Le Bistro

Rude hostess/owner at the door, curt and unfriendly waiter, minuscule portions, high prices, poor food quality, noisy table cleaning by hostess in middle of meal, rushed service - it was the worst dinner out we've had in 20 years. It's funny how people always talk about the French being rude but creating great food - in this case we just got the rude. In several trips to France over the past 25 years, we always had good food and never experienced overtly rude treatment as at Le Bistro. A few examples: Asparagus salad: a pair of 6" VERY skinny (1/16") stems, cut into pieces and arranged like a tree, with multi-colored squiggles all around - as though that would make up for the complete lack of an actual salad. Same drill with the hearts of palm "salad", compsed of two perfectly straight columns of about 10 dime-sized disks of hearts of palms, but again, the chef giving vent to his creative side with the squiggles. Digging into the bread now. tiger prawn cocktail: 1 30/35 count shrimp, sliced vertically into 3 pieces and placed atop an average mushroom - but plenty of squiggles to distract you from the rumblings in your stomach. More bread to give some comfort to the wine. Tournedos of Beef - the 3 ounces of chewy filet was well-done on top and rare on the bottom and topped with an awful cheese sauce that clashed horribly with the beef and had to be scraped off to render the meat just palatable. The dessert plate was fine and, although I rarely eat dessert, I gobbled this one down to avoid going next door for some pizza. Finally was able to stop eating bread. In sum, a real disaster and for $150.