Bruce H.
Yelp
We had not been to La Gare for a while, but a friend who was flying in from Texas had fond memories of the place, so we agreed to meet there for dinner.
What a mistake.
It was Memorial Day, so the restaurant was packed. But the food and the staff's lack of coordination truly ruined the experience.
So there were three of us for dinner. My wife, me and our friend. One good thing about Mondays at La Gare is that there is no corkage fee. That helped, but didn't make up for the rest of the experience.
Our friend ordered the escargot appetizer followed by a veal dish, and my wife and I both ordered one of the 'specialties,' the beef Wellington. We both ordered it medium rare (this will be important later)
Now, each meal comes with soup (that day's soup was mushroom) and salad. The appetizer was supposed to come out first, followed by the soup, the salad, and the main course.
So, after waiting about twenty minutes for the appetizer, we asked our very busy waiter where it was. He replied it would be right out. It wasn't.
When he finally brought it out after almost half an hour, he explained that he thought another waiter had grabbed his escargot incorrectly, and he had to put the order in again. Remember what I said in the title about poor management? Well, it got worse from there.
So the soup came out, which was very tasty. But then the salad followed. The salad was watered down. I mean, like water was dripping off the lettuce. It was as though they had either washed the lettuce and then forgotten to spin the water out of it, or the dressing was so diluted as to drench the salad with water. In any case, it was limp and virtually tasteless. At this point, I was less than impressed, because this was by no means a cheap meal (the end bill with tip was over $230 for the three of us, and remember we brought our own wine).
So then, the main course came out. My wife's Wellington was medium-rare. Mine was well done. No pink in the meat at all. When I was finally able to flag down our waiter, I sent it back, showing him that it was not even close to medium-rare, and he agreed. He apologized, said he'd get the replacement right out.
Here's what I think happened, and this goes back to poor back-of-the-house management. After the appetizer fiasco, it happened again. Someone snagged one of our medium-rare Wellingtons and gave it to someone who had ordered theirs well done. I got theirs, and they got mine. This is completely unacceptable in a quality restaurant.
The next problem was that it took about fifteen minutes for my replacement to come out (it should have been pushed to the front since it was a send-back for a table that had already been served). By that time, my two companions had finished their meal, so I just had the waiter box it up for me.
There is no excuse for this kind of inept back-of-house management, unless the owners are just resting on their reputation and figure that no matter how bad the experience is, people will come back just because of the restaurant's former reputation.
Not in my case, because there's no way I'll ever set foot in that restaurant again. I almost gave it a one-star rating, but our waiter, although hobbled by his inept back-of-house, was the bright spot of the evening. Kudos to him, and a pox on everyone else involved.
