My husband and I were ready to love this place. There are very few upscale restaurants in Pasadena so we couldn't wait to try it.
The experience was mediocre at best, awful at worst. First, they brought bread to the table with pre-wrapped pats of butter. I almost thought I was in a diner, not a restaurant with $25 entrees. The bread tasted store-bought.
I had escargots and my husband had the pate for appetizers. The escargots were cooked well but were in a butter sauce that was as salty as anything I've tasted. If I hadn't been hungry I wouldn't have finished them. My husband only ate half his pate before giving up - it tasted worse than store-bought pate.
Then my goat cheese and mango salad came out. The salad was bland beyond belief. The goat cheese was great, warmed and served on the side. If I had known I would have said "just bring the goat cheese, hold the salad."
For our main courses my husband had the bouillabaisse, which was drenched in salt, and I had the beef noodles. I took one bite, my husband took another, and then I told the waiter to take it away since I wasn't going to eat it. It wasn't bland, it wasn't salty, it was just bad. I'm asian, and I've eaten a lot of cambodian/vietnamese/chinese/ korean food in my time. I'm not sure what the chef was trying to do, but whatever it was didn't work. The waiter offered to get me something else but frankly I was too scared to try another dish. So after I ate half my salad and all the goat cheese, we left.
It's telling that the waiter never once asked us how the food tasted, and the manager who seated us never came out to talk with us after my dish went back to the kitchen. If that's the quality of their food they will shutter their doors before the end of the year.
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