5.28.12
Anniversary special: Two couples, a low rent owner and a sleaze bag waiter.
We always celebrate our anniversary with our next door neighbors. This year was special, for our friends were celebrating 50 years together. Since it was a monumental anniversary, they picked the restaurant where we would dine.
They chose Côte d'Azur in Naples Park Area.
Although we anticipated a wonderful evening together, our disappointments outweighed the good.
As we were seated, the waiter asked us whose anniversary it was. We wondered how the waiter knew it was our anniversary but our friends replied that they told them when they made our reservation. With that our waiter opened a bottle of wine and implied that it was "on the house". As we reviewed the menu, we were then told the items that were not available tonight: lobster; quail; and the duck breast. He did recommend Dover Sole for $51.00.
We decided on two salads to share amongst the four of us, one a Caesar salad and the other endive. As a retired chef and owner of many restaurants, quality is priority. The Caesar salad had a low grade parmesan cheese and the same cheap tasteless blue cheese on the endive. I would assume at $14.00 per salad, edible cheese would be standard and we wouldn't be told to "split them ourselves" prior to eating.
I am not sure why I was surprised, when the tasteless sea bass arrived minutes after the other meals, the lamb chops were raw, advertised online for $36.00 but dinner check price 42.00, arriving prior to the bass but needing to arrive a bit later because of a round trip back to the kitchen and still raw on the second appearance. The additional two meals were veal tenderloin scaloppini morel mushrooms, but no morel mushrooms on the veal and, again advertised online for $34.00 but dinner check $37.00 per meal, both an overcharge for the quality. Needless to say, we were all very disappointed in the food, price, and service not to mention all the false on line advertising.
The next day our daughter called inquiring how we liked the wine she sent and paid for at the anniversary dinner. Shocked, we were never told that the wine was a gift from our daughter. We were under the impression that the wine was a gift on the house. We have made numerous calls to the restaurant to inquire about the wine, but have received no response.
As they say, live and learn. Next year on their 51st anniversary, we will not return to the French restaurant, nor will we recommend it to our friends looking for a special meal to celebrate a special day. To sum up our experience, we split our salads ourselves, ate cheap cheese, raw lamb, bland bass and overpaid. However, we were very thankful for the wine, but unfortunately thanked the wrong person. read more