French Meadow Bakery Cafe

Food is pretty good. Service is sub par, inattentive. I ordered at the counter service. The seating in that area was dirty. Most of the tables had not been cleaned. The one I sat at was sticky. I saw three employees sitting down for break. I spoke to the manager about how dirty it was. Her mouth said «I’m sorry» but her eyes and attitude said «I don’t really care what you think.» If you can find healthy somewhere else in the airport go there.

I hate to write this because French Meadow is my go-​to for health airport fair. To start, the sever station side of the bar smelled terrible. Like a dirty dish rag. I bartended through college and I know that smell — like rotten beer and sour tomato juice. It’s from standing beer and juices like Clamato and no one cleaning it up. One of the taps was dripping and as a result, the condiments were soaked on the bottom when I went to pick up the salt and pepper. The bar its self was messy and the bartender poured without a jigger or stopper — meaning the liquors sat open and exposed to fruit flies.
I ordered a Cobb salad and it was just ok. The bacon was burned and tasted old.
The kicker was when the second shift bartender showed up and took his gum from his mouth — with his fingers — and threw it in the trash. I was hoping I’d see him immediately wash his hands but alas, he did not.
I’ve been coming here for years as a frequent flyer and I know it can and was better. The disorganization is apparent and is leading to a dirty bar and poor behavior with regard to health code. I probably won’t return.

What all airport food should strive to be. Great healthy choices along with lovely bakery items when your sweet tooth is acting up. Today is my first time here and in the future, when I have the option to fly through MSP, I’ll come here just to get a meal at French Meadow Bakery instead of settling for less at any other airport. Yes, it’s that good!

I’ve picked up salads to go and had really good experience with my food. Always wanted to try the sit down restaurant side. What a waste of time. My coworker and I were grabbing seats at the bar and were told, not asked, but told to move because another customer wanted to charge his phone. The bar area smelled. I got a wet napkin. Half of the sides weren’t available. My sandwich was good but everything else was subpar. Next time I am staying away from the bar and taking my salad to go.

I ordered vegan blueberry corn meal pancakes for breakfast. First of all, the pancakes came with butter on the side. When I asked the waiter if it’s vegan, he said it’s not, even though I had explicitly requested the order to be vegan. He didn’t even apologize and asked me to not use it and keep it on the side. How can I trust them if they keep non vegan stuff on my plate? Anyway, the pancakes weren’t good. Neither soft nor tasty. The service was below par. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only vegan friendly restaurant in Minneapolis airport.

How have I never stumbled across this little gem in MSP before? Delicious breakfast croissant sandwich! It was HUGE! They cook the egg when you order and it came served with hash browns and guacamole. A little more expensive than some of the other airport breakfast options, but so worth it!

Don’t get the pancakes! Pancakes were dried and bland tasting. Coffee was good and the egg on the side was good.

I just had the best airport breakfast of my life! I had 2 egg scrambled with spinach and cheddar cheese, grated hash browns and sourdough toast. The hash browns were cooked to perfection. The sourdough toast was amazing and is a must-​have! My compliments to the chef and staff for running such a gem in an airport and really making my morning with such a great meal!

Great croissant breakfast sandwich with real egg and fresh spinach. One of the best airport breakfasts I’ve ever had!

Disappointed…
Ordered a bowl of chicken and wild rice soup and the oil!!! Yuck.
And… they give you a slice of white bread in a baggie! Really? Seemed like such weak effort to me.
And lastly, watching the glum person working there cut open the bag of soup and dump it in a pan… yuck again…

The only decent food in terminal 1. They have pre made sandwiches that they will warm up before they serve you, pre made soups, a host of pastries and boxed sandwich and salad combos. If you don’t want to be stuck eating Burger King or wok and roll, give this place a try.

Airport food is almost always overpriced and mediocre. French Meadow was a pleasant surprise. There weren’t too many options in the terminal, and after browsing through some of the Unilocal reviews, I decided to take my chances here.
I ordered the Chicken Salad Sandwich. It came on a croissant with plentiful curry chicken filling, and a mixed green side salad. The salad was slightly overdressed, but the entire meal was really not bad for airport food! I’m usually disappointed at how ripped off I am, but here, I was satisfied and full by the end of the meal. It’s still not stellar (especially for the price you pay), but I’d go back any day with limited options and a hungry appetite.

