Time to kill in Glasgow Central station, fancied a coffee so popped into Patisserie Valerie, figured with a name like that they’d manage a decent coffee and croissant.

How wrong I was! Stale on the outside and as cold and dense as a dead star in the middle. Thing is, I’ve come to expect this virtually everywhere now except (from memory) Cafe Nero.

Why do places think this is OK? Does post-Brexit UK prefer their pastries stale and hard, or (like me) is everyone just too embarassed to complain out loud about the quality of their croissant…

:can’t find an embarassed smiley:

You walked past Gordon st coffee, fool! 🙂

Was leaving the station, didn’t see it till after ☹

I thought PV had went tits up, due to someone creaming off money from their accounts, but the one in central remains open.

Did you take it back?

Did you take it back?

That

Did you ‘have a word’ with the manager > smiley face <

This reminds me of an urgent call a colleague of mine took the other day, about a domestic crisis. Turned out one of her kids was crying down the phone ‘mummy, we’ve run out of madeleines’…!!!

Oh, the horror! 😂

The problem with the take it back argument is that by the time you realise you may have left the queue, in which case you will need to queue again to be seen and the slow Hassel to get a response. You may not have time for this.

Still trying to find a better fresher croissant than Lidl bakery. Well, I stopped trying tbh.

OP, take it back 🙄

Talking of stale, have you ever seen those mummified rock-hard pastry-and-meat breakfast-things that lurk, unsold, later in the day, in hot-cabinets? £1.50 for a granite pastry-boat containing some blackening bacon-jerky with hard shiny orange cheesefudgestuff? And that brown, stone-hard, once-bread roll, hiding a dessicated ex-sausage beneath it’s Pre-Cambrian crust? omg no amount of plastic packets of sauce can rehydrate that or make it remotely edible. omg

There was no chance in hell I was taking it back, if word got out to the mean streets of Glasgow that some effette Edinburgh type was impugning the freshness of Weegie-land’s pastries there would be a lynching!

Patisserie Valerie has a name that writes cheques its produce cannot cash.

For future reference, there’s a Lidl just around the corner. But indeed why people sell and put up with shit like this in this country is beyond me.

I nipped out yesterday afternoon to buy a pie for lunch, and when I got in the car the clock read 3:14. True story.

Still trying to find a better fresher croissant than Lidl bakery. Well, I stopped trying tbh.

Yep I reckon they’ve nailed it and 49p

I always go for the choccy ones tbh evil things but mmmm yummy.

Does post-Brexit UK prefer their pastries stale and hard,

Consider it punishment for choosing horribly pretentious, weirdly-shaped unpronounceable 50p Surrender-bread from foreigners rather than the more politically-correct £1 British sausage roll or Pot Noodle 😎

Surrender-bread

Lol

Why is it that British cafes are so rubbish at this sort of thing. And why do Brit’s put up with it?

I dunno, I think there’s some sort of false-minimum on the capitalist curve. Independents, PV, Pret, Nero, Costa, Gregs etc have all found a price point that people will pay for varying levels of “I wouldn’t be seen dead in (insert chain to the right in the above list)” consumers. Without there actually being any competition in the market.

To the point that confronted with a motorway service station for breakfast I’d pick the Gregs. the coffee comes out of a machine (which means it can’t be f***ed up) and the croissants haven’t been sat there long enough to turn into stale pastry and a lump of butter. All you’re paying extra for at Costa is a red mug, the opportunity for someone to scald the milk, and a delivery lorry to bring the croissant from 100 miles away.

Went for a weekend in Barcelona last year, one of those secret-escapes deals which are about as luxury in real life as the travelodge, but that’s another matter. The hotel wanted about 10euro extra each fro breakfasts, so we walked over the road to the local independent sit-in cafe, stuffed our pie holes with as much pastry and coffee as we could handle and got change from 5 euros. Why can’t the average high street manage this without messing it up or becoming the caricature in the McD’s adverts?

Went for a weekend in Barcelona last year, one of those secret-escapes deals which are about as luxury in real life as the travelodge, but that’s another matter. The hotel wanted about 10euro extra each fro breakfasts, so we walked over the road to the local independent sit-in cafe, stuffed our pie holes with as much pastry and coffee as we could handle and got change from 5 euros. Why can’t the average high street manage this without messing it up or becoming the caricature in the McD’s adverts?

To be fair I think this is a recognised UK market sector, particularly in this-here-Larnden where there is often a cafe full of people tucking into bacon and eggs to avoid being anally raped in the hotel next door.

Another vote for Lidl bakery, yummyness for breakfast and lunch sorted for pennies, makes taking a pack up unnecessary hassle and expense.

Talking of stale, have you ever seen those mummified rock-hard pastry-and-meat breakfast-things that lurk, unsold, later in the day, in hot-cabinets? £1.50 for a granite pastry-boat containing some blackening bacon-jerky with hard shiny orange cheesefudgestuff? And that brown, stone-hard, once-bread roll, hiding a dessicated ex-sausage beneath it’s Pre-Cambrian crust? omg no amount of plastic packets of sauce can rehydrate that or make it remotely edible.

Those are not for eating they’re for fighting. See also dwarf bread.

For future reference, there’s a Lidl just around the corner.

Where? I’m starting a new contract in central Glasgow on Monday and looking forward to the myriad purveyors of brunc and lunch options.
Riverhill, Where the Monkey Sleeps, Tinderbox and Philpotts are all favourite haunts, but which other places am I missing?

Glasgow has plenty of decent specialty coffee places and bakeries that will sell you a great pastry.

Chains, on the other hand, generally sell pastries that range from inedible to just about passable. Patisserie Valerie is a particularly bad example of a chain – I believe at one point they weren’t even using butter in their croissants as they were so stumped for cash.

JP

Where?

Out central station onto union st via the steps, turn right, down across argyle st, through lights on the left.

Thanks Nobeer, that’s just tweaked the route of my new way to the office 🙂

So, a bit further out from Glasgow, but on the same subject matter.

Train journey on Monday, with a 45 minute layover at Nuneaton (of all places) to change trains.

Any suggestions for croissants/coffee.

Looking at google maps I can only find an Asda with a McDon or the cafe on the station.

Neither places fill me with joy and expectation.

Another vote for Lidl bakery, yummyness for breakfast and lunch sorted

How’s the ’beige’ diet working out? I find that it ‘bloats’ me so much that these trews have been cutting me in half, seemingly more every passing year…

Where the Monkey Sleeps,

Mmmmmmm….Meathammer.

The bestest sandwich shop in the actual world. Fact.

A French couple I know who until recently lived here in the UK before moving back to France said they could never find any bread that didn’t taste stale to them – obviously used to much better!
They did say the Lidl bread was the best they found in the UK and always tried to get it from there.

When I was last in Italy the croissants we bought from a well know supermarket were just like the ones the OP describes. On our return for further supplies the next day we realised, to our horror, that the ones we had bought were ‘vegan’. That explained everything 🙂

A French couple I know who until recently lived here in the UK before moving back to France said they could never find any bread that didn’t taste stale to them – obviously used to much better!

A Swedish friend said much the same to me a few months ago.

How’s the ’beige’ diet working out?

Never had an issue luckily. In fairness we are talking one pastry and one pizza slice type thing per day, alongside fruit and carrots usually. I’m not a fan of chocolate or creamy stuff, and whilst I enjoy a nice bit of fish everything else I eat is veggie and tend to finish most days with a glug of red wine. You could set your watch against my satisfying dump regime.

The bestest sandwich shop in the actual world. Fact.

I’ll need to try that. ‘Piece’ in finnieston is my fave.