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Posted by on Nov 14, 2013 in Blog, Las Vegas, Rants and Raves, Restaurant Reviews | 15 comments

My Rant Against “The Crepe” at Tivolli Village (Las Vegas)

 

the-crepe

 

How difficult is it to make a crepe?

Well, it might as well be rocket science if you’re dining at the newest cafe-restaurant which just opened up at Tivoli Village, in Summerlin.  Wanna’ guess what the name of this new place is?  Try this:  The Crepe.

The most outrageous thing about our lunchtime visit today was — WE NEVER GOT ANY CREPES!

 

Maybe they should rename this place The Air.  Or, The Wait.  That was the full extent of our lunch.  I’ll say this, it’s one helluva good place to go on a diet and lose weight.  Everything on the menu is low-fat.  Er, make that no fat.

Here’s what happened.

the-crepe-counter

 

Marieta and I have been seeking out an acceptable crepe restaurant for years.  So far, the only place in town that gets it right is the Paris Casino (big surprise), although the only option there is a small informal carry-out bistro.

Imagine our delight upon reading in today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal that a new crepe place just opened up at Tivoli Village.  The math here all added up to what should have been a great experience.  Close to home.  An upscale location.  A European chef (according to the article).  And, over one-hundred different varieties of crepes on the menu.

What could possibly go wrong?

Answer:  Just about Everything.  And then some.

We arrived at 1 pm on a Wednesday afternoon and took two seats at a small metal table in the middle of the dining area.  The place appears very spartan.  Cement floors.  Exposed air-conditioning vents and ducts suspended high up in the ceiling.  An open kitchen.  One might describe the look and feel here as “industrial.”  No big deal.  We’re not here for the decorations.

The waitress approaches.

“Can I start you off with a drink?” she asks.

“Sure — two iced teas please.”

“We don’t serve brewed iced tea,” she snaps.

“Okay, how about two glasses of water for now, and we’ll order something else with the lunches?”

“We don’t serve regular water — just bottled water,” she says.

“Okay, bring us two then.”

Suddenly, Marieta notices on the menu that bottled water costs $4.50 each.  So, that’s $9 bucks automatically tacked on to the check, and we haven’t even ordered a starter yet.  Nice trick.  But I’m not falling for it.  I holler over to the waitress that we’ve changed our mind — we’ll pass on the waters.  Fucking robbery doing that to people.

I glance around and notice just about everyone has bottled water sitting on their table.  What a racket.  It’s going to be one hell of a surprise when they see their checks and suddenly notice they’ve been shaken down for $4.50 a pop (not counting tax and tip).  FOR FUCKING WATER!

One more thing about the water.  They serve 12-ounce bottles of Aquafina.  I’ve priced those myself at Costco and they’re like $7 for an entire 24-pack.  So, The Crepe is making out like ballbusting bandits and charging customers more than 15 times the cost on the markup.

FOR FUCKING WATER!

Have I sufficiently emphasized enough just how pissed off I am about this?  How well will this policy go to go over here in Las Vegas next summer when it’s 112 degrees outside?

Well, if I’m going to get porked for $4.50 for a single bottle of water, instead I might as well order the “fresh squeezed” juice.  The Crepe offers lemonade, orange, and grapefruit.  I opt for the grapefruit.  Cost:  $4.50 a glass.

About five minutes later, my “fresh squeezed” grapefruit juice arrives.  Here it is.  Check out the photo below:

 

juice-rip-off

 

Look at the size of my fucking hand!  Now, take a look at the size of the glass!  You mean to tell me THIS IS WHAT AI GET FOR FOUR-DOLLARS AND FIFTY FUCKING CENTS!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

The “fresh squeezed” grapefruit juice is served in a plastic glass about the size of a pear.  I could gulp that shot down in one drink.  Hell, my hand engulfs the entire glass.  And worse — it’s A PLASTIC GLASS!

THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!

