The French Press

Reviews 4

JO

Joshua Shaw

My wife and I used to love this place. Almost every Saturday we could come for brunch, enjoy delicious meals and get ridiculously good coffee and teas. Unfortunately, when they moved to the new location (which is almost 4x the size of their previous location) its seems they didnt hire a new staff person for the kitchen or for hosting. Because of this, I have many critiques and comments. I do hope management reads these because they need to change something. They are losing customers. 1. UNNECESSARY WAIT TIMES: Every single time we go, and I mean every single time, we will wait for over 1 hour for our table. And yet, throughout our entire wait time there are empty seats and dirty tables. Could someone please hire a bus-boy?! Seriously, you could have your servers tip-out the bus-boy that way they dont make a dent into your hourly costs to run the business. 2. UNNECESSARY FOOD TIME: It is completely unacceptable for us to wait 45min - 1 hour for our brunch. It doesnt matter how much you are making from scratch. This is foolishness. Your kitchen needs to spend much more time prepping for the day. Additionally, if your kitchen was not built to handle the amount of guests you have and tables you continue to set-up, then stop adding tables. If people are waiting 1hour for their food, it doesnt matter how good it tastes. Build a bigger kitchen, hire more staff, do whatever it takes, but dont waste peoples precious time because your kitchen is inept. 3. UNKNOWLEDGABLE STAFF: Almost every time we come in to The Fresh Press, we order two breakfasts, at least two coffees, and usually a pastry. (thats if its only us. We used to like to bring larger groups but that is out of the question now). However, almost every time we order, the servers fail to bring us silverware. The tables are soaking wet. When we get our coffee we rarely if ever get a stir stick or spoon. On two occasions last month we successfully were delivered all our coffee and food without ever being brought silverware, creamers, napkins, and more. And when asking the server, it takes them upwards of 5 minutes because they have either been poorly trained or their section is way too big. 4. INABILITY TO ACCOMMODATE LARGE PARTIES: A party of 5 is not a large party, but when you bring that many people to eat at The French Press, they are incapable of understanding the parties needs. They struggle to bring tables together. They are terrible at guessing specified wait times. And when you order for a party of 5 or more, it can take up to 20 minutes for your coffees and over 1 hour for your food. This is not Elways or Del Friscos. 1+ hour waits for food, and 20+ minutes waits for coffee is ridiculous. If you cannot handle larger than four parties, you probably shouldnt be in the restaurant business. Lastly, I am saddened I feel compelled to write this review. We love this restaurant. We love the staff. We love bringing friends from out of town to experience the food and coffee, but it has become too bad to enjoy any longer. This past week many of my friends have asked for other brunch locations that are similar to The French Press, because TPS is no longer an option. It has, unfortunately, gotten to the point that we would rather take our money and time somewhere else because we dont have 2+ hours for brunch. Management, please spend the necessary time, energy, and money on figuring out what kind of a restaurant you want to be, how to train your staff, prepping your kitchen, getting appropriate technology and systems, and hopefully we (and along with many of our friends) will come back. Thank you for your time. I would be inclined to re-evaluate my review if contact by management to discuss my critiques.

JU

Judah Kosky

In summary. My wife and I were quite disappointed by this place. Below is my ratings with 10 being great: Ambience: 7 It is a good open feel to the place, but it tends to get crowded. Staff: 3 Very friendly but the waitress that took our order messed up pretty good. My wife is allergic to potatoes and gluten. So she ordered the omelette with the potatoes and bread on the side to give to me. And they didnt do that. She also order avocado on the omelette and we had the flag the waitress down and ask he for the avocado. Friendliness can only go so far if you struggle with the practical. Food: 2 Honestly, I try to rate breakfast places on a scale of her they all serve. Eggs and bacon. If they impress me with that then I know that they pride themselves on the food they serve. In short, my stomach hated me for the rest of the day. The bacon wasnt just crispy but burnt and tough. Very cheap bacon that you can buy at the grocery store. The egg, not even seasoned. The bread, stale. They didnt even provide jam or butter to put on the bread. My wifes bacon, avocado, an cheese omelette was pretty pathetic. She kept on saying throughout the meal, where is the cheese? Drink: 5 Nothing to write home about. Honestly I have had better coffee at IHOP. And IHOP has free refills. Price: 7 Everything was well priced and affordable. But when the food came out we realized why it was so cheap.

BR

Brandi Fox

So disappointing! We recently moved to the area, and I was so excited to see this french bakery as I love french pastries. This morning, my husband ran over to pick up some croissants, plain and chocolate (like the beautiful photo on their website). When he got there, they told him they didnt have any chocolate croissants this morning. Okay, fine. Well, the plain croissants they gave him werent even fresh. Leftovers from yesterday! They were hard and cold. They should really be ashamed of themselves for serving that mess. I called and told them that they were inedible and the guy said they save the leftovers for lunch sandwiches (beware!), but that they shouldnt have given us those, that if I came back theyd give us some that theyd baked this morning. We decided to just take the croissants back and ask for a refund. The clerk said shed void the charge, but didnt provide a return receipt, so Ill have to watch the credit card statement to make sure that is the case. They gave us some of the fresh ones as well, but too little, too late, in my opinion. I do not understand why they gave us leftovers if they had fresh available, or why the fresh werent ready yet (at a half hour after opening) if that was the case? Either way they should have told us what we were getting. Overall, a terrible experience and we will not be back.

RO

Ronnie McDade

In comparison to other top breakfast restaurants in the Metro The French Press is very average the menu is simple,( variety of Bennies nothing very unique or exotic) the food itself was cooked properly and seasoned well(tasty).In regards to the staff, the young hostess appeared very uninterested and did not speak to us(we were asked if we wantd to be Inside or outside by another hostess, but then another hostess grabbed the menus and took the lead, but never looked at us or talked. It was a lil strange.)our server was excellent and although she brought the check early in the meal she explained why she was doing it, and let us know that there is never a rush.( we appreciated the communication. in this day and age thats rare.) The environment was excellent located in the Contemporary Belmar shopping district The French Press offers patio seating as well as a Industrial style dining room with huge windows that let in the sunshine and allows you to people watch. Enviroment, Staff, & dishes were very clean. I would return to the French press in hopes that I just ordered the wrong dish for me, and cought the hostess at a bad moment.