Go For the Desserts, Not for the Entrees or Unfriendly Service
Written: Jul 14 '08 (Updated Jul 17 '08)
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Pros: Atmosphere
Pastries
Quick, cafeteria-style service
Cons: Too salty
Sauces are too thick
Mediocre service
The Bottom Line: La Madeleine tries too hard to be like an authentic French restaurant with too much sauce and too much salt. They do succeed with their wonderful pastries and country décor.
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| lindeisha's Full Review: La Madeleine French Bakery and Cafe |
I’ve been to France three times, the last time was about eight years ago. Most of my memories seem like a dream, except for those of the food. I can still picture and almost taste the simple, but delicious Pan Bagnat sandwich at the beach or the desserts at a little cafeteria style restaurant. Not to self-indulge here, but to make the point that even the humblest food in France was better than the faux-French (Frenchy) food at La Madeleine. That’s not to say, though, that I won’t continue to go there once in a while.
The Frenchy Atmosphere
La Madeleine is a cafeteria-style restaurant, with a full-service looking seating area. And unlike many other chain restaurants, every La Madeleine I’ve visited (in Maryland that is) looks almost exactly the same. It is designed to resemble a French country house, with wood beams on the outside and all-wood interior. There are nice thick sturdy wood tables and chairs, a big, cozy, working fireplace in the center, wooden shelves with pretty pottery and a little patio for eating outside. They even give you a big wooden block with a number on it if you have to wait for your meal to be prepared and brought to your table. Some of these touches are nice, but others are tacky, like some very fake looking plastic flowers strategically poking out of a table drawer. Overall, though, the design works and it has a calming, old-world feel to it.
The Frenchy Food
When you enter La Madeleine, you are greeted by a beautiful glass case filled with mouth-watering pastries on one side and some bakery style breads on the other side. For me, the desserts are La Madeleine’s saving grace. Plus, I have the sweet memory of my husband once buying me one of their full-sized Tiramisu cakes for my birthday before we got married. It was wonderful. Besides Tiramisu, some of the other pastries they offer are: Fresh Fruit Tarts, Sacher Tortes, Napoleons, Éclairs, Croissants (butter, almond, and chocolate), as well as assorted cookies and muffins. I think I’ve tried every pastry there except for their Sacher Torte, and they were all delicious. Besides the pastry case, they also offer sweets on their regular menu: Fruit Salade, Yogurt Parfait, a Chocolate Parfait and my absolute favorite, Strawberries Romanoff. The Strawberries Romanoff are whole, fresh strawberries served in a big glass dessert dish and topped with a brandy sour cream sauce (which is not at all sour to me, but you can taste a hint of brandy). It is - how do you say - ooh la la.
Besides desserts, they serve breakfast, lunch and dinner foods. They have salads, hot sandwiches, entrees, pastas, “French” specialties (Quiche Lorrane, Quiche Florentine, Spinach Pochette, and Chicken Friant) signature crepes, as well as some traditional and gourmet breakfast foods.
These are all just OK. Their problem, which is the same problem with Americanized Italian food is that they just try too hard by adding too much of too many different ingredients, and in doing so miss the mark of the real thing. For example, their Chicken Pesto Pasta is pretty good, except the poor little bowtie pasta are drowning in sauce, which is also too thick and too salty. For lunch or dinner, I recommend the simpler items, such as the salads and sandwiches. Another decent offering, their Rosemary Rotisserie Chicken is baked to a golden brown and is flavored with herbs. The menu says ½, but it looks more like ¼ of a chicken to me. It comes with Rice Provencal and Steamed Broccoli. But even with this simple, low-fat dish, it is a gamble as sometimes it is served too dry, as if the chicken has been hanging out in the rotisserie too long. The soups are good. My favorite is the Potato Soup. They also make a nice Tomato Basil I once tried their tomato-based vegetable soup and it was so salty I couldn’t finish it. Plus, it tasted like it had Old Bay seasoning in it (which is a Maryland seafood spice, traditionally used for crabs). Not very French-tasting to me.
If you really want to find out the nutrion facts of their foods, you can fill out a request form at the restaurant’s website:
http://www.lamadeleine.com/Nutritionrequest.aspx
If you give your name and contact information, you can request an Ingredient List, Calories, Fat, Carbs and Protein. It is interesting that there is NOT a box to check for Sodium. Hmmm.
My Recommendation
The main thing that is not French and fancy about La Madeleine is their reasonable prices, which range from about $10 to $13 for an entrée and between $5 to $8 for salads and sandwiches About the only genuinely French quality at La Madeleine (at least sometimes) is their customer service. Maybe it’s just the one in Columbia, MD, but when I go, the service is pretty perfunctory, not much smiling and when I was I given the receipt, instead of “Thank you, please come again,” I was told “Here ya go.” If it weren’t for their desserts, I might not even go there, but since their food is OK, I give them an average rating. So, go and try it out. If you’ve never had real French food and don’t have to watch your sodium intake, you might even love it.
This opinion is part of Barbara’s new French and English Write Off .
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: Yes
Vegetarian Friendly: No
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations I recommend anything that is not served with a sauce: choice of salads, sandwiches (Turkey Bistro or Chicken Caesar), or their Rosemary Rotisserie Chicken.
Especially avoid their sauces and soups if you have to watch your sodium intake.
I enthusiastically recommend all of their pastries.
Best Suited For: Friends
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Epinions.com ID:
lindeisha
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Location: Maryland
Reviews written: 95
Trusted by: 58 members
About Me:
Loving life one second at a time
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