Le Clusius - Reservar una mesa

This restaurant gave us one of the worst dining experiences of our lives. We waited to be given menus. We waited to put in our drink orders. We waited for our drinks to arrive. We waited to give our meal orders. We waited for our meals to arrive. We waited and waited and waited and waited for the cheque. This was in a practically deserted restaurant (only one other couple in the restaurant & two servers available). And the whole damn meal took 2 hours. With a whole lot of waiting. Super frustrating.Adding to our frustration was the fact that neither of the servers spoke a single word of English. No, we are not one of these families who travel around expecting everyone to speak to us in our mother tongue. In fact, I speak pretty decent French, and we are all accustomed to pointing at things and using sign language to get our messages across. I actually don’t think the language barrier was the main problem here. I think it was a general lack of common sense and intelligence from the people who were serving us. So picture this: we were asked if we wanted English or French menus when we arrived. Naturally, we chose the English menus. Here comes the frustrating part… we put in our orders by pointing at the menu items and me doing a little bit of simultaneous translation. 10 minutes later, the waitress comes back to verify what we wanted because she couldn’t figure out that the “beef” on the English menu was the same thing as the “boeuf” on the French menu - and sure enough she had got the order all wrong. After much chaos and confusion, and me actually resorting to flapping my imaginary wings and clucking loudly to explain that the “chicken” on the English menu was the same as the “poulet” on the French menu, the waitress disappeared again to place our orders with the kitchen. Not surprisingly, we did not get what we ordered. The food that we did get tasted pretty good, but by that point it really didn’t matter. That’s 2 hours of my life that I will never get back. The 1 other couple that was in the restaurant at the same time as us ended up only ordering wine & dessert because they were trying to explain that the husband had a seafood allergy and were not at all confident (even with 2 waitresses + me + the woman at the front desk trying to explain in French and English what an allergy/”allergie” to seafood/fish/”poisson”/”fruits de mer” was) that they were not going to get a meal that would send the poor man into anaphylactic shock.I understand that not everyone speaks English, but good Lord, if you’re running a restaurant in a hotel and provide a menu in English, you need to find people to serve your guests who, even if they don’t speak perfect English, have a basic knowledge of the main items so that they will know what is being ordered (and not look surly and annoyed while serving their guests).

• Útil
• Inútil
• Responder

Bare brick and limestone, white table cloths, grey and red curtains and effective lighting were spoiled by an over busy carpet pattern and canned music. The restaurant had fifteen tables with space for more. When we arrived at 8:00 pm there were only two other diners. Deadly. We had a little root vegetable and beef stock soup as an amuse bouche. Then we waited 45 minutes for our starters.I had nice chopped snails with ratatouille and a pastry gauze, served on rectangular plates with chipped corners and a red line which could have been part of the ceramic, except that I could scrape in off with a finger nail. Then we waited for the main course. After half an hour, one of the customers at the other table fell asleep. No wonder the place is empty. One hour and thirty minutes from arrival, two of our main courses arrived. I had veal with wild rice and asparagus wrapped in bacon, which was very good. Companions had rack of lamb and prawn risotto.We didn’t feel like waiting again for puddings and coffee, so we used the hotel room service instead. Good food, slow service, empty restaurant.

• Útil
• Inútil
• Responder

I normally eat in the town centre but arrived at the hotel late and took the restaurant as the easy option and actually was quite impressed.The atmosphere is a bit lacking - bit canteen like - spread out and not really an intimate space. Service was quite reasonable; even for a solo diner I would not say it was too slow. Food was pretty good. My black pudding in filo pastry was delicious and the pork "iberican style" was also excellent. I accept that the wines could be regarded as pricey but otherwise OK.Would I seek it out from the town centrre. Probably not!

• Útil
• Inútil
• Responder

We ate here on two nights of our stay at hotel D'univers, the food was hot but not as remarkable as made out in their literature. The wine list was very expensive ranging from 35 to 500 euros, apparently they do a house wine but it is not mentioned on the menu or in the wine list. As mentioned in our review of L'Univers hotel, service could be a bit unusual. With the whole of Arras to choose from we would not put Le Clusius near the top of the list.

• Útil
• Inútil
• Responder

Positive: Nicely decorated main restaurant room Negative :Portions too small, no creativity for vegetarians, waiter inexperienced

• Útil
• Inútil
• Responder