Yummy grilled tuna sandwich! Perfectly grilled on a homemade white bread with spinach. Served with a small tossed salad. FYI, the croissants are perfection too.

Disappointed. Service is poor. Just wanted organic granola and a coffee. Took 25 minutes to receive it. They were not that busy. Good luck trying to flag someone down. Both diners on either side of me ordered a hot meal after me and received their’s way before mine. Granola was good and a lot of it. Thank goodness I had a long layover.

Vegan mecca in the Minneapolis airport!
On a long layover thanks to a delayed flight I think I walked the entire length of the Minneapolis airport. There is one other place I found (can’t remember the name) with a good salad bar that includes quinoa and other options, but French Meadow had the items that got me the most excited.
I had their vegan chili and the Thai soup the last time I came through and thought they were both delicious. This time around I had the tempeh reuben and it was SO GOOD! Best sandwich I’ve had in a long time — and healthy!
They’ve also got a nice selection of vegan-​friendly chocolates at the register and green kombucha to drink.
I will be coming back again any time I am traveling through MN.

This is for a lunch review.
Overpriced for what you get. I’d rather go to the fast food places for lunch instead of here.
The burger was pretty bland and the sides are not your usual burger sides.
The pasta pomadora was like eating spaghetti in the 2^nd grade cafeteria. Same quality and same taste. I was shocked when it came out onto our table that it was spaghetti noodles. What!!?
A 20oz Goose Island IPA $ 7.99

When I’m at the Minneapolis-​St. Paul Airport, I know there’s at least one place that has food that I can eat — French Meadow, on the main concourse for gates A through E. I have a very restrictive diet, mostly aimed at excluding MSG and free glutamate, which is in *everything* that is processed or pre-​marinated. (There is another small French Meadow outlet on the F concourse, but they don’t have a grill and only have sandwich type main dishes.)
I have to be careful what I eat even at French Meadow, because chefs do everything they can to boost the flavor, but those caramelized, free glutamate chemicals are what I’m trying to avoid for my health. I can have a 100% grass-​fed beef burger, but I have them leave off the caramelized onions, the mushrooms, the cheese and of course the bun. So that leaves me with a hamburger salad with no dressing, because both of their balsamic dressings had flavorings added. Hamburger salad is usually a safe bet wherever I go. That, or salmon or some other fish that doesn’t get marinated or breaded before cooking. I was hoping for a small plain white potato or sweet potato but their white potatoes were already made up with spices so I said no thanks.
If you have a special diet, give them a try. I think they’re the best bet in the whole MSP airport for listening to you and giving you food that won’t provoke a reaction, which is just what you *don’t* need while you’re already under the stress of travel.

UPDATE: Dropping from 4 stars to 2 because of how poor the service is. On my first visit the food came out reasonably fast but the waitress never came back to the table after taking the order and bringing me my food. I had to flag another waiter down to get my check. I thought it was a one-​off thing and I just got a bad server. On the most recent visit there were two issues: 1) They put Parmesan cheese on a vegan meal. When I pointed it out to the waiter delivering the food he argued with me and actually started to walk away. He said it was vegan cheese. Finally he agreed to swap it out. 2) On my waitress — I never saw her or anyone else after my food was brought out. I had to get up and get my own water, get up and walk around until I saw some hot sauce, had to get up and get another waitress get my check. It’s not like she was on break. She was coming out on the floor to take orders. Even when she walked by me (twice) she turned her head away and ignored me speaking to her.
So, the good…
Good food. Especially since it is an airport food place. They have a decent selection of Vegan offerings. I got the Vegan Cornmeal Blueberry Pancakes and a side of hash browns (prepared vegan). Both were really good.

If you are looking for organic/​legit food come here. Other than a waitress who acted like a baby in the phase of I-​WONT-​LOOK-​AT-​YOU-​NO-​MATTER-​WHAT-​YOU-​DO phase (eye contact is it that hard!?) based on the pear/​beet salad and smoked turkey/​mozz quesadilla I would venture to say everything on the menu is pretty legit and full of fresh flavor. Other tables had pretty sweet looking spreads. Large portions. Salads robust and generous. Go MSP!

