Au Bon Pain

Unfortunately, I had to wait for a sandwich that they weren’t making… Once I asked about it again, they made it right away. I also purchased a small soup, only to find out they had no spoons anywhere. There response was, «Well, we have forks — that’s a miracle.» That is not amusing for an $ 11 lunch.

We lunched here several times during our family’s recent stay at Vandy.
The first time we were served right away and both of us really enjoyed our sandwiches and pastries. There was not a clean table to be found indoors or out so we just picked the least disgusting one and carefully tried to eat off the tray.
The second time we were served by the same people and it was also pretty fast service. Still not a clean table to be had.
The last time, I stood in line for at least 15 minutes waiting to be served. What’s really crazy is there was NO ONE in front of me! It was a different group of people working and I could tell a marked difference in service. However, the food was still excellent and the tables were still dirty. I never once saw anyone wiping down the tables during any of my three visits over the course of three days.
The Turkey and Swiss was my favorite sandwich and I thought their cornbread and chocolate chip cookies were really delicious as well. Too bad they only had the chocolate chip cookies on the first day, but the chocolate chip brownie made a worthy substitute.
It is convenient if you are at Vandy. It’s a little pricey but the food is good, service is spotty at times, and never did we find a clean table.

Nice sit down place for wifi! Had tea and waited out the rain in here. Nice interior for conversation and personal space. Staff was so nice and charming.

I appreciate a great place with plenty of healthy options and treats so satisfy every taste right here on the wonderful Vanderbilt Hospital campus. I’ll be back again & again!

The food was Actually pretty good but the cashier was so rude that I complained to the manager.

I have been here for several weeks I get the smoothies for my mom who is the patient. It’s a hit and miss here I’ve been waited on fast and the next time waited upwards to 8 to 10 minutes to be waited on. one time this lady was walking around I had to ask her I’d she knew how to make a smoothie she said yes and proceeded to make it. i think it’s just a staff shortage
The register people are sometimes nice as well

I’ve had lunch here about a dozen times… maybe more. The VA Hospital is one of my customers and I’ve had projects there that lasted for a couple months straight. The cafeteria there, sadly, is pretty… not…good. So sometimes I’ll just shoot through the back door and cross over to Au Bön Pain. I don’t think anyone would choose it when their friends say, «Where should we meet?» but for a restaurant located smack dab in the middle of a few medical facilities, it’s not bad. I do agree that it’s a bit pricey… if you went there every day it would certainly add up. However, you can eat as healthy as you want to and get in and out pretty quick. If you can manage to wait until the lunch rush is over… the staff is much friendlier. Plus they have a couple little rooms you can use for meetings. It’s all right.

There’s not much to say about this place. It’s not a place that I would seek out but it is conveniently located in Vanderbilt so when you have long appointments it’s there for you. This is definitely a better choice then McDonald’s. It’s very over-​priced and just okay food. A bottle of water was $ 2.50 and the $ 7.00 sandwiches didn’t come with a side. Everything was a la carte. I bought a blueberry muffin and was extremely disappointed in the fact that the top was coated in hard sugar crystals. Customer service is so-​so. The manager who took our order was helpful and pleasant while the girl that gave us our food… not so much. I was also told they had a soup and sandwich special running but were out of the soup so there really wasn’t a special. It is what it is, I guess. There’s nowhere else to go in Vanderbilt to eat so embrace it.

Awful!
My advice bring your own food when visiting the Vanderbilt Health Center.
Service was slow. The person preparing my sandwich was grumpy and unsmiling, spent her time complaining about her job with her colleagues. The sandwich was advertised as a toasted sandwich was a barely warm baguette smeared with an avocado paste that was loaded with vinegar then cold, hard chunks of boiled chicken was laid on top.
Ordinarily I like Au Bön Pan but in this case I would never eat from here again

So this was my second time venturing to Au Bön Pain and it was yet another pleasant experience!
The Good: Lets just start off by saying I like to try new things food wise, but not to kin on foods I can’t pronounce so I mostly study what ingredients come in it. Don’t ask me what I tried my first visit cause I can’t remember but this time I tried the Thai Chicken Peanut Wrap and MANNN IT WAS GOOD AS HELL! Came with chicken, lettuce, peanut oil, cucumbers, wontons, and some type of shredded cheese… of course I was skeptical but just like the first time I went the young lady behind the counter making you food was so polite, and very helpful that she unintentionally talked me into to trying it,…Thanks kind lady cause I would have missed out on an AMAZING EXPERIENCE! all the ingrediants in my wrap tasted so fresh and everything blended together so well when i took my first bite all lingering doubt abandoned my mind and even though that wrap was a pretty big size I devoured it under 5 mins!
Ok enough about the food,.sorry had a fat moment :(I’ve read some reviews that complain about the prices, Now think about it… you pay about $ 5 to $ 6 and some change for a greasy burger with fries that may have been sitting under a heat lamp for God knows how long! When you can get your food made in front of you with FRESH produce that’s very HEALTHY and pay maybe a smidget more??? I’m sorry im not feeling you sonnn! As for the atomosphere, it seems to be very clean and for the times i walked in there i tend to be always greeted so great customer service from the counter to the outstanding kool chick making my food!
The Bad: Only bad thing to me is that there aren’t more chains of this establishment everywhere in nashville but you know what they say «Too much of a Good thing is Bad».that might apply to something else so don’t quote me on that!.. lol
I am a fan and will be back Again and Again and Again…

Food is great in some categories. very very expensive. Coffee is average.

