This was unfortunately one of the most disappointing restaurant experiences I have ever had. It has been years since I have written a Yelp review, but our experience at Les Vaseuses was so frustrating it felt like the only way to get past the awful feeling we've had since we left a few hours ago. The only reason I even gave it one star is because there was no option for zero!!! This is due to a particularly unfortunate combination of mediocre food (what little food actually made it to our table) and staggeringly bad service.
Let me preface this by saying that our enthusiasm over food is one of the main reasons my husband and I love to travel. Les Valseuses is below the apartment we rented on airbnb, and our hosts recommended it as they are friends with the owner. After reading a promising-sounding review on Ex-Berliner, we decided to give it a try.
The storefront is no frills, but has a reasonably pleasant ambience. The surly girl who greeted us at the door spoke some French and so do I, which was a plus as I don't speak German. She seated us, then came back a little while later to take our orders.
We decided to start with a trio of olive tapenades along with a couple of glasses of Viognier. For my main course I ordered the steak and frites, and my husband ordered the poached salmon with chicory and pureed carrots. We had to wait for our wine to arrive, and there was sand (!?) in the wine. There was also no water at the table. We asked our server for a couple of glasses of water, and ten minutes later she delivered a large, fancy bottle of water (which ended up costing us 4 Euros) without asking whether this was something we were okay with. We then had another long wait, during which time we ran out of wine. By the time our tapenade finally arrived we were famished.
The tapenade trio looked quite nice - a selection of green olive, kalamata, and sun-dried tomato tapenades. The sun-dried tomato was quite tasty, while the green and the kalamata were both fairly flavourless. This was served rather unceremoniously with a basket containing two small store-bought buns that couldn't possibly hold the amount of tapenade they were accompanying, even by lathering it on thick. The bread itself left much to be desired--I was a little surprised to find that they were the exact same buns that we got with the curry dogs we bought off a street cart in Mitte earlier that same day. Hot dog buns were fine for that experience, but I would have expected something more from a French Bistro.
What happened after that was bizarre. I wish I could comment on the rest of the food, but it never arrived. Our server quite literally never came back to take our empty appetizer plate, to offer us more bread, or to refill our wine glasses. We watched as the couple who had been seated next to us half an our after we arrived finished their main courses, and still our server never materialized and our food never arrived. We were sitting directly next to where the chefs were preparing the food, but no one seemed to notice or care.
At one point during this experience, my husband got up and stopped another server to ask what had happened to our server and our main courses. She told him that she would check. Soon after, our server finally reappeared and headed straight for the bar without so much as a glance in our direction, where she proceeded to chat with the bartender for 5 or 10 minutes before disappearing into the back again--without a single word to us or glance in our direction. Immensely frustrating.
After a full hour had passed without our mains being delivered or any explanation or reassurance that they were indeed ever coming, we finally decided to leave. In years of restaurant eating I have never done this! But it was getting truly ridiculous and the only thing we could think to do was leave so that we could finally get something to eat elsewhere. My husband went into the next room, told our server we were leaving, and asked for the bill. She made no comment, but shortly after the second server came over with the bill and no further comment.
We were charged in full for the water, wine, and tapenade, and offered no apology or explanation. When we asked the second server what had happened, she said she didn't know, but asked if the reason was important to us. Maybe our server had become too busy, she said, or perhaps even the kitchen had forgotten. "Why does this matter to you?" seemed to be her general attitude. The chefs glanced over a few times during this exchange, but no one offered an apology or explanation. We were simply treated with snobbish indifference.
Honestly, I know Berlin restaurants are not known for good service but this was incredible. You can't run a restaurant with no service whatsoever. There are other French Bistros in Berlin - I wouldn't waste my time on this one. Boo! read more
