We were really looking forward to this place. It was my husband's birthday and we drove in from Austin to stay at Peter and Paul and of course heard that the restaurant was excellent.
Off the bat, I want to say that the hotel is so wonderful and we will be back! The restaurant, not so much.
I hate leaving bad reviews and almost never do, but the food wasn't very good and I feel like there's so much incredible food in New Orleans that it's a terrible shame to spend one of our two nights dining here, particularly for a birthday.
The peach and burrata salad didn't have much flavor. The dish could benefit from either a drizzle of balsamic, maybe honey, or at least some fresh basil. It wasn't balanced, just creamy with no acid or salt.
The ceviche was surprisingly also not very flavorful. Once again a notable lack of acid. The shrimp was on the fishy side, and it was served with plantain chips that were not large enough to be used as scoops, though ostensibly they were the vehicle for the ceviche. We fumbled with trying to get the ceviche on the chips until eventually giving up and just using a fork.
We ordered the littleneck clams and added on the rolls so we could mop up the sauce. When the dish arrived, it came with three rolls, and then two minutes later our server brought the rolls we ordered--totally neglecting to mention that it already came with rolls. We had a silly amount of rolls on a small table that we did not end up eating, and on top of all this, the rolls were very dry and not fresh. They were toasted, but you could tell they hadn't been very fresh to begin with.
Our final dish was the snapper, but unfortunately our server forgot to put that order in. She was very nice, but I sensed maybe not that experienced. She put the order in when we were done with everything else, and we realized that it was going to be a while. At this point we honestly just wanted to get out of there. So, I told her to not worry about it after all and that we didn't need the snapper. I communicated this immediately after learning that the order hadn't been put in when we ordered it. We waited around a long time for her return, hoping to request the check when a man emerged from the kitchen and came up to our table. He asked us if we wanted the snapper or not in a very irritated and gruff tone, he was not happy. I told him we did not, and mentioned that our server neglected to put the order in, and he walked off.
I did not appreciate him aggressively marching out to confront us in front of the whole dining room like that, it was weird and unprofessional. He ended up coming back and expressing that there was a miscommunication, but it was inappropriate for him to be confrontational in the first place and if he required clarification, it's the server's job to be the liaison.
In spite of the gorgeous, romantic atmosphere, our experience here was just very weird and stilted. It made me sad that my husband had to have such a strange birthday. Stay at Hotel Peter and Paul and make dinner reservations elsewhere. read more