In France one always has high expectations of food. This restaurant and a limited selection of possible menu options was chosen for us by our tour guide and either it was a poor representation of the menu, or a blatant distortion of all that is France. Given there were only three things I enjoyed about my visit and two of them were not food-related (that the tour paid for the meal and the Colombia vs. England football match was amazing), I'm more inclined to the latter.
Very quickly into the experience it felt like it would not go well. If I had been dropped in here not knowing where I was, I might have guessed back in America or maybe Britain. Its black wood looks like a British pub or an American BJ's, complete with a big wall of drinks. The back and forths in French by the waitstaff, the stained glass ceiling and the choice of sports on the TV might possibly give it away, but it still does very little to scream "you are in France" and even though I made it a point to ALWAYS speak French in restaurants when I was here, it felt as awkward as it would be to speak Chinese in a Panda Express and so I just defaulted to English instead.
Literally the only thing I liked out of my three courses was the stewed pork, which was meltingly tender with enough gelatin to hold it and the gravy together, and served with a few sprinkles of some reasonable ratatouille. But two problems nevertheless. One, look at how much food was actually on the plate. After all three courses including someone else giving me their dessert, I was still very hungry and went back to the hotel nearly starved. There are tastefully restrained portions and there are pittances, and to leave a three-course meal hungry is the latter. Two, true French cuisine requires a purpose and use for every ingredient and element, and the gravy is amazingly deep but there is no starch or anything else to sop it up with, not even the bread everyone and their dog makes in France. It makes the genius of the gravy wasted.
Then there were the other two courses. We had to choose an appetizer between vegetable platter and shrimp cocktail. I mean, a shrimp cocktail in a French restaurant, IN FRANCE? Why? It was entirely bland and devoid of character, and looked very unappetizing at that. I briefly considered not even eating it. If I could have made an honest choice between appetizers, it would have been neither.
The desserts look nice on the surface, a fruit cake that has an initial creamy texture and a pretty-looking cream presentation, but tasting reveals that the texture is skin-deep and the cake has no real depth of flavor, and a crème that could have lifted the cake as a delicate crème anglaise was instead basically just cream poured right from the bottle onto the plate. It was bland (again) and added very little, and the whole dish screamed of wasted potential. I know there is a good dessert possible here, but the soul of it is missing and the execution is lazy.
Which is a good metaphor for the whole experience. The only thing earning this place 2 stars is the pork; everything else feels like a slight to this wonderful country of food. Not just because of what it does wrong, but because of the elements it does get right elsewhere that just feel like the chef went to sleep in the middle of making the recipe and didn't care enough to finish testing. In hindsight, we'd almost have been better off going somewhere else and buying our own meals. To me, most of what was served here is not French food. It is food that was most likely served circa 100 years ago before French food made many inroads into America and elsewhere, and never changed with the times whatsoever but still markets itself as French food. And that is the greatest insult, that people may be used to this as "French food" and never think twice, and especially when the kitchen does get something gloriously right, rave and say this is a legit French restaurant.
I was incredibly relieved to have a free day on the tour where we could avoid the imitations and try some real French food again.
Bref, en français : Peut-être c'était dû à la petite sélection de laquelle notre groupe de tournée a pu choisir, mais la plupart du repas (sauf le porc) était une mauvaise imitation de la cuisine française et l'entrée n'était pas du tout française ! Vraiment, un cocktail de crevettes ? Il n'avait rien de goût ! Le gâteau aux fruits n'était pas bon aussi et sa crème a manqué quelque chose. L'intérieur ressemble un pub breton ou américain, pas France.
Je vous conseille à éviter ce resto à faveur d'une brassiere authentique. Seulement les touristes aimeront cet endroit. read more
