I'm really unhappy with what happened at this resto. I got a very good table by the sunny window and ordered the eggs Benedict with spinach, mushroom, and asparagus, and an extra English muffin which I always get with eggs Benedict to soak up all that lovely hollandaise and egg yolk.
The waiter was, judging by her accent, French (as in from France) and spoke not a word of English and my French is execrable (but better than her English, I promise), so I was a bit anxious about whether the order would be correct, but it was, with the split muffin in a little ramekin on the side, and the plate looked absolutely beautiful- I'd post a pic but you see many examples of their Benedicts on this site already.
So I proceed to eat, and start with the salad, which was...fine. Not special per se but not offensive either. I move on to the star, that gorgeous eggs Benedict. Yolk is PERFECT. Just a perfectly, perfectly poached egg, so I tear off a bit of my extra English muffin, and hmmm- it's not buttered, but is toasted, and wow it's DENSE, nothing like the light, airy, crispy, BUTTERED thing one expects with an English muffin. Then I take this dense, unbuttered...thing and dip it into my egg yolk and hollandaise slurry, and hmmm again: the hollandaise has no, zero, lemon. Lemon is a NECESSARY aspect of a hollandaise, and my big issue with most resto versions of this French bit of heaven is that they never seem to put enough lemon juice into it. Well, this one had NONE. But the potatoes were so-so and I was hungry so I proceeded to eat the rest of my plate, which had evolved in only a few moments from "oh-my-God this looks delicious" to "this is worse than 'eggs Benedict' you get from iHOP."
But the worst part was that this Benedict had NO ASPARAGUS. None. I signal the waiter and try to say that "there is no asparagus here" and with the assistance of google translate, get my point across, so she ascertains that the asparagus was "of poor quality" and so the chef elected to cut it into small pieces. Okay, it the asparagus was bad, why was I not informed of this when I ordered it, and second-- there was no asparagus in this dish. Asparagus was the most expensive and most precious thing on the plate and would have married beautifully with a COMPETENT hollandaise, but there was none. I finished up and went to pay, and here's another galling aspect: That English muffin was $3 extra and I was not comped one cent for receiving a dish that lacked the star ingredient. Not a penny. So here we are. I still tipped 18% but am very unhappy. read more