Wait.  I haven’t even had a chance to actually sample the “fresh squeezed” grapefruit juice yet.  Can you say “bad to worse?”

If the liquid concoction they served me today is “fresh squeezed” grapefruit juice, then I’m the Pope of China.

NO WAY, BUSTER!

Want proof that I know what I’m talking about?  There’s no pulp in the juice.  Look.  There!  Do you see any goddamned grapefruit pulp in my glass?  Look at it!  And they dare to call this “fresh-squeezed?”  It’s not!  THERE’S NO PULP!

I’m thinking this must all be a sick joke.  Surely, the Practical Jokers camera guys are going to jump out of a wall in a minute and announce we’ve all been pranked.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  That’s it.  It’s all a big joke.  Hee, hee.

Wait.  Where are the cameras?

The waitress approaches and is ready to take our lunch order.  For some reason, despite the warning signs, we remain optimistic about The Crepe.  Never mind the water and juice disasters.  We didn’t come here for the decorations, or the water, or the juice.  The crepes should be good here, right?  All will soon be forgiven.

We decide to order two doubles.  That means — a lunch crepe and a dessert crepe.  Plus a small garden salad.  Cost:  $17 each.  So, after the meal, tax, and tip, we’re probably looking at $50 for lunch in this place.  Oh well, its worth it if the food’s good.

About 20 minutes lapses.  The table next to us gets served.  Two crepes come out — served ON PAPER PLATES!

Hands shaking.  PAPER PLATES!  The “WIRE HANGERS” of restaurant-dom.

Mommie-Dearest

 

So — I’m paying $50 for lunch and drinking from a plastic glass and eating off paper plates?  What is this — a fucking company picnic?  THE HORROR!

NO PAPER PLATES!  NO PLASTIC GLASSES!  NO WIRE HANGERS!

It was hard to get much of an indication about the food.  The old people next to use ate up their meals.  But who knows the back story.  Two tables away, some waif sent her crepe back to the chef.  She wasn’t satisfied for some reason.  But that isn’t necessarily the fault of the restaurant.  Some customers can be real assholes.

After 35 minutes, another woman comes out from behind the counter.  Aha!  Lunch is served, at last.

“Did you order two (indecipherable menu items)?” she asks.

“No.  We ordered (whatever).”

Flustered, the woman realizes she has come to the wrong table, despite the fact we’ve been given a large NUMBER 4 which is placed squarely on the table.  She finally locates the correct table and serves up the crepes to what is presumably another starving couple.  Meanwhile, we’re advised that our order is “coming up soon.”

Lucky us!  Better than winning the lottery.

“I saw two cooking on the grill just now….those must be yours,” the woman advises.

Great!

I feel so blessed.

Another 10 minutes lapses.  Mind you, we have ordered two small salads with two lunch crepes, to be followed up by two dessert crepes.  And we haven’t yet received a basket of bread or a salad.  But we do have our “fresh squeezed” grapefruit juice to nurse on!  Hooray!  Then, if we really get thirsty wasting the day away, we can always order some of those delicious $4.50 bottles of water.

By my estimate, we’ve now been waiting for 45 minutes.  Did anyone get the phone number for Domino’s handy?

No one comes over.  No apologies.  Not a single word.

Since time is all we have to kill at the moment, Marieta decides to take a headcount.  She notes that 22 people are sitting in the restaurant, including us.  Perhaps 3 or 4 orders have been served since we’ve arrived.  In 45 minutes.  Gee, what would ever happen if they got a rush?

By this time, lunch has become a comedic circus.  I’m shaking my head starting to mutter profanities.  I’m sure some other people must have heard me bitching.  But I’m way past being livid at this point.  It’s actually starting to be funny.

Perhaps another 3 or 4 minutes pass and I’m staring over into the kitchen area, which is behind a lunch counter.  I don’t see any signs of our scrumptious crepes coming out.  Perhaps they’re back there somewhere hiding.  Sitting on the counter.  Baking under the heat lamp.  Laying on the floor.  Who the fuck knows?

