My girlfriend and I have been to a lot of restaurants in the two plus years we've been together. We've had great meals and we've had not so great meals. But this place has the sad distinction of having been the worst meal we've ever eaten together.
We were greeted promptly and offered a lovely table next to the fireplace. The place was not too crowded but still had enough to people to lend it a degree of credibility. All the signs pointed to this being a good meal.
One of the specials of the day was 2 french onion soup (soupe a l'oignon for the french readers). Being an extremely cold day and being wimpy tourist, we were very eager to eat our soup. Since the soup was likely to be filling, we decided to split a lunch entree: a 3 cheese pizza.
After about five minutes of waiting, the waiter finally took our order. We weren't concerned at that point. Five minutes is surly an acceptable time given the waiter was busy with other customers.
But what was not acceptable was the thirty plus minute wait for any food. It became so bad, my girlfriend had to ask for bread, which on the plus side was promptly brought. On the downside, the place claimed to offer free wifi. However, even after showing the password to the waiter, he still claimed the wifi worked and the password we had typed was correct. I didn't realize two highly trained tech workers carrying an iPhone and an android could somehow mistake typing a password so badly.
After what seemed a torturous wait, the server finally arrived carrying not our long awaited soups but the pizza. We asked about our soups to which he seemed shocked we had not received them. This would indeed be shocking if perhaps the place had other waiters working the restaurant, but he was the only one. To make matters worse, instead of leaving the pizza with us and then returning with our soups, he actually took the pizza away!
So now we've been 35 minutes without food, presented with our pizza, and had it taken away from us. I now know how our dog feels when he sadly watches us eat dinner. The look in his sad puppy eyes was akin to mine was I watched the pizza go from being thrust in front of me to hastily taken back to the kitchen.
Five minutes later the soup arrived but it was not the rich golden brown cheese topped soup Julia Child would proudly serve, but instead smelled (and tasted) like someone light a cigarette lighter on the cheese to speed the process. Burnt cheese too closely resembles the smell of burnt hair. The top was black, the cheese in the soup cold and not even the slightest bit melted. In all, a terrible version of a french onion soup.
After picking the burnt portions of the cheese off, straining out the sloppy wet clearly low quality imitation cheese from the soup, and slurping up tepid brown soup, the waiter finally brought our pizza. You would think that we'd be given a new pizza since the other one arrived and was taken away over fifteen minutes from the time it last at our table, but alas, the food gods did not shine down on us that day. It was the same pizza - now cold and dry, topped with now hardened cheese and overly cooked crusts from clearly sitting under heat lamps while we ate our "soups" (I use the term soups here in jest).
Worse still than the pizza, was the fries. I'm not sure why fries are put on top of pizza - maybe that's a Quebec thing. I'm not against fries on top of pizza. It's unusual but when in Rome.... However, I highly doubt the Italians would serve anything as limp, soggy, and grease covered as the fries that covered our pizza. I've had fast food fries that tasted better.
In short, the meal was atrocious. There are many terrific eating options in Quebec City. Meals that you want to continue eating long after you're full. Dishes unlike anything you've ever had before. Flavor combinations that would make any chef envy. Fabulous French cooking that would make Ms Child extraordinary happy. This place, however, is not one of them. read more