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Back 8 years ago, when the chef of Vivienne’s Bistro was at Peony Kitchen in the Bellevue area, I went there almost every other weekend. I truly loved the food. When I returned to the area recently, it was the first restaurant I wanted to visit again. Unfortunately, I found out the chef had left Peony. Luckily, a friend told me the chef had opened a new restaurant on Mercer Island, so I decided to give it a try.
The first few visits to Vivienne’s were good. I especially enjoyed the squid ink rice and the three spice chicken. The restaurant is very dark inside, even during the daytime, but the food at that point was still satisfying.
The real disappointment came on Lunar New Year, when I invited my family to celebrate there. The experience was shocking. The nine-flavor basil beef was overwhelmingly bitter and excessively oily, topped with a thick, sugary starch sauce that made the flavors even more unbalanced. Shortly after eating it, I felt stomach pain and nausea.
The lamb dish was equally confusing in execution. It started with a hint of lemon that seemed intended to cut through the heaviness of the lamb, but that was completely buried under a thick, sour and spicy sauce reminiscent of a bottled chili-garlic style sauce. The flavors clashed instead of complementing each other. The richness and heaviness of the dishes caused immediate discomfort, and I had to stop the servers from bringing out the remaining food because I simply couldn’t continue eating.
What concerns me more is the broader pattern. I later learned that the chef’s focus has shifted to the Seattle downtown location. From my experience, this Mercer Island location now feels similar to what happened at Peony Kitchen — declining quality, inconsistency, and what feels like a lack of hands-on attention. The food tasted rushed and poorly balanced, as if execution no longer reflects the standards that originally built the restaurant’s reputation.
As someone who has followed the chef from one restaurant to another over the years, this feels less like a one-off bad night and more like a gradual drop in care once attention moves elsewhere. Relying on an established name while the quality declines is deeply disappointing to loyal customers. I truly wanted this place to succeed, but this experience made it hard to trust that the same level of dedication is still there.