort to go to. Plus, almost 50% of the 5 reviews on Google have mysteriously appeared since this thread was posted. Also if you check on facebook, a local parenting forum has given it a glowing shout out in the past hour. I might be reaching of course, but then so is @childsplay* with her visions and dreams.

It must be ShePut given the overheard door comment

Unless another customer but I doubt it

@aubaine makes an excellent point.

£3 for a babychino!

I think the babychinos are free if you’re a member. It would be interesting to know what % of the customers are expected to sign up for membership.

Last comment about menu (Am looking at website now!)

I don't understand how they say: 'We consider all our food carefully and source everything fresh, there’s no sugar in our kitchen! We actually haven’t added sugar to any dish - the most we would ever do is a touch of honey where required for certain and those are ‘treat dishes’. However, we promise you won’t even notice!' when they have ice cream, chocolate sauce, nutella, tiramisu, etc on the menu.

I know it's just bollocks. Although the "Unicorn" (kids'?) menu has mostly very pretentiously healthy things that no child I know would eat.

I’ve been and checked out the Instagram feed, and it has 27k followers, however VERY low follower integration (likes/comments etc). That is a huge flag for bought followers apparently. My step sister works as part of a social media group for a really large multinational, so she’s my source for this info.

Lots of the followers of you click on them, also have a generic/no profile photo, are private with no photos and no profile photo, or also have an indestingushable username, indicating a ‘bot’ or fake account.

Sorry should say interaction not integration!