Colleen D.
Yelp
20 years ago on my 13th birthday my mother took me to lunch here. It's such a wonderful memory--a gorgeous, quiet, old French tea room. We had club sandwiches which were the classic towering stacked sandwich, and five dollar cokes (an insane price for 2001, but it was my birthday.)
Yesterday we returned, with my father, my husband and my two daughters. We ordered club sandwiches and cokes for my parents and my daughters and when they came out, we were shocked. They were flat and limp and goopy, a pancake of a sandwich, a pale comparison to the sandwiches of our memory. I got a chicken burger for the same price (30€) which was AMAZING and huge, so it was very confusing why this other dish was so paltry and lame. For the price, the club sandwich is an absolute rip-off. Then the check came and the cokes were TEN DOLLARS. They didn't have the soft drinks on the menu, and we saw why in that moment. The price-gouging is mind-boggling. This is Laduree, so we expected higher than usual prices, but ten dollars is out of this world ridiculous.
Also they gave me my glass of champagne in a wine glass, not a coupe or flute, which was weird--I'm paying 20€ a glass, so give me the full experience!!!
Finally, while still a beautiful restaurant, it is now catered to instagrammers: fake flowers, backgrounds for photos...gone is the wood paneling, the elegance....now it is fancy and lovely in the way that Disneyland has some fancy restaurants. Laduree seems to have lost its soul.
Now they were wonderful about having kids with us: very accommodating with a highchair and stroller check, awesome. And my daughter loved all the fake flowers, so we still had a good time.