Café Athenee

Great location, lovely atmosphere. Tasky food but we expected the dish to be a bit decorated or accompanied by a salad not a slice of quiche slapped on a plate.

I was fortunate enough to visit the cafe, situated inside of the International Bucharest for their grand reopening. There is no question that this will be a landmark establishment within Bucharest. The quiche and espresso martini were second to none and world class. I highly recommend you visit, or choose IC Bucharest, for even the cafe alone.

This spot disappointed me a lot, the staff was very unprofessional, they doesn’t helped us with a free table, we alone looked for a free spot, the waiting time was awful, more than 45 minutes for a tea and a matcha latte, also the matcha was simple milk!

Not so satisfied with the experience at Athenee so far, I have been here twice and each time things went terribly wrong.  To start off with the positives - great interior design and amazing location (city center and neighbored by Louis Vouitton store and Hilton Hotel). Spacious café and spacious restrooms with great attention to detail (if only the rest of the experience matched this).  Besides these two factors everything else is quite shabby. The staff are clumsy/borderline disrespectful and the standard of customer service is subpar (it's usually to be expected in Romania sadly, and still - with such a location the standard should be very high). You're either made to wait a very long time without anyone paying you any attention or you wait forever after placing an order (when dining in). We waited 20 minutes for our coffees and another 20 (so 40minutes) for our baguettes.. which were cold and did not taste fresh (no olive oil, a swab of pesto and saggy salad). The coffee was immediately a red flag (although tasty, the flat white and cappuccino were the same exact sizing and milk, when in reality they differ not only in ratio coffee to milk but also frothing/milk preparation). Again, for such a location this is a rookie mistake and no attention to coffee standards and recipes.  The menu is so poor - unbelievably poor, actually. Not much to choose from besides some octopus (?! Who even eats that at a café) and some dry pastries. No attention to vegetarian/gluten free options and zero fully plant based options for those interested. The menu in itself is scanned of a leaflet (tacky in comparison to the design of the place) and it leads to a very confusing online menu "powered by Schwepps" (again, really tacky). You're then left to hunt for food items on that poor excuse of a digital menu and their only differentiation is "items with images are freshly made and items which don't have pictures are from our glass case". Oh?! Either management is inexperienced here or the owners don't understand how the location impacts the customer base - you'll get people with finer taste if you pin yourself next to the finest of stores and brands. Meanwhile the experience is below McDonald's levels (and they're famous for their customer service). They've got a really long way to go and I hope someone takes ownership of this place and turns it into a one of a kind brunch/dinner spot - it's got the full potential ready.