Chez Le Chef

12/15/09

Very sweet and personable chef! Great omlette and croissant!

by ASE51986 at Citysearch

Came here with my bf when he was very hungry. Chef Frederic was very sweet and chatted with us for a bit while taking our order. Bf got the farmer's omlette and I got a chocolate croissant. Both were delicious and huge in size. Enjoyed the meal and the service!

08/22/09

Pretty good

by LaCavaStar at Citysearch

My girlfriends and myself were looking to have brunch but the one place we wanted to was an hour wait so we walked a block down and stumbled upon Chez Le chef. we walked in and we saw two tables right by the door and thought whoa super small but then read the menu and said ok well give it a shot. The bus boy brought us up stairs where there were a few people and then said the chef will be up to take your order.A few minutes later I was startled as this man walked up to us. He is something you see on cartoons he was so awesome!! He took our order and then a little while later we had two sandwiches a chicken salad and banana french toast and a pretty good fruit juice which had about 10 different fruits. Our experience was overall good. We even took a picture with the chef hehe for me.

• Pros: Awesome looking chef,
• Cons: cluttered, overpriced

08/15/09

Terrible food, bad service, do not go

by YM84 at Citysearch

The food here is quite awful and the chef is a little crazy. The hot chocolate tasted like it contained spoiled milk. We sent it back and said we did not want another one. The chef made another one and insisted 1) there was nothing wrong with the first one and 2) that we must have the second one. We tasted the second one and though it was slightly better than the first, we didn't want it anyway and sent it back again. The chef then climbed up the stairs to where we were sitting on the second floor and got in our face and told us there was no spoiled milk in the hot chocolate. It was just that the first one had melted whip cream. We told him that either way, it tasted funny and we did not want it. He left huffing and puffing.

Then we realized that everything else there tasted funny too. The croissants were sour and seriously undercooked in the middle. Our two-year-old, who normally eats everything, had a bite and aggressively tried to cough it back out. We also ordered the house special and we could not eat it because the eggs were entirely undercooked.

Yikes. We decided not to complain further but got up to pay for the check. The chef gave us the check, growled at us once again about the hot chocolate and told us he took it off the bill, even though we had "no reason to complain." Shocked by the rudeness, we informed him that the rest of his food tasted pretty awful too. He did not give us a further discount but told us that if we did not want raw eggs, we should have asked for them to be well done.

Oh, well. We would have been more upset had the whole incident not been so absurd. The chef obviously takes his cooking very seriously, but reading the other reviews on here, we are not the only ones who believe that his cooking leaves a whole lot to be desired.

It's too bad because until he got all in our face, we found his restaurant to be perfectly pleasant. The decor is quite charming and the waiter was very nice. The chef, with his funky accent, originally even added some character to the restaurant. But all that is useless if you can't offer halfway decent food or service.

• Pros: live accordian music for Saturday brunch
• Cons: nasty food, psycho chef