Financier looks French, feels French and has a French name as well. Located in the heart of the Financial District, just a few meters from Wall Street, is this French pastry shop that looks like an upscale place...until you understand that you'll be ordering at the counter and eating with plastic cutlery.
A French pastry selection offers a selection of sandwiches for breakfast as well as the big display of cakes like you'd expect to see in a French pastry shop. Two big machines of coffee, some tables here and there and two employees taking the order behind the counter. Not the most welcoming and professional of employees for an early morning.
It saddens me to see a concept with a special devotion, offer food that is badly presented by incredibly bad staff.
Let's try their breakfast:
- The croque monsieur: thick layers of cold ham, probably seven of them, topped with cheese and a toasted pain de Mie covered with cream. Cold, unpleasantly cold but full of taste. It would have been good if prepared properly.
- The croissant looks bad and is cooked in the microwave: a chewy croissant filled with chewy bacon and melted cheddar. It could have been better if prepared with dedication.
Pastries:
- Caramel pecan eclair: too sweet to have more than a bite, a dough like a bread baguette, a frosting where sugar crunches under the teeth and three pecan nuts to decorate it. It's a low quality kind of eclair priced at $5.
- The berry tart: a very tough dough and extremely sweet glazing without the yellow pastry cream you expect to have in a tart. Not good at all!
- Napoleon Mille Feuille: flaky and crunchy, a layer of whipped cream and another of pastry cream. No significant flavor except the taste of burned pastry dough.
Coffee is your average street coffee with no added value.
Extremely deceptive when compared to what it tries to present. Below average food, low class pastries, an extremely noisy place, badly presented plates, dirty fridges... It's not a place I will be visiting again.
