Food quality: Passable. If what you seek is standard pub fare with no frills at an inexplicable 20-30% premium then the Etoile Blanche is exactly what you need. The cheeseburger is roughly default, the chips have no soul or satisfaction and the over-frilled Frenchannois plates du jour will impress any locals who haven't left the city in their lifetimes.
Ambiance: A sort of jack-of-all-trades atmosphere that tries to be at once a British drinking public house, an American sports bar and a French brasserie, without really achieving any of the three and without having found an identity of its own. The retro-fake beer plaques on the walls look like they've been purchased in the last three months from a Chinese factory off alibaba dot com
Service: It strikes me as ironic that Lausanne can host one of the world's most eminent and prestigious hospitality schools and yet find itself with a catastrophic dearth of hospitable service in its establishments. Etoile Blanche is no exception, failing to pay attention to entering customers, losing reservations and answering curtly and extremely rudely to the most basic questions. Two qualities a waiter can legitimately have is the surly cockiness of the quality of his kitchen and the arrogant confidence in his mastery of the menu and the wine list. Waiters here possess neither, lapsing into insolence and base tantrums of the most childish kinds.
Etoile Blanche neither deserves your custom nor behaves like it tries to win over your business. Its only real utility derives as a useful landmark for directing your friends to Café St. Pierre across the street, a pleasant, hospitable, tasty, comfortable café that oozes class and atmosphere and is the exact opposite of Etoile Blanche for exactly the same price (or less on occasion).
Summary: Use Etoile Blanche as a landmark to get to Café St. Pierre, which honestly deserves your custom. read more