L'Experience Paris - Mercer Island

We had out of town guests and wanted to show them downtown Mercer Island. We decided to have brunch at L'Experience. We usually come here for the French coffee and amazing selection of pastries. They also have cakes that you can special order . Inside seating is great for meetings, working on your laptop, or gathering of friends. Lots of tables inside and a few tables in front outside . Their eggs Benedict and quiches on their brunch menu was amazing and delicious. Customer service was friendly and the French accent brought back memories of being back in Paris.

My go-to place for authentic French pastry on Mercer Island. Also lovely for a light French brunch (weekends only?). It's quite expensive and sometimes they've already sold out of the pastry that I'm looking for, but (on the bright side?) I learned that a savory Koign Amann is also delicious. Also, you can buy Mariage Frères tea in tins here. Service has been good, ambiance is sunny and open. A perfect place for a treat.

Brunch here is good... if you're okay with a wait. And a cafe that is more IKEA than Paris.We waited to be welcomed in and sat, we waited to order, and we waited for tea, juice, and a croissant. We waited for our benedicts. Luckily, we weren't in a hurry. The hazelnut croissant was delicious. We both enjoyed our benedicts. I had the tomato confit and basil. The tomatoes were roasted and delicious. I would've preferred a bit more hollandaise or basil butter/spread. And a bit more dressing on the salad. He had the salmon and avocado and enjoyed it. Our waiter was in a bag when our mains were delivered. He was very quick to come over and apologize for the wait - before we even said anything. While slow, the service was good.

We decided to do brunch here on a Sunday at 11am. The food was good, not great. Unfortunately the reason I will not return to this restaurant was the service. From the moment we walked in, it was clear that the staff was a bit overwhelmed and there were not enough people to do the work. No one even noticed we walked in and I had to ask someone for us to be seated. The 3 people serving food were doing the best they could, but they also had to make coffee and drinks. I had to ask for help 3 times by going up to the counter. Everyone was pleasant but they forgot quite a few things. The ambiance is very sterile. I would not recommend this restaurant.

*please note brunch is only offered at the Bellevue and Mercer locations--not Issaquah!*Honestly...five stars. I've been to a "stylish" cafe before but the food always tends to fall flat.This cafe's food is very impressive. I had the eggs Benedict with tomatoes and Basil butter. It was the best Benedict I've had in a long time. Every bite was bliss. The chai latte was also perfectly sweetened and so cute. My husband had the French toast. The servers are wonderful--young, courteous, (really cute!), and French! Highly recommend this place. It seemed everyone else was having a great time too. We came at 1pm on a Sunday at the Mercer location and got seated immediately.

I love the food at the L'experience, so I picked up a croissant, cookie and a slice of leek goat cheese quiche today (requested cold to eat later)However I still do not understand the design concept at the Mercer Island location. It is so inefficient that this concept makes no sense.In the downtown Bellevue location, you enter, walk up to the counter, place your order - which is then immediately placed in a bag or a box and pay for what you ordered. A very easy and wonderful experience, which is also efficient and lovely.At the Mercer Island location, there are examples of the daily features on a table, and then a staff member takes your order with a tablet. The staff member then disappears into the back for an extended amount of time to gather your items. Today this extended amount of time took 20 plus minutes, and there was only one patron in front of me. Everyone else had already been served. The amount of time it takes for the staff to take an order, then wander away into the back of the kitchen / prep area to gather your order and then finally walk back to the front of a house to give you your order, is bizarre and ridiculous. Maybe the owner thought this concept would be more, hmm, Mercer Island-ey?? But in reality it just doesn't work at all, because of how inefficient it is - especially when you're short staffed. And honestly seeing stale examples of the daily features sitting out on a table with patrons leaning over to examine them, isn't too appetizing.And then weird things happen like today when the staff member walked out from the prep area to give someone their bagged pastry, while carrying the slice of my quiche in his gloved hand. Not on a plate or in a package - just loose in his hand. And he forgot I didn't want it heated. I get it difficult times, staffing issues, all sorts of challenges which make running a business so much more difficult these days. And a restaurant concept like this just makes it even more so.The leek & goat cheese quiche however, was divine.

Ordered iced latte 16oz and it needed sugar to be added. Wasn't sweet even after adding two packets of sugar. Pretty standard, nothing much fancy. Price comparable to Starbucks. Based on the reviews, their pastries are too sweet so I didn't get any today.

Yesterday, I was meeting friends who live on the Eastside while I am in Seattle so we were looking for a halfway spot to brunch and maximize our time amidst all the other busy weekend activities. My friend suggested the MI branch of L'Experience as a midpoint. I made a reservation for the 3 of us at 11am (yesterday was Saturday). I arrived a little early and the tables were completely full and the staff bustled to make sure to open up a table for us in the quiet(ish) back corner and were ready before my friends arrived at the reservation time. Food was good-- one friend and I split the Classic English Muffin Ham Egg Benny (they have several versions on the menu, including using a croissant base instead of English muffin but the classic here is Jambon de Bayonne & Emmental) and it is served with pommes dauphine, and a mixed green salad. My 1/2 of the order was the perfect amount for brunch! We also split a kouign-amann (a sweet pastry from the Bretagne region of France) and it was really fresh and yummy, had a caramelized sugar base! But it was pretty early in the day and they were sold out of almost all of their pastry varieties :( My other friend got the ham cheese (jambon-fromage) omelettes and it looked like the perfect French omelette, not a hint of browning.Drinks-- problematic. They were sold out of every.single.one of their teas on their menu (ALL 13 Mariage Freres varietals) and so I got a basic spearmint tea but still got charged the $7! I didn't notice until later and they graciously refunded it to me but the young lady at the front cashier said "her manager expects us to still charge the same price for all tea but she understood it was a rip-off" and authorized the refund. Water-- had to walk over to a staff member after our food was delivered to remind them that they never gave us any water, despite our 2 servers noticing several times that we didn't have water and needing to bring it.I think part of the issue was that there were only 2 people to service the entire restaurant and the layout is kinda funky. It has the feel of a fast-casual, but with sit down service. I honestly think they would do better to reformat and have counter service with runners to bring the food!All in all it met our needs, and the food was decent but come early for the widest selection and make a reservation if you can. It was noticeably less busy when we left around 1:15pm.

Great atmosphere and food. Have eaten there many times and will continue to do so. Good for groups as well. Great pastries.

I'm so upset at this bakery. We had a whole party centered around the "Galette des Rois" which is a custom we have from Europe where whoever gets the porcelain figurine will host it next year and wears the king clown. When we went to pick the Galete up at the bakery we asked the person that brought it to us if the cake had a figurine inside as we expect them to have because that's the whole idea of the tradition and she told us exactly this "yes it has a toy inside". We asked are you sure? Is this not the square "L" piece on the top? and she confirmed that it wasn't and that it was a toy. We did the whole cutting of the cake to find out there was no figurine inside and the whole thing was a bust and screwed our whole Galette des Rois celebration. I am so upset about this.I will never ever buy anything from them and I will tell all my European friends to a life them like the plague. I'm seriously fuming. All that money spent on that party wasted because these people didn't do their job.On top of that the quality of the Galette was subpar so even worse. They need to learn how to do a good one and train their people or do whatever so they don't destroy an evening celebration due to their disappointing performance.