Needham's Petit Robert Bistro bears no comparison to the Petit Robert in Kenmore Square. The setting is drab, the food preparation is dreary, and the service is poor. \r
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We ate there early in the evening and found the restaurant empty of diners but filled with staff hanging around and chatting with each other. We waited several minutes for attention from them and then had to interrupt our waitress's launch into a recital of the ""specials"" to ask for a drink. Even though there were two bar tenders and no customers in the bar section, it still took them nearly ten minutes to deliver our drinks -- a neat whisky and a gin martini, nothing fancy. Throughout our meal, as the restaurant half-filled, the wait staff continued to lounge around the room chatting enthusiastically with each other. One of the discussions we overhead centered around their amazement and dismay that the diners were families and middle-aged people, not the young rich people they expected! (Why?? -- it's Needham, not Beacon HIll!)\r
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The dreary food began with a single half-sized loaf of ""french"" bread with a very hard crust, an interior obviously heated by microwave, and a single pat of nearly melted butter in a too-deep dish. Every spoonful of the lobster bisque contained grit. The blue cheese that topped the romaine salad was in lime-sized lumps. A very over-cooked and tasteless mixture of green beans, onions, and carrots accompanied both the vegetarian dish and the steak dish. The ""poivre"" sauce for the steak was about 70 % onions, 25% thin sauce, and 5% poivre and the ""frites"" were tasteless and cold.\r
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I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone.
Cons: Service, Food, Ambience
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