www.lechandelier.co.uk/
For this visit, Ben and I were accompanied by our friends Anne-Marie and Ed. I'd been to Le Chandelier before (but before I started this blog), so was keen to re-visit and take the obligatory photos and re-sampling of cake.
There's always a risk in taking friends to a place you've enjoyed before, just on the off chance that it doesn't come off quite as well as it did the first time around. We've all been there.
So I rolled the dice... and lost.
Oh dear.
First things first. Le Chandelier is in in a fantastic location on the ever chic Lordship Lane. It's a lovely high street, and has all manner of nice goings on going on (including a small market off one of the side streets on Saturdays).
The cafe's decor can't be faulted. It's truly lovely, and the display of cakes and patisseries at the front counter is stunning.
The cakes themselves are delicious. I had the red velvet, and my only criticism is that the icing was slightly too sweet even for me (which is saying something).
So far, so good.
I think had we just stuck to ordering cake we would have been OK. But we made the mistake of ordering "proper food" as well.
Not that there was anything particularly wrong with the food either... although Anne-Marie's large berry pancakes came in at an eye watering £13.00. For that price we were all expecting a smorgasbord of berries of all colours and types heaped in a large mound on top of a skyscraper of pancakes. Unfortunately she was served what looked to be about 8 blueberries and a tiny hamster-sized dish of maple syrup.
What really let Le Chandelier down on this occasion was the abysmal service. We waited over an hour for our food to arrive. When we questioned the (rather rude) waiter, we were met with a glare and interrogated about whether we'd ordered a "slow dish".
"Did you order the chicken??" he asked us rather sternly. "No" we replied in unison. Our waiter shrugged, mystified. To his credit, he did offer to give us another round of drinks on the house, which we gladly accepted.
We then occupied ourselves for a good few minutes debating the enigma of the chicken dish.
Finally our food arrived, and poor Anne-Marie ended up with bacon pancakes, not berry pancakes.
The (rather rude) waitress thought fit to debate with Anne-Marie about whether she'd ordered the bacon ones. I'm pretty sure Anne-Marie knew what she'd ordered, since she doesn't even like bacon.
Everyone was so put off by this stage that I was the only one willing to have a slice of cake... expensive cake too, at £4.20.
So when all is said and done, I have really mixed feelings about Le Chandelier.
On the plus side, I do like the decor (10/10), and the cakes are wonderful (9/10). But it's expensive (4/10).
For the price we paid, I expected excellent service, and we just didn't get it (3/10).
I can't see myself going back after this experience.
CakeMyDayLondon Rating
