影片
更多
2007-08-19
17 浏览
W's Entrecôte le steak house francaisThe amazingly low caliber service The French St-Germain version of the Chinese Great Wall Bordeaux.The rain drops were dripping over my shoulder as I entered the 6th floor of Holiday Inn Express @ the W's Entrecôte le steak house francais to celebrate my friend’s birthday. Overwhelmed by the “wall of frame”at the entrance, W’s Entrecôte was “The Tatley’s Restaurant of the Year”for nine consecutive times. Full of expectations for an exquisite French dining exp
The amazingly low caliber service
The French St-Germain version of the Chinese Great Wall Bordeaux.
The rain drops were dripping over my shoulder as I entered the 6th floor of Holiday Inn Express @ the W's Entrecôte le steak house francais to celebrate my friend’s birthday. Overwhelmed by the “wall of frame”at the entrance, W’s Entrecôte was “The Tatley’s Restaurant of the Year”for nine consecutive times. Full of expectations for an exquisite French dining experience, my taste buds were aiming for a ride.
After checking in at the counter for reservation (and yes, she have asked us for our reservation name, time, phone number and number of guests), the waitress still led us to the wrong table. I quickly became agitated, knowing it was pretty obvious how she didn’t even pay attention to the number of guests on our reservation.
Luckily, it was a small restaurant, so I simply waltz in through the dinning hall on its one inch shiny tile mosaic floor to sit with my friends on a school style open back wood chair. With all due respect for the designer, he did a great job in mimicking the outdoor balcony café style environment; but the un-cushioned chair is so uncomfortable that I became more tired by sitting on it a few hours without lower back support.
As I glance through the 4 page menu, I was really surprise how limited choices were available; 2 set dinner, 4 selections of appetizers, 2 types of soups, 5-6 choices of main course (interestingly, there was about 10 types of desserts?!?!). Despite of the few choices available, it took us at least half an hour to draw a conclusion on what to order. Within this lengthy debate of what to eat, the waiters simply ignore all our needs, including the stile tasting tap water and the complementary bread basket (in the end, I had to wave my hand like mad man to just get them to fill up my glass).
I decided to share with my friend on ordering both set dinners to taste the variety; set dinner A: foie-en-gras (aka pan fried goose liver), lobster bisque, salmon steak, soft chocolate cake (278$), set dinner B: sea food platter, rib eye steak, desert platter (318$). We also ordered a four hundred dollar bottle French Bordeaux (St-Germain / 01) to start.
After showing us the wine, the waiter only cuts off the tip of the aluminum wrapping and de-crocks on the table. The wine was then poured into our 3 inch, un-bowl, short wine glass for trial (for pete sake, is a classy restaurant, at least show me the proper method to de-crock a wine and the decency to use the proper wine glass for a Bordeaux). As I swirl the wine for a bit, all I can smell is a foul sting of a spiciness, badly aged, vinegar with over tannin content. The first sip was a killer, the tannin and the acid just burnt through my mouth, simply reminding all of us nothing but the 30RMB bottle of China Great Wall red wine.
It doesn’t take a professional wine taster to know this bottle was spoiled. After decanted for twenty minutes, we argued with the manager and the “in-house wine taster”on the situation. They gave me an impression that think I don’t know my wines and refuse to admit it was spoiled; in fact, they were even trying to convince me that this was an aged Bordeaux so its got an elevated alcohol content (yeah right, five to six year French Bordeaux should be at its prime and it reads on the label 14% alcohol).
Extremely unsatisfied with the wine, the appetizers weren’t much better either. The foie-en-gras was just covered in a thick layer of spiced salty black sauce that took over all the flavors. Then came the lobster soup which simply doesn’t taste like lobster and its lack of the flavors renders this bisque to be nothing but salt water in a bowl. Lastly, the sea food platter (four oysters and three sea snails), I am impressed on the freshness of the oysters but really disappointed on this grade C mal-nourish skinny size (yes, even small Kumamoto oysters can be small but fat).
The main courses weren’t anything spectacular either; the steaks were as thin as a normal breakfast steak (only measuring up to 8mm-1cm thick). As it was cut, you can see how fibrous and how rigid it was, for sure is not even good enough for a grade B rib eye.
The pan fried then grill stamped salmon fillet (it was simply grilled salmon on the menu) was simply a disaster as the chief tries to use the concept of煎封馬友(Cantonese lightly powder coated pan fried fish with soy sauces on top) to lock the juice within the meat; but his lack of heat control and the low quality thin cut fillet resulted in a rough textured charcoal flavored ultra-dried fish pieces (normally, when fish was overcook, the mean looses cohesion). Not mentioning how over boiled and tasteless the side-dish vegetables are, I wouldn’t recommend this course to anyone.
As the service, wine, appetizer and the main course completely ruined my mood for the evening, the hot chocolate cake was the only course I was satisfied with. Despite the chocolate melt within the cake was too sweet, I still felt the pastry chief did a decent job to the evening’s closing.
In the end, before tips and 10% charge, I paid about 390 dollars. Frankly, I felt the quality of food was so low that it was compatible to any 150 dollar set dinner in any local steak house joints. Needless to mention how unsatisfied I was with the lack of service and how spoiled the wine really was (I drank only 1 sip from the entire bottle). I felt that I only got about 95 dollar worth of food for the total amount I have paid.
***** T*****
张贴