On August 25th, my wife and I decided to try a new restaurant for our date night. We typically go to the same restaurants, and felt like we wanted something new.
There is a new Rouge Boeuf that opened near our house a couple months ago, and it is usually pretty packed ( typical sign of a good restaurant, lots of people want to go ). One of the reasons we opted for this restaurant, was the “bring your own wine”. We typically have some decent bottles of wine at home, and getting wine at restaurants around here, are always at a 200% markup ( meaning, a 20$ of wine is sold for 40$, a 30$ bottle, 60$, etc ).
Our opinion going in was that this was a pretty upscale place, with good steak and seafood from people we know who had eaten there in the past. Images from the web, and their site ( always makes things nicer than they really are ) looked nice. In fact, this is what we saw.
Now onto our actual experience.
Atmosphere:
The restaurant isn’t as “chic” as the pictures look. The menu’s are written on the walls in chalk, the tables are really close together, maybe 24″ ( 60 cm ) between the tables. The ambiance is very loud, you can’t really hear your own conversation, as everyone else is screaming to hear each other, so you end up hearing their conversations louder than your own.
The table clothes, are just a piece of paper, and the napkins are paper. For those of you you don’t get my reference, see my opinion about napkins being an indicator for restaurants. Lets move onto the food quality
The Food:
The food wasn’t bad, not was it very good. I had a cream of vegetable soup as an entree, the Bison steak (about 5 ounces) with steamed vegetables and french fries. My wife had the same soup, the filet mignon steak ( 5 ounces ) steamed vegetables and a baked potato (all dressed).
The soup, was supposed to be a cream of vegetable, but there was no creaminess to it, it tasted and looked like pureed vegetables. It also lacked flavour, it had no finish.
The bison, was pretty good. The steak was not so. First is was undercooked for her preference, it was also not very tender ( which i expect from a filet mignon ).
The vegetables were good, they were seasonal ( squash, zucchini and carrots ), steamed until well done, but had no seasoning. They tasted good, but it was just the flavour of the vegetables.
The fries were horrendous. They tasted like soggy McCain French fries that were undercooked, and not seasoned at all. As for the baked potato, the “all dressed” meant a slice, yes you read that correctly, a whole slice, not cut up, of bacon inside the potato, and a layer of melted ( into 1 solid chunk ) of cheese on the top. The potato wasn’t double baked, has no butter mixed in, no chives, garlic or any other seasoning, just the potato, a slice of bacon and some cheese on top.
needless to say we did not stick around for dessert at the restaurant ( at 8$ per dessert, and they didn’t even look good ).
The Service:
Our waitress was nice, and took the time to explain how the menu’s worked ( choose an entree, a main course, the side dishes and the “sauces” ). She was kind enough to offer extra bread when she saw the meal was taking a long time to come out from the kitchen ( but never actually brought us the extra bread ). The whole duration of the meal, things were slow. The only we did not have to wait for was water refills, as someone was constantly walking around with a water pitcher.
The Prices:
The meals were 27$ and 32$ ( 29 for the filet mignon and an extra 3 for the “all dressed” baked potato ) each. The entrees were included in the price. The price, for what we got, was steep, especially if i compare the service and quality/quantity of food we can get at other similarly priced restaurants around. For 32$, you can go into Baton Rouge, and get a 6 ounce filet mignon, with a side of baked potato with your entree ( soup or salad ), and the quality of the food at Baton Rouge is MUCH MUCH better.
Summary:
To summarize, we won’t be going back given the choice. For the same price ( minus having to pay double for a bottle of wine ) we will be choosing Baton Rouge when we want a steak.
Food: 6/10
Service: 7/10
Price: 5/10
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