The Little French Deli — Restaurant in Melbourne

Firstly, was a regular customer years back when it first opened.... unbelievably consistently beautiful food, taste, quality and comfortable proportion served. Well, my recent and now the last dining experience, well we are both still in shock, at the insignificant amount of food that the delivered. Please understand as I'm sharing this, fine dining we are well accustomed too. We are not glutinous 'eyes bigger than stomach people '. But as the waitress presented firstly our entrees..being scallops, on puree with black pudding...shock.... where's the scallops!!!!!!3 scallops , each piece was no bigger than your thumb, each piece sizing up to actually what one scallop on a plate should be. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING, they had cut one scallop into 3 miniature pieces, easily hidden under a smell of crispy prosciutto and hint of black pudding. Totally, utterly dismissal especially what had been exceptional plating few yrs back. I had to give feedback to the waitress....to which she simply smiled and acknowledged. Ordered the famous duck confit (as had done in past). Immediately disappointed...this duck leg was similar sizing to a sm baby drumstick, maybe more a sm quail, if that. Yes, tender for the three small mouth servings I experienced. My partner orederd pork belly, fat hadn't rendered sufficiently and No crispy crackle. Ohhhh what a disappointment. Don't ever mind paying over $250 for dinner but to serve portions that was immediately ridiculous on first sight says alot. Once again we are well accustomed to the 'fine dining' experience, seriously questioned how the Chef wasn't embarrassed to plate...

I wrote this a year ago after several positive visits:

Great little place and one of the nicest spots for dinner along the bay. Good quality menu and some excellent wines on offer.

I recommended the place to friends and even bought a voucher for a couple as a gift we liked it that much.

After a visit last night I'm disappointed to say the standards have dropped considerably. The service was really poor, slow and disinterested, the waiter couldn't answer the simplest of questions, and corrected our pronunciation of several items, but did so incorrectly! It's rude enough when accurately correcting someone but just embarrassing when you get it wrong.

We tried to order 2 eye fillet steaks at 7pm on Saturday and they only had 1 left, then tried to order a bottle of Syrah - didn't have any, switched to Malbec - didn't have any. So moved to our 3rd choice of wine.

The kilpatrick oysters were drowned in tomato sauce and unpleasant, while the lamb confit croquettes barely tasted of lamb, just bland vegetables. The beef tartare was ok, but under seasoned.

The eye fillet steak was good. Quality cut and cooked perfectly. The Coq au Vin (pronounced Coq au van, not Vin) was tasty, but very light on with mushrooms and bacon as listed on the menu.

The texture of the Creme brulee was way off and looked like scrambled eggs. Really poor execution.

We decided if anyone asked us how our meals were we would explain rather than leave this review, but not one person enquired about a meal when clearing, or when presenting the $330 bill.

So disappointed at what's happened and clearly won't be...

Firstly I will say the food itself was excellent, and it always had been, but this is a review for the Valentine’s day set menu experience itself, the service itself was very poor that night. We were met by our waiter at the door who when greeted told us, that he was working valentines day and didn’t want to be there, as well as later in the night overheard a staff saying she was traveling and just needed a job. There was 4 items on the menu and we only got 3 in the end as we had to wait 3.5 hours before finally giving up, not only did we watch other couples leave before dessert as they also got bored of waiting around but watched other diners arrive an hour later after us but also get some of the same set menu items before us. We actually left fed up and angry, and tho the same waiter was apologetic etc but after saying why we were leaving, was still charged the full amount as our dessert was “just being made now”. Again 3.5 hours of waiting. 6:30 arrival left just before 10pm, and this was also a reservation done a month in advance. The food is still excellent. Cannot fault that. B it the wait staff didn’t have the same passion or care that had been expected...