Lynn C.
Yelp
If Yelp had a mandatory headline for every review you make, this one would be called "Sloppy Fine Dining, at its Finest"
The restaurant portrays itself as fine dining, ensuring all the checklists are ticked off: reservations recommended (you may not get seated without one), two pretty hostess at the front, coat check with a host taking off your coat and putting it on for you, nice atmosphere, uniformed servers, cocktail list, wine list, multiple courses, plated meals, fall off your chair pricing. You name a fine-dining detail, they have it checked off the list. But executing? Tare-hee-bluh (imagine it said with a french accent)!
First off, I have discovered, having lived in Paris for two years, that speaking a little bit of French makes things worse rather than better. When you speak to a service person in the relatively little French you know, the service person will speak back to you rapidly because if you clearly speak terrible French full of grammatical error and heavy English accent, it means you can fully comprehend anything that is said by a local in rapid French. Anyway, all this was to say that don't bother speaking French to them. They all speak English, given that a majority of the clientele there are all tourists, and the service will actually be nicer if your English is better than theirs.
So we get there and I tell them in my awesomely poor French that we have a reservation at 7pm. The girl looks at us with that French ostentatious shock like you've done something tare-hee-bluh, "mais il est 18h25!" she tells me in her terribly awesome French. I look at her in my wide-eyed north american confusion....so...? She looks slightly annoyed and tells us to have a seat in the cramp lobby filled with people waiting for a seat. I ask her if we can wait at the bar, and she says "no, it's not possible, there is no more space" with two open seats staring in our face at the bar. I then ask her if it's possible to get a windows seat, she tells us, "not it's not possible...well it's only guaranteed if you take the special menu that is 134 EUR - will you be taking that?" I translated to my bf what had just passed and he shrugs and I decided i'll look at the menu first.
We go and sit down. At 6:55, another hostess saunters over, and asks for our name, clearly with no idea that we made reservations. My boyfriend insists that they didn't understand my awesomely poor French and show them the reservation SMS on the phone. The hostess gives a look like a light bulb lit, then puts on a huge smile and urges us in. We are, of course, not seated by the window, despite that out of the 15 tables by the window, only one table was taken. I suppose if we told the hostess that we will take the 134 EUR one we'd get switched but that really makes the whole thing crude and I thought the whole demand was a bit ridiculous.
The rest of the evening went by without much story. All the protocols for fine dining are followed - the wine list was provided but all the wine was terrible, including the ones we ordered. The 68 EUR menu had your fixed three courses. The food was good, but not amazing, the plating was crude at best when an effort is made. Most of the food was just placed on a giant plate of emptiness (see the fois gras pic). The lobster veloute was nothing special, the veal came with chestnut and bokchoy, while the seabream came with mashed potatoes (shouldn't it have been the other way around)? The creme brulee was slightly charred and leaves bitter burnt flakes in your teeth. The service is surprisingly fast with a good number of smiles - and as soon as a plate is empty, it is immediately swiped off your table without a pause as a server or busboy walks by. I really mean swiped.
I suppose you are paying for the view, not the food or the service. Keep in mind that you are in a dining factory, and that if you wanted a one-star michelin experience, it'd be much more than 70 EUR on weekend night, and you won't walk away disappointed.That is not to say that you can't get better food or experience elsewhere, but it'd be hard to get one directly in face of le tour Eiffel for this price. I'm not lowering it to a two star only because the food was tasty and the ambiance was nice. We were really glad we spent some romantic time in the beautiful restaurant, but both of us agreed we would not be back.
