BEAULIEU Épicerie fine & Bistrot — Restaurant in Vienna

ANGER MANAGEMENT TRAINING SHOULD BE A MUST FOR WAITER

I have been monthly visiting Beaulieu since I live in Vienna. It was one of my favourite restaurant in the city. Always recommended it to friends. Spectacular location, amazing food... and horrible staff with dirty mouth.

Majority of the waiters are Hungarian, as a fellow Hungarian I have always been slightly bothered by the constant and loud cursing in Hungarian. Every time I am there I can hear them cursing at least 10 times - if not more. At other places, majority of waiters are usually Hungarian too, both in Vienna and countryside, but loud cursing I have never experienced. Here it is the norm.

I tolerated it because of the great place and food up until now. However, yesterday the rudeness escalated. We had Starter and Salad that evening. My husband was still eating his Starter by the time the Salad arrived. Because there was no free place on the tiny table, the waiter tossed the Salad on top of the plate my husband had still food and was eating from. Then stormed off while making faces.

I didn't want to give a bad review online, therefore I decided to give him my feedback upfront. At the time of paying, I politely flagged to him that his action was inappropriate by saying "I'd like to flag that the manoeuvre with the salad was not too kind, next time we'd appreciate if we were asked to move the plate so you can place the salad on the table". What came afterwards put me off guard. He had a HYSTERICAL OUTBURST in front of the other guests. He made such a scene that the other guests started to turn to see what's going on.

He said he thinks tossing the plate on top of the other one that had still food in it was perfectly fine because he was busy and his hands were full... I told him that I believe asking the guest to move the plate would have been the polite solution. To which he had the most absurd reply: "I won't make the guest do the work by saying that and anyways I do this all the time.. if there is a phone on the table then I put the plate on the phone, I don't care". I am surprised that someone with such thick skin to be rude to guest doesn't have thick skin enough to take feedback in a professional manner when being called out. When he was fed up with addressing the issue with us, he simply stormed off and started to complain loudly to coworkers about us in Hungarian. The saddest thing in the whole situation that he didn't even get to the point of realising what was wrong with his behaviour and went on total defence mode. What's more he managed to escalate the situation over and over. To be fair, the restaurant was full and very busy, so I am sure he was feeling overwhelmed, however, this is no excuse for the constant cursing, rudeness and making a heated scene when receiving constructive feedback.

Anna & Christoph Heinrich created such a lovely place with amazing food. Too bad they picked the wrong staff to represent them. I hope this review...

Honestly, after 3 days of Austrian/Viennese food I was sick of schinitzel and goulash and potato salad and the sausages. So for my last meal I stumbled into Beaulieu, a tiny cozy spot within the Ferstel Passage, a short hop away from Cafe Central (don’t go- tourist trap, or if you must just take photos).

So around 830 I walked in apprehensively because on google maps it says “reservations required” and asked if there was a table for two and the server said yes (happy dance), there’s space inside. So dad and I plunked ourselves down in the commonly seen tiny table that never has enough room for what we order.

Skimmed the menu and for the better part of 10 minutes argued in my head if I wanted foiegras or the escargot... and decided on the escargot and a beautiful salad minus the fennel with a rosé spritz while dad got the usual chicken coq au vin blanc- I had a taste before he finished and it was quite alright(liked my food better) Food highlights: the bread and butter ( the butter was heavenly) escargot was amazing and of course you need to dip that baguette in there my summer salad was beautiful and a huge portion dads coq au vin blanc was tasty with a side of mushrooms and rice- lighter than the usual red wine and good too

Well what really got me was the service. OMG. The service was amazing. I’m used to the snotty Parisian service where they hate you if you don’t speak French and just have their noses in the air- but here, it seemed all the servers were available (very common in asian restaurants, not so much in western) and totally ready to accommodate any requests with a happy smile no matter how busy they are... and they were slammed.

So yes totally tipped them extra and ended the night an hour and...

Today, I wanted to give this restaurant a second chance. I was here for supposedly a nice dinner with my husband last November and today with my kids for a lunch. Last November, our experience was not so well. Very slow and rude service, food that we came there for were not available and food was mediocre.

Today, we had a French onion soup, escargot and quiche. It took 32 minutes for someone to come and get my order and it took 17 minutes for the food to arrived. (Today, it is understandable since the server was alone so service was slow but she was nice).

Onion soup doesn't taste any french onion soup I've eaten in France or outside France. It came to our table room temperature, the onion soup had a tiny slice of bread with very tiny slice of cheese on top and served in a regular bowl. The soup was blant and seems diluted. The onions are not caramelised properly since some of the onions were a bit crunchy and there was a hint of bitterness. The escargot doesn't taste much (lack of herbs, butter and a little bit of salt). Lastly, we had the quiche of the day, it was tasty but the blue cheese or whatever cheese they used were overpowering the rest of the ingredients (broccoli). The bill also took a bit of time to arrive and the server asked for a tip (for me tip is a must if you enjoyed the food and received a good service). This is Austria not America.

I'd say that this place is a tourist trap. I am really disappointed to give this review but I feel like I have to to set the the expectation of those who are looking into having authentic...