I had another wonderful experience at ABP! I was in need of an early dinner and it didn’t hurt that I had in my hand a coupon worth $ 1 off a $ 5 purchase. I have been watching my calories and so it was important that I didn’t «go over» my allotted number. Fortunately, all of the caloric values can be found when ordering (at least for the pastries, soups and sandwiches! I settled on a half sandwich and small soup.
The portions were perfect and ideal for a dieting meal. I’d highly recommend it. I selected the Turkey and Swiss on a multigrain baguette. There is this lovely honey pecan spread that comes on there which play softly off of the Swiss cheese notes. It is a little on the sweet side – so if you aren’t in the mood for that! I was a little passive and didn’t request it to be removed.
As a soup I selected, after much tasting, the wild mushroom and wheatberries soup. It is a vegan and soy-​free option that just spoke to me. Together they were the perfect 496 calorie combination for dinner!

My breakfast sandwich on a skinny bagel was fresh, hot and delicious! I also got soup a couple of weeks ago and it was incredibly good. Great smiles, great service.

I want to be clear that I was never a fan of a McDonalds being at the center of a world-​renowned medical center… seriously VUMC, what was that about? I’m researching the effects of obesity on kidney disease at the time, so I always found McD’s presence a little ironic.
ABP is not necessarily better than a McD’s, but the difference is you have better options available to you. A full salad bar, a fantastic soup bar, sandwiches both hot and cold, and the calorie counts on everything. But there are things there for anyone not counting calories, or if you really want fast food people, walk over to the children’s hospital, where they have Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. Or the cafeteria, where there’s a grill station with plenty of McD-​like offerings.
ABP can be your best friend or worst enemy. It can get pricey quickly for a lunch, and at prime hours its packed. But again, you have choices. A small soup and a baguette is $ 5. They have snack offerings like cheese and grapes or hummus and veggies for about $ 3.99. Sandwiches can be purchased premade or made to your specifications. They also have great coffee.
I go here for lunch on days I forget my own. It really is a place to test your willpower, because you can find yourself with an expensive and heavy lunch in no time. But the people who work here are great, and the selection of food is decent.

As Megan C. rightly pointed out, its unfair to judge Au Bön Pain on the political struggle surrounding the departure of the much beloved McDonald’s.
The Better Half was recently «enjoying» a brief stay at VUH so I got to stop in a few times.
The things it definitely has going for it is the «ready to go» meals. In the Vandy environment, if you are a patient, a visitor or an employee you want to be in and out as fast as you possibly can. There is a plethora of these items waiting of you.
Everything I had was reasonably fresh and definitely warm. I felt the price was fairly decent, and I spent almost no time in line any of the times that I went there.
There is however a «Made to order» sandwich line in the back. I did not take advantage of this in any of my visits so I cannot speak to how good or quickly they deliver, or how the prices of those sandwiches are.
If you are in VUH, it’s the fastest meal you can get, otherwise you have to truck over to Children’s for the food court there. If you aren’t familiar with the place, this can be a confusing journey to say the least making Au Bön Pain a good choice.

Ok Unilocalers, I’m very disappointed in you.
That’s right, I’m calling you out. In a review about a business that I think you’ve been treating unfairly. I notice that ABP has gotten abysmal ratings, and I think that it’s a little undeserved. You can’t give them one star because you wish you could order off of the McD’s dollar menu instead of getting a pastry. That’s a gripe about Vanderbilt’s decision to put in ABP and take out McDonald’s, and does not belong in a review of the restaurant. :end soapbox:
ABP is a nice, newly renovated space that serves some tasty food. Yes, their sandwiches can be a little pricey, but I think that they are more unique than say, a Subway sandwich, and I’ve so far been impressed with their freshness and quality. If you want a Subway sandwich, there’s a Subway within a five minute walk. In two different directions. They’ve got a variety of healthy and not-​so-​healthy snacks, a nice coffee-​bar, including espresso beverages, and I really enjoy that they provide the nutritional information so that you can make an informed decision about what you’re purchasing. I’ve also had really pleasant interactions with the employees as I’m checking out my food.

