Le Petit Chef

Excellent lunch choice. Cesar Salads are great, sandwiches with fresh baguettes and fresh meats is a joy. Plus it is very difficult to pass up those desserts, brownies, cookies, pies…

If you work downtown and are looking for something fresh and delicious, this place is it! They make all of their food fresh every morning and all sandwiches and salads are made to order. Really delicious and flavorful food. My favorite is the California Cobb salad with chicken. Every last bite is satisfying. Very decent prices for the amount of food you get. Definitely my favorite lunch place in Hartford!

This place is the epitome of great local taste and great fresh food. Very friendly staff and amazing expired overall. It is NOT a fine dining place but food tastes so much better. I always have their santa monica and it os amazing! They do not accept credit cards so bring cash. You’ll love it here.

Next to office so we end up going here for lunch very often.
Meat loaf, meat balls and roast potato salads are fantastic. Have heard great things about their Caesar salad and turkey sandwiches as well. Their turkey is real. not deli/​cold cut. My lunch partner raves about it and she ain’t easily pleased!

No idea how I have missed this place. Place is amazing. Everything is so fresh and delicious. Definitely stop by and enjoy

Really awesome place to grab lunch on a weekday! My favorite sandwich is the Santa Monica on the fresh baguette. Each component is really really tasty. They also have a good selection of hot food items and daily specials. The owner is really friendly and wonderful to talk to. He does a great job of keeping customers happy and so many (you can tell) are regulars. Try to get here early or be prepared to wait in line.

This is by far my favorite lunch spot in the downtown Hartford area. Everything is made fresh and taste like a homemade meal. They have different specials for each day of the week, I have had almost all of them and have never been disappointed. They also have a huge list of salads and sandwiches. The sandwiches come on their fresh baked baguettes and all have fresh ingredients. I always go with the cape codder that has fresh roasted turkey, spinach, cheddar cheese and cranberry mayo. They also give you a side with the sandwich. They have a bunch of fresh salads (tomato cucumber, potato…) and also hot sides like roasted veggies and mashed potatoes. Basically everything is under $ 10 and you will never be hungry after eating. The only drawback is that it is cash only.

Le Petit Chef is phenomenal. Best sandwich I’ve had from a shop in a long time. So happy Unilocal pointed me in this direction today! Only sorry I don’t live in the area to frequent it more often.
I had their Plymouth sandwich — turkey, avocado, tomato and mayo on a baguette. The quality of each component really sets this place apart. Their bread is incredible! They bake it themselves — fresh every morning and use only imported European flour. Their commitment to quality delivers amazing results. For the turkey they offer the option of deli meat or roast turkey that again they make themselves fresh each morning. I highly recommend the homemade roast turkey; I tried both and the fresh roasted definitely won out. Turkey was moist, flavorful, and fresh — not at all dry. Yum. It felt like I was eating REAL food. Each piece was delicious. Sandwiches include a side as well. Some side options include mac and cheese, Waldorf salad, macaroni salad, etc.
Prices are very reasonable. Two large sandwiches with sides, two bottled drinks, and a linzer tart came in at $ 19. Downside: cash-​only. The décor could use an update as well. But don’t be put off by the unassuming atmosphere — you are in for a real treat! And personally, when looking for a sandwich shop, I prefer a quality meal at a reasonable price to a fancy ambience 100:1. Will definitely return when next in town!

I got the chicken caeser salad, asked for the dressing on the side, but it came mixed in. The dressing was very garlicy, and a bit warm. Everything was fresh and good, but alas, the salad was overdressed.
The place was clean, cute, welcoming, the people were nice.
I missed the «grab your own delicious daily-​baked bread» basket… LIFE FAIL
I will be back based on all the wonderful reviews.
Also, my cousin recommends this place for days you have a hangover, saying the meatloaf and mac’n’cheese can save your life…

I work downtown and discovered this restaurant when looking for a sandwich for lunch. I get lunch around 1PM so the line isn’t long. The breads are excellent as they make them fresh. I usually get roasted chicken on my sandwiches, it’s very good. My go to sandwich is the Santa Monica which has roasted chicken, sun dried tomatoes, avocado, red onion and light dressing on the bread. The dressings are also home made. Most recently I got the Cape Codder which I got with cranberry mayo and the New Yorker with corned beef because they were out of pastrami. Both were delicious. They have rotating entrees such as Dijon Chicken. I have not tried those as the sandwiches are very good. This is my go to sandwich place downtown. Note that they don’t accept credit card so you’ll need cash.

