I'm not too sure how this restaurant has over 4 stars but this was my experience last night...
My wife and I had a dinner reservation for our anniversary at 6pm. Due to a car show going on on Brand Blvd directly across from the restaurant, we timed our arrival a bit earlier to leave time for parking and to walk over to the restaurant. Therefore, we arrived a little earlier than our reservation, at 5:35pm. We decided to walk in to see if maybe the hostess could seat us a bit earlier. We noticed there was only one table occupied and thought it wouldn't be an issue. As soon as we walked in, the hostess didn't greet us. She just asked if we had a reservation, to which we told her it was at 6pm, acknowledging we were early. She said she couldn't seat us and we'd have to come back at a time closer to 6. My wife and I didn't argue with her. We just said ok and that we'd return a bit later.
When we came back at 6, the same hostess acted like she hadn't seen us less than a half an hour ago. So again we told her we had a reservation at 6pm and she proceeded to finally seat us. Only the same table that was occupied at the time we originally entered the restaurant was there. No one else was dining at the establishment.
After we sat, our drink order was taken immediately, followed by our dinner order a few minutes later. Since there's a promotion on their Yelp page stating that you get a "free appetizer with dinner", I asked our waiter about it. He said the "free appetizer" is the complimentary bread they provide with the 3 different butters. Mind you, this item is NOT listed on the appetizer menu. On Yelp, it's listed as "complimentary". Again, we didn't say anything, we just ordered the jumbo shrimp appetizer to share and our dinner orders which were the lamb and Chilean sea bass.
Again, the jumbo shrimp appetizer came out fairly quickly and was pretty tasty. There were 6 pieces of jumbo shrimp piled on a bed of guacamole. This didn't seem like a French dish to me, since they're advertising that it's a "French" restaurant, but nevertheless, the appetizer was good. After we were done, they cleaned up our table and offered to bring us new silverware and dishes for our dinner. This was much appreciated.
So now we wait for dinner. And man, did we wait. At this point, the original table of patrons had left and a new table of 2 had arrived. So including us, only another table of 2 there. After about 20 minutes of waiting for our dinner, the hostess, who we later find out is the manager, comes over to our table to express that something was going on in the kitchen and our dinner would be delayed about 10 minutes. She said sorry a few times and made sure to note that it wasn't her staff's fault. We said it was fine, we weren't in a rush and could wait it out.
Another 20 minutes later, our dinner arrived. The presentation was nice but the flavors were subpar. Regardless, we ate what we could. I couldn't finish my lamb dish because everything had grated pistachio sprinkled all over it. It was a bit too much and not to my liking. My wife's sea bass was alright. There was a piece of sea bass and a couple of green beans on her dish. Not too much to see there either.
While we were eating our dinner, I asked for our check because we were pretty much ready to go. The atmosphere was great but the service and food weren't.
When the bill arrived, I saw we were charged for the "complimentary bread" after all and weren't offered any compensation for anything while we waited for our dinner due to the kitchen mishap. No one ever said a simple "Happy Anniversary". Now don't get me wrong, I typically speak up about issues like this but I was just frustrated with our overall experience here and was just ready to pay and book it. I wouldn't recommend this restaurant to anyone I know and certainly won't be coming back here. read more