I hate this place. I work at Vanderbilt, so have had the opportunity to go here a few times — and am very disappointed. The McDonald’s they had before, though greasy and unhealthy, was perhaps the MOST efficient McDonald’s, nay restaurant, I’d ever been to. This sort of efficiency is necessary at a place like Vanderbilt’s Medical Center, where lunch is always swamped with visitors, doctors, and medical students. Plus, McDonald’s was inexpensive, which is nice if you’re a poor employee, student, or visitor. Au Bön Pain is probably twice as expensive! Also, they shut down the salad and soup bars several hours before they close, which limits the amount of food available later in the evening. What’s the point of being open until midnight if there’s nothing to eat?
So, in list form, here are my gripes about Au Bön Pain:
1. Too expensive for anything large enough to be filling
2. Service takes too long — wait is often 20 – 30 minutes for a sandwich
3. Place is not patient-​friendly — mostly filled with doctors and students at lunch. Don’t know if this is the price, or what.
4. Amount of food they have available diminishes rapidly after about 8 or 9 pm. They stop serving new soup, take down salad bar, etc. At McDonald’s, you could get anything on the menu up until they closed!
5. NO DOLLAR MENU
Au Bön Pain in my arse.

Now here’s a story/
of a place in Vandy/​
where there was cheap burgers and fries and an M/​
sure it was greasy/​
and all too fatty/​
but with MickyDs at work no one gave a (darn).
Now here’s a story/​
of some admins at Vandy/​
who decided that popular place had to go/​
it looked bad/​
and a little scary/​
that such unhealthy place could be in a hospital.
So they looked around and found some friendly guys/​
who said they had a healthy sandwich shop/​
they would sell discounted soups and salads and pastries/​
so Vandy said they wouldn’t cost a lot/​
That’s the way we got Au bon Pain
(Au Bön Pain… Oh what a drain…)
As people have mentioned, it looks nice and is a decent place to read papers, but we have good sandwich and coffee joints all around Vanderbilt. While the sandwiches are delicious, they are expensive as heck, around $ 5 – 6 at half the size of Subway sandwiches, without even chips or bread like at Panera (Vandy said they struck a deal to make it more affordable but… no). In fact, a Subway is in the Children’s Hospital, a Panera is a block away, and there are additional soups, salads and sandwiches for much cheaper prices in the VUMC cafeteria. Though McDonalds was a embarrassment to the hospital, it served as a cheap, nearby food source for us poor students and faculty at VUMC. Au Bön Pain really doesn’t have any of those benefits.

It was bound to happen… can’t have a McDonald’s under your hospital and endure a decade’s worth of snarky comments about how you are trying to drum up business for your ICU with their food. So… Vandy caved and we are here with a shiny new Au Bön Pain.
The good news is that the food is fresh, they make most things on the spot, they have a better salad bar than the hospital cafeteria and they have made normal human 2 – 3 bite cupcakes and other snacks that have only 300 – 400 calories (not great, but better for you than a Panera cinnamon roll the size of your head).
The bad news is that they are too expensive. Any human sized sandwich is going to set you back $ 7 – 8 which isn’t THAT bad, but if you have to buy lunch every day because you have a family member in the hospital it’s sort of a double whammy. They have a ‘value’ coffee which is basically a Dixie cup of coffee, but those creative types can add a zillion creamers and pretend they got a latte I suppose.
Short story… if you are going to drop 12 bucks for lunch, get some service and better food anywhere else on 21^st Ave.

The infamously greasy McDonald’s attached to the Vanderbilt hospital has officially been replaced via French invasion, named Au Bön Pain. While I will not argue that ABP is a much more healthy alternative to Mickey D’s, the notion that it is in the same price range as McD’s is absolutely ridiculous. ABP’s price range is comparable to Panera or Bread & Company and offers a similar range of food items.
The renovation is beautiful. Colorful couches, large glass windows, and brightly painted walls make ABP a fun and relaxing space to grab a bite to eat, study, or hold a meeting. In fact, there’s even a small private meeting room to the right of the main entrance for maybe a business lunch or mini-​party.
I am familiar with the Au Bön Pains that can be found everywhere in Boston, so I was excited when I heard they were opening a branch in Nashville. It has sort of a cafeteria style in that you grab what you want and then bring it to one of the checkout registers. I have yet to try the sandwiches, but they look delicious and will definitely be back to try them. They also offer soup, a salad bar, and an assortment of baked goods.
I stopped in today for an afternoon coffee and snack. Unlike its similar competitors like Panera, ABP actually brews a decent cup of Joe! The hazelnut blend is wonderfully aromatic and delicious. And, I love love how they offer SOY MILK at no extra cost to accompany your coffee, for those of us that are lacking the lactase enzyme. I paired my coffee with a delicious cinnamon scone (after staring at the baked goods options for a good 10 minutes, thereby blocking the normal flow of people traffic, since they all looked oh-​so-​scrumptious and it was so hard to decide).
They’re still working out some of the kinks, since they just opened Tuesday. But, give them some time, and this place is going to be a hit! Also, GREAT hours. Currently, they are open 5 AM — midnight on weekdays and 6 AM — 11 PM on weekends. But, I heard they are hoping to upgrade to 24/​7-​hour service eventually. Vandy students are going to overrun this place, for sure.