Quel Disastre!!

I have officially had my first REALLY bad food experience in New York. (Well, not including the time that I got food poisoning from Thai food one week after I moved here -- haven't touched the stuff since!)

Special K was in town and I thought we'd try a cute little French bistro in Hell's Kitchen that I'd heard was merveilleux. I think we both felt a little weird about the place from the moment we sat down, but we decided to press on. Vive la cuisine francaise!

My first observation was "this is a bit grubby, isn't it?" as I glanced around with wrinkled nose at the smudged red & white checkered table cloth (and by the way, isn't THAT really more of an Italian restaurant's theme??) and noticed that the entire restaurant seemed to be coated in a dingy film. But the place was crowded and noisy, so again, we felt the quality of the food MUST be amazing if this many people could overlook smudged table linens and random floating items in the water glasses.

When we sat down, there was a basket containing two rolls already on the table. We noticed one of the servers bringing fresh baskets overflowing with rolls to the other tables, but when we stopped her to ask for fresh bread, s'il vous plait, she looked from each of us to the basket already on the table and said "Zat EEZ fresh -- made today!" Special K and I looked at each other and he clarified, "No, actually, that was already on the table when we sat down -- can we get our own basket?" To which the lovely, customer service-focused server adamantly said, "No, ZAT is all you get!" I think we were both too shocked to even realize that this was at least the fifth cue we'd had that we should GET UP AND LEAVE.

To avoid the sketchy drinking water, we ordered a bottle of wine which another server proceeded to slosh not only into our wine glasses, but all over about half the table. (Ah, now smudged table cloth is beginning to make more sense!)

Our entrees (poulet cordon bleu for me and hanger steak for Special K) were equally disappointing.

You know it's bad when the best things at a french restaurant are the french fries.