I went to Bar Cecil to celebrate a double birthday with my bestie last night. First off, you have…read moreto make reservations two weeks in advance online-- not more, not less. They don't pick up the phone at all, so don't bother calling. They do, however, take walk-ins if you're willing to wait. All part of the optics and over hype. We brought our own bottle of Veuve and they were great about putting it on ice for us and opened it for us so we could sip while we waited for a table. All excellent, but it came at a $49 corkage fee before tip! Geez! When we were seated, the host made a big deal about our birthdays gave us BOTH handwritten birthday cards and told the waiter to take good care of us because we were celebrating a double birthday and seated us at a center spot at the bar, which we loved! A hit! Overall, the service and ALL the staff were great, but to be honest. some of the food was hit and miss. The menu is somewhat underwhelming. They seem to be mostly known for their deviled eggs. Okay, I love a deviled egg, but so what? Every time I'd ask anyone about Bar Cecil, they'd say, "Well. their deviled eggs are good." We should have known then, but we wanted to see for ourselves what the hype was about. It's French because they serve, escargot, steak frites, and caviar service, but it's really a bunch of different food items that aren't really cohesive -- deviled eggs with dates and sage, Thai curry muscles, smoke pork chop, cacio e pepe. WTF? The best things we had were the oysters, grilled artichokes and the Bernaise sauce on the steak frites was spot on, but the steak itself was chewy and difficult to cut with a steak knife -- a miss that could have been a hit. Not worth the price point. We also ordered the Thai curry muscles, which were really good until the last six muscles, which were sandy and gritty. Again another miss, that could have been a hit. The waiter did take them off the bill, but then at the very end of our "double birthday celebration," the waiter asked, "Are you ready for desert?" My friend responded, "Well, I'm pretty full. Is it complimentary?" And he responded, "It is, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise." So we both ordered desert -- I ordered a "special" desert that wasn't on the menu. A cookie ice cream thing and she ordered the pavlova. Mine was okay. She loved hers. Again it could have been a massive hit-- instead it was a massive miss! We were charged $27 for our two "complimentary" deserts before tax and tip! Oh well, we didn't haggle and paid our bill, but only tipped 20%. We would have tipped an extra $50-$100 because it was our birthdays and we would have tipped all the comped amounts to the wait staff, figuring we would have paid those costs plus tax and tip on top of that. Too bad. Overall, I wouldn't wait in long lines any time soon for this experience. It's was just a meh for us.