Again, no apologies.  We might as well have been invisible.

Finally fed up beyond repair, I tell Marieta we’re blowing this joint.  In my lifetime, I’ve walked out of only a few restaurants.  In most cases, I’d prefer to talk to the manager or owner and seek an explanation.  But here, I see no point at all.  What does one say?  Where to begin?  How much time does the manager have to listen?

We leave, completely and utterly unnoticed.  We even walk within sight of our waitress, who didn’t seem to be aware that we’d not yet be served.

I realize this isn’t five-star dining.  But this dining experience was about as bad as it gets.  Of course to be fair, new restaurants deserve to be cut some slack.  After all, everything is new.  But the total lack of care, concern, or customer awareness at The Crepe was appalling.

So, how were the crepes?  Perhaps they were delicious.  But, I’ll never know.

UPDATE:  CLOSED/OUT OF BUSINESS

15 Comments

  1. (slowly) Clap. Clap. Clap.

    I want to eat every meal at a restaurant with Nolan Dalla.

  2. We’re not here for the decorations… lol

    You really like your crepes! Such Passion for dining!

    I hear they serve great dishes over at the White House. You run, you win! Simple plan.

    People are tired of such shit! WATER. Come fucking on already!

    Gas is hitting 2.99 in some places for a gallon!

    I’m with you Nolan. Your V

    • Your VP running mate.

  3. Yes!!!!! Had a similar experience! Except when I went they didn’t have menus. The man behind the counter listed a bunch of fruits they had in stock, including raspberry. So, I ordered a raspberry crepe. I got raspberry syrup (which I hate). The waitress (the self-proclaimed wife of the man behind the counter) told us her husband didn’t know what they had in stock. That was after a 35 minute wait, and I didn’t want to complain for fear it could take another hour to get my food. Terrible experience.

    I’m just happy I brought my own water. Sounds like it could have bankrupted me if I needed to order a beverage.

    Great piece. More people need to read this before they waste their life savings and precious hours.

  4. Hello, I’m a little late to the party, but being the owner of a new restaurant takes quite a bit from my free time 🙂
    I’m the guy behind the counter who had no idea what fruit is available, AKA the owner of this joint.

    Mr. Dolla, I really enjoyed your piece and thank you for taking the time to write it. Let me start off by clearing up a few misconceptions.

    1. Our bottled water is $1.50, you can see it on the menu here: http://thecrepelasvegas.com/menu/. If you were charged $4.50 I will gladly refund you the difference since obviously a mistake was made. Or better yet, if you decide to come back and try our crepes, the water is on me 🙂

    2. We don’t serve tap water because of our tiny kitchen. The Health Dept. is requiring us to have 5 types of sinks – 3 for washing, 1 for dumping and 1 for hand washing. We cannot serve water for consumption from these sinks.

    3. We now have brewed iced tea.

    4. The juice really is fresh squeezed, but we run it through a mesh strainer and that’s why the pulp is missing. I love pulp with my orange juice, some people don’t, but we try to please everyone.

    We have small and large sugarcane cups but when dining in we serve juice in the small cups you are already familiar with. If you order a small juice, you get this cup with no ice. If you order a large, you get this cup, no ice and one refill. Not the perfect system, but that’s what we can do at this point in time. Clearly, you were cheated out of a refill and the waitress at the time put ice in your cup, so I will gladly refund you the money you paid for your juice.

    5. On our prices. Crepes in Paris hotel start from $9 and go up to $17 for savory ones, that’s what I paid when I ate there in July of this year. Crepes in Henderson start from $7 and go up to $9 for savory ones and the restaurant is located in a strip mall. Both of these establishments have a very limited selection of crepes. So paying $8 or $8.50 for sweet and $9.50 to $10.50 or $12 for a crepe with caviar in Tivoli Village seem to me is pretty cheap. My rent and the rent for the place in Henderson are very different, but our prices are almost the same.

