C’est La Vie Fresh French To Go

I really wanted to like this place. There is a dearth of bakeries on Cape Cod and when one opens I try to go and find out if they are any good or not. My friend works in town and she said I should give this place a try so I did. I went in one morning two weeks ago and wanted to try an almond croissant. I walked by the patisserie case and saw some lovely things in the case. The eclairs and cream puff looked terrific as did the cakes. I also saw French macaroons as well so I was hopeful. A little further on I got to the boulangerie items, croissants, breads, etc. When I saw the almond croissants I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were over proofed and flat, and looked like a 6″ x 4″ undercooked pancake. I passed and offered my concerns on the firm’s Facebook page. I got a nice message from the owner that acknowledged the issue and said that they were having problems that day and to please try again. Well, today I did just that.
As before, the pastry case looked terrific and had it been later in the day I may have tried one of them but I was again in search of an almond croissant. I got to the bakery section and while the almond croissants were cooked a little more than before they seemed still not fully cooked. I decided to buy one and see if it was my imagination. What I noticed when the clerk handed me the package was that the one croissant must have weighed at least ½ pound! When I got it to my office it was definitely underbaked and the filling inside was a runny gooey mess. it was seeping out of both ends and made the whole thing soggy.
I hope that these folks do well, but their reputation for croissants is, to me, ruined. There is another bakery in Yarmouthport who has the almond croissant down to a science, so that is where I will go for delicious bakery items. Sorry folks. I did give you another try and was again disappointed.

I REALLY wanted to give this place a higher rating. I’d been a few times and the French pastries and bread they offer are amazing. For instance, their cappucino mousse is a real treat and their cheese bread… dear God I can’t say enough good things about it. And the cakes, while I haven’t had them, look A Maze Ing.
A few things, though, that have turned me off on the place a bit (and luckily they’re very fixable):
1. Service — I’ve been twice and each time the woman waiting was in the back for 2 minutes before she noticed someone had arrived (the place was not empty). Very cordial though, I will say.
2. When someone orders a hot chocolate at what looks to be a very nice French bakery/​coffee shop, it’s a real bummer to see someone squirt Hershey’s syrup into a mug of milk and place it on a heater. Please splurge on something more gourmet hot chocolate, please.
3. The décor is promoted as ‘like if you were sitting in your living room’. The problem is that the setup for sit-​down customers is very poorly laid out. It basically looks like there’s way too many tables that look as if they were inherited from a few households and unceremoniously shoved to the side of the room. There is zero art work or decorations on the neutral-​colored walls and the tables are shoved together so tightly there’s barely maneuvering room to even pull out a chair. Get rid of most of those… you don’t need them. Replace them with a couch or two with coffee tables & rugs and a few magazines and you have a winner (of course keep a few other sit down tables as well) and perhaps entice local artists to display their works on your walls?
4. Really baffling how there is a coffee station with all the condiments up front in a very accessible location, however, for plasticware one must instead go to a back corner table amidst the piles of tables to retrieve a fork, spoon or knife. Why not just keep all that up by the coffee area? Plus, it was someone frustrating to have to literally push past people sitting in front of that plasticware table to obtain them… again, way too many tables in the place.
Don’t get me wrong, the place is well worth a visit, and you’ll be glad to have stopped in if you’re picking up a coffee drink, pastry or dessert. And they’re still very new and have some growing pains… but if they were a bit more attentive, did a whole rehash on their table and décor setup, consolidated all the accessories in one reachable area and went for a better hot chocolate solution, they would have a huge winner here and I’d be glad to up the rating considerably!