Places like this are the reason I started using Unilocal in the first place. I never would have found them if it wasn’t for Unilocal.I was in the area for work and decided to try and find a good local spot for lunch. I couldn’t be happier with this find.
I absolutely loved the Mom n’ Pop feel of this place. Between the hand-​written menu on the white-​board and the home cooked meals out on display I was at home. I ordered the Parma sandwich which had thick slices of prosciutto which brought me right back to my family parties back home. They are listed as a French restaurant but I definitely felt some German and Italian inspiration present as well. For my side I had the German style potato salad which was delicious.
Everything else there looked amazing and I wish I could have tried all of it. The prices were all very reasonable. I can’t wait for the next time I have work to do in Hartford, because I’d love to return again soon.

Excellently prepared and fresh ingredients. This place is outstanding. I had chicken cordon bleu, with mac and cheese, and a carrot, apple and raisin salad. All were tasty and fresh.

Great, fresh food and interesting characters who serve you. Only thing keeping me from going 5 stars is the cleanliness of the eating area. Olaf, wash the walls down once in a while!

Thank you Unilocal for steering me to another great place! I Had one of their roast beef sandwiches. Everything was fresh and tasted great! The roasted potatoes for your side are a must! They have a great variety of sandwiches and salads as well as 2 or 3 daily meal specials. As the other reviews say, get there early before noon to avoid the line.

Heaven on earth.
I had the Santa Monica sandwich with fruit salad side for $ 6.82.
Oh me oh my was it good.
And then apple pie. Mama mia.
Everyone’s really nice too.

Great sandwiches. The hot specials are very good. Olaf, the «nice guy at the register» is the owner. He makes everything fresh.
I recommend the fresh roasted chicken, but get there early before it dries out under the heat lamps.
The salads are good but there are only two dressing options. Neither look healthy.
Buy a baguette for later or to gift to someone that loves bread.
As others have stated, this place is cash only.

Having read good reviews I decided to venture on over for an early lunch at work to beat the line.
Ordered a variation on roast beef sandwich with horse radish, sun dried tomatoes, and brie on a baguette. There are choices in fresh bread for your sandwich. The macaroni salad was pretty fresh and good but had some questionable looking carrots here and there. The rest of the sides, potato salad and cole slaw and more, looked relatively fresh and delicious.
The ingredients were spot on quality for the sandwich. The service was friendly, I did not however get the ‘nice old guy’ at the register, he must have been grumpy that day. Seems they also only take cash.
Some small upgrades would help here, particularly the décor is lackluster. Maybe a chalk board for the menu? Take notes from Avert Brasserie nearby.
Overall fantastic food with décor and payment methods a bit behind the times. I will surely be returning to try more in the future!

Worth coming here just to chat with the man working the register! We discussed the beneficial properties of Gerolsteiner water and then bantered for a bit auf Deutsch. Extensive menu, fresh ingredients, TASTY sides. Just noon and already busy. Lots of tempting desserts whose sizes are big enough to share. Eat in or take out. Great lunch option!

For about a year a co-​worker that used to work in downtown Hartford kept raving about a restaurant on a side street whose seemingly non descript exterior hid some of the most delicious food and well made food in Hartford.
Finally — on a rainy Friday I decided to take the plunge and see what all the fuss was about.
I have to say she was 100% correct, this is a total hidden gem of a restaurant in Hartford that I had never heard of and if I did not go searching for it — would have passed it by. What they lack in ambiance (table and chairs for those on their lunch hour looking to grab a quick bite and the food is served in Styrofoam containers) they make up for in the food!
All the food is made from scratch daily (including the salad dressings) by the owner/​chef whose accent seemed to be of German decent. There was a large board of creative sandwiches and I was told that there was a daily rotating hot bar.
I got the roasted chicken salad with tender, juicy chicken breast that I was told was roasted that morning. It was moist and all the vegetables in my salad were crisp and fresh. My co worker had the chicken Cesar salad with freshly made Cesar dressing (with extra garlic). The quality and freshness of the ingredients as well as the time and care that the chef put into each dish came through in the final products I tasted.
They also had a variety of fresh breads and desserts (again made fresh on premises by the owner/​chef)
Parking is not easy to come by (we had to drive around a couple of times to find a spot), but if you work downtown this place should be added to your list of places to try for lunch.
I was surprised that it did not have much of a lunch crowd for a Friday but it might have been the weather or the time we came through (about 1:30pm

I’m a little torn about this place. It isn’t my first choice to go there for lunch, but there are a lot of redeeming facts about this place which I can recommend to others.
The big plusses: Fresh ingredients, including homemade bread, and fresh chicken and homemade dressings. For a Chicken Caesar Salad, it’s terrific.
The sandwiches are also good. They also have hot meals (like Chicken Marsala) which are a nice change.
The negatives: the line can move a little slow, the menu can be limiting at times, limited drink selection.
But overall, a very solid place for lunch downtown. I’d personally pick the Gyro place next door, but you won’t go wrong here.