I’ve heard good things about the French Meadow brick and mortar for years so I thought I’d give their satellite airport location a try.
They had a case of dessert bars, mostly riffs on brownies of one sort or another (turtle, cheesecake, rocky road) and some other options like lemon bars. I was having trouble deciding so I went with basic — the flourless chocolate brownie bar. I figured this would be a good bench mark.
The chocolate chunks in the bar are amazing. The actual brownie part is a little gritty and dry. The bars are chilled so maybe they’ve just spent a little too long in the chill chest.
Just from perusing the other cases their sandwiches looked good — while I probably would check out another place next time I’m in the MSP airport, I am still curious about their main location in the city.

I hope this is a fair review since I didn’t have any of their bakery items. I was sorta kinda on a diet and tried real hard to eat healthy. I was famished when I got to the airport and I was looking for Surdyk or Ike’s. Found these places but for some reasons, I passed on Surdyk because I didn’t want wine or sandwiches. Ike’s looked too fancy as well. Then, I saw French Meadow and I made a split second decision and before I knew it I was sitting on one of their tables.
I wanted a cup of soup but none sounded good nor fitting in my diet except the black bean chili. It tasted like plain chili with black beans and corn. Wendy’s was better. It was super ordinary and nothing was special about it from taste to presentation.
I ordered the goat cheese quesadilla and that was crap. I was excited it came on a whole wheat tortilla but I don’t know what goat cheese they used as I didn’t taste it at all. Goat is my happy animal and I was looking forward to the taste of the cheese that came from squeezing those little goat nipples. I wanted that tang, that wet armpit taste that I happen to love. None of that. Instead, I got an orangy sauce with more black bean inside a limp tortilla that I couldn’t pick up. I am kinda done with limp ass soaked quesadilla. Limp is erased from my dictionary.
The service was cold and super slow. I got everything I asked for but about 5 minutes longer each time and I really didn’t get that warm and fuzzy feeling like I would if I had petted a goat at the zoo. It was just really meh for over $ 20 worth of food. The only good thing was I knew I wouldn’t gain any weight eating this crap food.
I ate enough black beans though and I think If it wasn’t for the loud jet engine noise, they would have identified easily who was launching the gas ass-​sault on that plane. Thanks, Jenny A on that one. Lol. No casualty. Everyone on board survived.

*Edit* I wrote my review under the wrong location, so I am re-​posting it for the right one and deleting the old location review!
I had a layover here for about an hour. I Unilocaled «vegan» and this is the first place that pops up!
It is a full sit down restaurant, so it might have been better to eat here if I had longer time. But I wasn’t going to find anything better, so I took my chances. I warned our server that we were in a hurry and to just ring everything in at once and drop the check off when they can.
For actual vegan options, I only saw 3 items marked «vegan,» which I was disappointed to see. Apparently, others can be modified vegan, but I didn’t have time. I’m looking at the website and it looks like they have a ton of vegan options, so maybe they gave me a later night/​bar/​limited selection menu? I have no idea. But anyway, I went for the vegan corn cakes.
It was really really good and I ate it way too fast. It had the corn cakes topped with vegan sausage, spinach, and vegetables. The sausage was really good quality and had a lot of flavor to it! The corn cakes itself was really tasty too. However, the entire thing was very very dry and hard to swallow.
I went for a side of house potatoes which looked like it was marked vegan on the online menu, but when it came out it had cheese melted on top. Bummer. I had my friend eat the pieces with cheese on it and I had the ones on the edges that the cheese missed. Sucks because once again, I didn’t have time to rectify the situation and get a new one.
They have a few beers on drafts and ‘organic’ cocktails. My friend got the organic mojito, and we agreed that the taste was so strong it was unenjoyable. My experiences with ‘organic’ liquor is that it always has a strong and unpleasant taste to it. I say skip it and stick with beer or wine.
The actual dining area is really nice and open. There is a small bar with tv and people were watching the Super Bowl while I was there.
I wish I had more time to rally gloss over the menu, but alas I will have to see for the next time I ever find myself in Minneapolis!