    6. On the “paper” plates. They’re not paper plates, they’re made out of sugarcane plates. Front page of our menu has a small blurb about this. This is where we buy our plates: http://www.ecoproducts.com/sugarcane_plates.html
    This was also a choice we made because of our tiny kitchen. Having normal plates would require a dishwashing machine and more space than we currently have. We’re working on a solution, but at this point we’re sticking with sugarcane 🙂

    7. On waiting. I find that most people think of crepes as fast food, like pancakes. Which they can be. If you go to France or China, crepes are generally considered street food and can be purchased from a street vendor. We wanted to create a different experience and show that crepes can be much more than just Nutella and strawberries.

    We have about 50 different types of crepes, most of them are savory and vary wildly in ingredients. We have a crepe with smoked salmon, cream cheese, pickles, capers and tomatoes. We have a crepe with grilled tofu, seaweed crunch and topped with miso sauce. We even have a crepe with caviar. All of these take time to make. The sweet ones are easy, but when you order a crepe with benedict florentine, ham, soft poached egg, spinach, topped with hollandaise sauce, expect to wait 15 minutes just to make your crepe. How long do you wait for breakfast at a breakfast restaurant on a busy Saturday or Sunday morning?

    Now a bit of history. We had a few weeks of a soft opening in October and we officially opened on November 7th. We started with two employees in October and my wife and I. We greatly underestimated the interest in our place and had to hire more people in order to keep up with our growth. We currently employ 10 people and my wife and I work there from 6.30am every morning until 11pm at night, seven days a week and we need to hire more people as we’re getting busier and busier. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t reply to your post earlier, I’m writing this at 11:51PM on a Sunday night and have to wake up in 6 hours, but that’s the life of an entrepreneur 🙂

    Please let me know if you plan on giving us a second try, I’d love to chat with you more. I would suggest that you come after 5PM during the week when it’s not so busy yet.

  5. I ate at The Crepe in December and had no problems. I’m looking forward to visiting again and enjoying their various events. I wouldn’t trust a review by anyone who has a vocabulary as limited as Mr. Dalla.

  6. I agree. Not a good place.

    We came in and we’re asked by chef to sit in the back, because we were with children!!!

    No waiter came to the table to take our order for 10 minutes, so when I asked about it, was told that waiter would be with me in a minute, however it took another 10 minutes. After waiting for the order for 30 minutes, checked on this and we’re told that the next is ours. But next order was taken to another table that was brought to customers who came after us. So, checking on this again and are told that they are too busy! The place was not even half full! Wanted just to pay for drinks and leave, however they have complemented drinks.

    After almost an hour at this place left angry and hungry.

  7. I see Elena has been here 🙂 I’ll just repost my Yelp comment to her 1 star review.

    Elena hello. I think you’re being a bit unfair with your 1 star rating and writing that this is the “worst place ever”. After all you got free drinks, that should add at least one more star 🙂 Just to be clear we do not have free or complementary drinks, that was just for you and only for your visit today.

    Allow me to add clarification to a few things you wrote:

    1. We have an indoor play area for children and their parents in an effort to make it a pleasant experience for all of our guests. Some guests don’t like children running around their tables while eating and that’s why you were directed to that area. Maybe an extra star for being the only restaurant in Tivoli Village with an indoor playground for your kids to enjoy?

    2. Our waiter took your order and the drinks came a few minutes later. I verified this by looking at our security camera footage. Your order was ready 22 minutes after it was placed but at that time you were very unhappy that your food didn’t come out immediately and chose to leave.

    3. Weekend mornings are our busiest time. We can seat 70 people in our space and we didn’t have any tables available today around the time you came. Even if we were half full that means about 35 people waiting for food so a wait time of 30 minutes is not unacceptable for any busy restaurant. You ordered our Philippines crepe which comes with pork and vegetables, which normally takes about 15-20 minutes to cook.

