La Chouette — Restaurant in Sydney

“NOT TO BE CELEBRATED!!..” - from a TripAdvisor review. Very difficult for me to write this review and if I can give a minus or no stars at all it would be much more appropriate. I made a booking with this restaurant a couple of days in advance to make sure that they can look after 16 of us and help us to celebrate two birthdays and a large family get together. I’ve received a lovely, reassuring text message confirming our booking and welcoming us into the restaurant. Sadly for me I didn’t read all the reviews, especially the TripAdvisor one. On a day- there was no one to greet or welcome us in. After a while a grumpy, unfriendly lady who took our booking over the phone appeared to be confused, said that they couldn’t setup one table for us, so we have to spread ourselves somehow over two tables - ok, not ideal, but we’ve done it. There was only one other young waitress there that we had to ask for menus, the wine card was never offered, our drinks were never poured. Most of us ordered steaks that all came over done with “no frills” frozen fries thrown on the side, not nicely plated or well presented, we had ask for butter for our youngest girl to butter her steak trying to make it eatable. A couple of side dishes were ok. We were looking at each other understanding that we would never come back but not to totally spoil our special night we were not complaining but instead were trying to joke about it and lift the dark unfriendly atmosphere of the place. One of the ducks dishes came totally uncooked and all ducks’ dishes were accompanied with watery, overcooked sweet potatoes mash mixed with large amounts of raw garlic and orange sauce was spread on the other side of the plate that I can only compare with a taste of reflux to put it nicely. We ask the uncooked duck to be returned to the kitchen and removed from our bill as at this stage we had enough, asked for a bill to pay and leave this place. The grumpy lady started yelling at us and making threatening gestures with her arms to go and talk to the chef, we asked her not to take it personally but we simply didn’t like the food and want to pay and go. She started running back and forth between our room, kitchen and one other table trying to involve other group of diners against us. The chef came out with no apologies but rather patronising and aggressive “you can’t please everybody” and “others like his food”. While I was paying our bills, I had to serve myself and help the grumpy Joy to use the eftpos machine 🙈 as she was too busy abusing us, especially the younger males in our group, yelling “ye, ye get out of here”, pushing and shoving men in our group, swearing right in front of our young children and eventually assaulting my son, who was holding the door for me with my coat in one hand and my bags with the birthday’s gifts in other - she just suddenly rushed to him and with all she got excessive force slammed the door onto him aiming to hurt and harm - I am still in total disbelief that anything like this is possible in Australia or anywhere else around our beautiful world. Shame on you...

I have been to La Chouette multiple times at this point.

Unlike many French restaurants in Sydney, La Chouette offers a cozy environment due to it being a family business. The staffs at La Chouette are the owners themselves. They are very helpful in their recommendations, and the chef is happy to discuss the foods with anyone interested.

The menu at La Chouette stands out quite a lot. They mostly offer traditional French dishes. This includes items which are more common, such as the escargot (i.e. snails) and confit duck, but also good quality foie gras, which is somewhat of a rarity nowadays, since its production is often banned and thus requires importation directly from France. The latter would trigger some moral debates, but I can't help but appreciate the people at La Chouette for keeping such a French classic on the menu.

Amongst all, I must recommend the beef tartare at La Chouette, which is second to none. This is not the usual, finely cut steak tartare you would see anywhere else. No. The beef tartare at La Chouette is cut much more coarsely, and thus requires much higher quality in the choice of meat since you can feel the texture more. It's also seasoned beautifully; with very generous portion should you order it as the main. This makes the beef tartare at La Chouette a delicious, hunger taming protein dish that anyone should order at least once.

Finally, La Chouette does change the way they prepare their dishes, although I have only experienced this once. In my experience, they had changed their preparations of the foie gras and confit duck.

In the case of the foie gras, they had changed the dish from a richer, perhaps more buttery taste, which was served with potato, to now a more balanced flavor served with pear. The case of the confit duck was similar, with their preparation changed from being more traditional, to now being more complex, with the duck pre-shredded and served with a finely tuned sauce whose main flavor profile I think was truffle.

I would recommend La Chouette to anyone who...

We went to this restaurant last Saturday night after wanting to go for a long time. It was disappointing.

This place is really overpriced. I know food is expensive and I realise the cost of running a restaurant is expensive also. We expected it to be a bit pricey as it was Hunters Hill too.

We normally like to get 3 courses but 3 scallops for $35? Having a laugh. $20 for soup? Come on.

My wife got the rack of lamb. Supposed to be 3 pieces but she got 2. $48 with no sides. $15 for a bowl of french fries. I got the pork belly which was about the size of a cigarette packet. $45 with no sides.

Run of the mill beers $14. That’s a blatant price gouge.

Desert. We both love orange crepe suzette. A waitress gave us menus and we said we don’t need menus we would like to order two orange crepe suzettes. Turns out the waitress can’t understand English well and isn’t supposed to take orders. She forgot the order than her, another waitress and the owner got into a little argument a meter from our table. We told the owner that we already ordered and one crepe suzette came without the orange. We said we ordered two. About 5/10 minutes later the 2nd one came out. Shambolic.

I must say the food was nice. But waaaaay too expensive and the service was embarrassing. Won’t be returning

UPDATE

Owner writes back with a snappy response about us not being prepared to be fleeced. But doesn’t mention the other parts of my review about his shambolic staff and their unprofessional manner. Joke of...