This is my first bad review. I never thought I'd be writing a bad review on a restaurant I'd been really looking forward to visiting. Whenever I pass Bistro de l'Absynthe, it's always packed and people always look like there having a good time and great food and this is what I expected. In actual fact, my experience of Bistro de l'Absynthe was the complete opposite. I was so cross after leaving that I'm never going back (despite it being a firm favourite with other friends). The service was shocking, the food was a complete disaster and the atmosphere was stressful. On the whole, a very unpleasant dining experience.
Our table was booked for 1:30pm, the end of the French lunch hour. Admittedly; it was packed, but I really wasn't expecting to choose my food before the door was closed behind me. I thought I'd have five minutes to choose what I wanted like in every other restaurant I've ever been to. Apparently, I thought wrong. I felt stressed and unprepared and rushed; not the ideal feeling to have before eating a two course meal. There was a set lunch menu: two courses for 9€50 which is a very good value, but the price really reflects the quality of the food: low.
There was a choice of steak and chips or a sort of Sheppard's pie followed by fresh pineapple or a coffee and chocolate dessert. I went for the steak and then the pineapple. The waitress was pushy and rushing us, which I really didn't appreciate. They asked every one of us how we wanted our stakes cooked and noted it down. We asked for a jug of water for everyone and three of us wanted to share a bottle of wine. She said she'd come back with a wine list.
We waited for about 20 minutes for our food to come (a long time for a couple of steaks to be cooking!) By the time our food arrived, it wasn't hot and they'd thrown the steaks out without asking who had what. I'd asked for a rare steak and got a well done one. And my friend Meg asked for well done and got a rare steak. I told the waitress that she'd given me the wrong steak and she just stared at me without a word of apology as if to say "what do you want me to do about it?" Paying attention to orders and bringing me what I asked for would be a good start. Still no sign of the wine...
We reluctantly swapped our lukewarm steaks and began eating (feeling quite parched as the waitress still hadn't come back with the wine list). I started tucking in (as I was starving by this point). The sauce wasn't bad, however the garlic overpowered the flavour of the meat. The chips were burnt and that flavour stayed in my mouth until I got a mouthful of gristle; really unpleasant. Still no sign of the wine.
As I was finishing my last mouthful of cold, gristly, burnt steak and chips the waitress whipped the plate from under my nose before I could put my knife and fork down and, worst of all, before everyone else had finished. Finally the snotty waitress brought a bottle of wine over. We'd asked for red but they didn't have any left so she brought the wine list back and we chose a rosé which they also didn't have so she brought a random bottle of plonk which wasn't great either (realistically, I would've probably drank paint stripper to take the edge off after th calamity they called 'lunch'). All this made one very unhappy Bethan.
Desert wasn't much better: a quarter of a pineapple trying to be a pudding by dumping icing sugar on it and spraying a blob of synthetic squirty cream on the plate. Not the bistro bliss I was expecting.
Aesop really sums up my feelings perfectly: "A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety." I arrived feeling content and left feeling anxious, bullied and angered by the whole experience. This is the worst dining experience I've had since I've lived in France. I would've been better off going to a drive through!
However, my friends, we must look onward and upward to the great pie in the sky. There are plenty more fish in the sea, and a few more restaurants in Poitiers.
Until next time,
Bon Appétit