    Perhaps you came in expecting fast food, but we are not that type of establishment. Our space used to be a sandwich shop before and I can see where some people get confused, but we are working on changing this perception.

    Should you decide to come back again on a weekend morning and knowing that you don’t like to wait for your food I would suggest that you look into purchasing our VIP memberships where you get a discount every time you purchase something from us and the best thing is your order gets put on the front of the line so you get your crepes faster than anyone else.

  8. This has become a great go-to restaurant for my husband and me, not only because of the quality and variety of the crepes, but because it answers a wide array of needs – a delicious breakfast, a light and tasty lunch, a tailor-designed dinner, or if we have dined elsewhere, a delightful dessert and coffee! We have never encountered an unpleasant server, and the owners are gracious and eager to please their guests. While there is sometimes a wait, it is well worth it because of the quality and care that goes into preparation. I am amused to read the negative “rants”, peppered with profanity and unreasonable expectations. They reveal far more about the author than the restaurant they are “reviewing” !

  9. I work at the farmers market on Saturday there at Tivoli village. I have seen the trials and tributes Agnes has endured getting this place up and running. She buys her produce locally,thanks for giving back to your community Agnes, and she puts her heart and sole into her crepes. I’m disappointed that there are negative reviews as I have never had anything but the top notch best food here. I hope the day these customers visited was not the day thier dishwasher decided to leave a sink full of dishes from the night before and not show up the next morning!! I cannot imagine the stress of coming in to open and seeing every dish dirty when you are about to start your day! I have been in the food/ bev industry for 20+ years and have high expectations for service, presentation, environment and quality. I will say, if you are looking for fast food this is not the place, but if you have the time then you are in for one hell of a meal with an orchestra of delight for your taste buds. Sometimes first impressions fail our expectations…..everyone deserves a second chance.

    • Nolan Replies: Thank you for your comments and for providing more information about the restaurant and ownership. Like you, I hope and want them to succeed. Moreover, I was much impressed by the owner, who contacted me a short time after the initial review was posted. A few months ago, I did give the establishment a second chance. While the service and organization had indeed improved, the crepes (specifically the filling/cremes/etc.) remained unsatisfying. Compote may be common, but it’s hardly a delicacy when fresh fruit is readily available. Once again, I left disappointed.

      Your thoughts are always appreciated and welcomed, although we do continue to have differences of opinion.

      — Nolan

  10. I was just at the Crepe Restaurant a week ago. They had a happy hour from 3 to 6 for 5 dollars had a chicken crepe it was better than I expected. The owner was very attentive and I think with any new place there are growing pains. What my experience they have the Restaurant on the right course and you will have a great meal. I suggest you give it a try again as they say you need to try a place at lease twice. Try there new Sparkling Wine BelAir Bellini it peach flavor it goes great with all the dishes there at the Crepe Bistro Restaurant.

  11. I almost threw up reading this rant. Nolan Dolla or whatever the fuck your name is. TAKE A SEAT. I feel so sorry that you waited a little too long to feed your pretentious fat ass face. They probably did not apologize to you because you sound like a real asshole that thinks he deserves something in life. Buddy, if you’re eating in Tivoli Village of course the prices are going to be racked up!! You are a clown. Bye.

    p.s. I just wanted to check the hours of one of my favorite crepe spots which made me stumble across this nonsense. Thanks for reminding me that there are living people in the world like you 🙂

    • I assume you are a family member of the owners?
      Oh by the way, now I know why they closed!!! 😛
      Thanks Nolan, I am sure that thanks to your review, a lot of people saved money and time.

  12. Trust me you dodged a huge bullet by not getting food! I used to work there and I’ve NEVER been more horrified in my life. Shocked they haven’t been shit down honestly the food is disgusting. Simply put they are pigs and would hate to see their home! Come to LA Belle Terre we do crepes and they are fabulous you won’t be ignored and will be served within 10 minutes…..15 on a busy day. A cleaner kitchen I’ve never seen other than my home?

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