Le District

I work in the same complex as the new “French Eataly”, so it was only proper that I would go on opening day a couple of months back. The Battery Park area has a lot of great restaurants now, including Mighty Quinn’s, Blue Ribbon Sushi, Northern Tiger, Dig Inn, Blue Ribbon Sushi and more (great for lunch, although it gets crazy packed during lunch hours because everyone goes to the food court area to eat). Le District is owned by the Financier people but their prices aren’t the same and their service is drastically different, too. While Financier runs very smoothly, there hasn’t been a lot of training for the people that work the counter at Le District and people are very snippy with customers and with their coworkers.

The day I went, we focused on the cookie display:

They sell the cookies by the 1/4 pound and offer you a free gift tin if you purchase 1/2 pound or more. I can’t recall how much it comes out to per cookie, but it was definitely expensive. My friend, Stephane, ended up buying 5-6 cookies and I thought they it would cost $12 at most but I think his total came out to over $25!

Le District also sells cute French candies:

And lots of different decorative metal tins thaty ou can purchase to fill with candy or other knicknacks. They also sell the cookies in smaller plastic bags:

Le District is split into multiple areas, including the cookies area, a crepe bar, coffee bar, to go area, and a sit down restaurant. They also sell desserts next to the crepe area:

I think the plan is to have an area where they can sell groceries, similar to Eataly, but when I visited on opening day, they were still under construction.

The coffee is slightly cheaper at Le District than Financier, but you have to put up with a little bit of a wait because the staff isn’t that well trained yet. However, it might be worth it because my coworkers that go everyday say the coffee at Le District is slightly better than Financier.