The Tasting Room at Le Quartier Français

Wednesday, December 10th, 2014

Reviewed by S K

Not my cup of tea when it comes to food, but I wouldn't knock off more than a star for that as the skill and quality is clearly there. Ambience was decent, though a little loud at times, and they had us staring directly into the sun for the first 15 mins of our meal. The servers even commented on how they were trying to avoid the sun, yet left us there to face the window. The was easy to get over and I generally would not even think of this as an issue had it not been for the rest of the night. Regarding the service: I don't know if it was just us or if things have changed drastically. The day started off well as we showed up early in the day without reservations and they were able to take us in. That was unexpected and quite exciting! From then on it was mostly downhill. We probably had over 5 servers serve our dishes throughout the night, all of whom had little personality and not much to say beyond the descriptions of the dishes (though we did notice other servers offering great service, that was not our experience at all). We were the first in the restaurant at 7pm when they had us come in. All started off very well and good with no problems and servers seemed vigilant in ensuring that we had the correct dishes and that none of the dishes had any of the things that met our few dietary restrictions. By the 5th course they simply stopped saying anything and we always had to ask. Probably because we kept getting different servers. We waited at least half an hour between multiple courses. Sure, if the restaurant is crowded and we are sitting there talking and drinking our wine, that would be fine, but we were not drinking on this particular night, and noticed that nearly half of the restaurant had left before we did (keep in mind we were the firsts ones to arrive). The waiting was beyond unacceptable. Had someone come up to us once and apologized or even acknowledged our wait, it would have been much less of an issue, but nothing. Oh and the kicker is the R600/persons mentioned above would have been great! Now that they're rated among the top restaurants in SA they changed R850/head and R450 for the wine pairings (keeping in mind you can do wine tasting for as little as R25 in the surrounding farms). Hopefully your experience will be different, but I think at least the service and ambience are way overrated. Like I said, personally did not think much of the food but I won't knock them because others seem to like it do much he.