Carrie T.
Yelp
My partner and I ate here on a Monday night, and it was the worst fine dining experience of my life.
Things started out well with the hostess and sommelier, but soon started to go badly. My partner had ordered a complicated first course heavy on the molecular gastronomy so it wasn't immediately obvious how to eat it, but the person who brought us the dishes - a different person from the first two we'd seen - did not explain what anything was. My scallops were perfectly seared, but the tomato was underseasoned and weirdly tough and the coriander accompaniment was just flavorless green goop; the dish was disappointing overall.
For a main course, my partner ordered the filet with pickled vegetables and prune chutney. I ordered the lobster with chorizo powder, turf-baked leek, seaweed, and lobster emulsion. There was a bit of a delay in getting them, but we enjoyed the intermezzo, even though we were a little confused as to why we were getting a sorbet before the main course rather than before dessert. Anyway, this time I made a point of asking the server - yet another different person - to show us around our plates. I was surprised that the "chorizo powder" was pale yellow and said so. The server explained in a patronizing way that "a highly scientific process is applied" to turn it to powder. I said, "I understand how it's made, I just can't see how anything involving chorizo wouldn't turn out oily red-orange." And as it turns out, I was right. It was bad. The lobster was perfectly cooked and the baked leek was deliciously crisp-tender, but the chorizo powder literally tasted like nothing. And there was no seaweed - the puree was clearly leek. With no contrast, the dish simply failed.
The sommelier came back to ask how we liked our meals, and first of all, he's not the person who should be asking that; and second of all, when I said, uh, I can't taste any chorizo in the chorizo powder, he got defensive. He, too, explained in a patronizing way about maltodextrin, and I said, yes, I understand, it's just not what the menu led me to expect, and without this element, the dish is unbalanced and boring. He said basically, thanks for your feedback, I'll tell the chef - and then he walked away and we never saw him again. There was no offer to make it right, no offer to take the 8 euro supplement for the lobster off the bill, nothing. My partner's beef was pretty good, but not worth what we paid for it.
We finished our main courses and waited. And waited. We were already disappointed, but thought, the menu looked so amazing, let's give them one more chance with dessert. I wish we hadn't.
The person who had been busing our table offered us dessert menus and returned to take our order. This was a bit confusing; no offense to busing staff, but is this the person we want to be asking for dessert wine recommendations? He did recommend good matches, though, so well done, him. If only the pastry staff were half as competent. My partner got the opera chocolate, which was three components combining chocolate with orange. Two were okay, but one was inedibly tart; when I tasted it, it was so unpleasant, I literally almost spat it out. I ordered the lemon and lime. Again, two components were okay and one was awful. The cheesecake tasted like mass-produced frozen key lime pie and had an unpleasantly gummy texture. I took two small bites, hoping it would get better, and left the rest quivering on the plate.
Then we waited for our check. And waited. We felt like we were being deliberately ignored because we dared to complain. I went to the bathroom, leaving my napkin and purse clearly visible on the table; I might as well have shot off a small firework saying, CHECK, PLEASE. When I returned, my partner was visibly bored, fiddling with his phone. The couple who'd been next to us, who were seated perhaps ten minutes before us, had been gone for more than half an hour. After I literally waved someone down, we finally got our check ten minutes later - even though there were only four occupied tables in the whole restaurant!
Maybe Monday is not the time to go. Most fine dining places are closed Monday nights, so maybe this is the night L'Ecrivain trains up brand new staff. That's the only explanation I can think of for the inconsistent, slow, confused service we received and the boring, pretentious, badly executed food that was far prettier than it was actually tasty.
