Les Petits Oignons — Restaurant in Brussels

Found via the Michelin guide. We ordered the Regence set menu for €70pp. Two big issues:

1. The four courses were presented over the same number of hours, with roughly one hour between each dish. The waiter repeatedly apologised and said the kitchen was being slow. But we saw our neighbouring tables come, get served, and go, all while we were waiting. In fact we were the first guests to come and among the last to leave. We felt ignored, and occasionally had to wonder if they had actually forgotten about us. To be fair, the waiter kindly offered us a nice glass of champagne to compensate us for the wait.

2. We ordered the quail for the main, but to our surprise we got the cod. There was no offer to cook the quail instead when we pointed it out and they realised the mistake. I guess we wouldn’t want to wait an additional hour for that anyway. The cod was not great, clearly mot freshly caught and tasted a mix of overcooked and dry. Again, the waiter kindly offered to strike our bottle of wine off the bill.

Among smaller qualms, the atmosphere and interior wasn’t top. The dining room was crammed and one of us had to sit where there was a lot of traffic. And why was there salt, pepper and olive oil on the table? Are they saying they don’t think their food is seasoned enough? They also forgot that one of the party members had a birthday, as noted in the booking. And the bathroom facilities were not particularly clean (think cobwebs).

Among positives, the two starters were tasty. The waiter was pleasant and clearly apologetic for the mishaps. And of course the free drinks were appreciated. But this restaurant needs to be stricken off the Michelin guide until it...

The food had a lot of variation in terms of quality. I visited with my family, and we ordered appetisers: the perfect egg and the carpaccio. The carpaccio was underwhelming, but the perfect egg was delicious: probably the most memorable dish from our visit. For the main courses we ordered the kidneys, sea bass on potatoes, the vegetable risotto, and the Caesar salad. My dish, the sea bass, was delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed it all, but my family had a different experience. The kidneys were overcooked, and although their flavor was nice, it rendered some of them inedible. The Caesar salad's chicken was also overcooked, leaving it dry and unimpressive. The risotto was decent, but lacked flavor (for my liking at least). The deserts were really good.

My lower review of the service is due to two factors. The first of which is the lengthy amount of time it took to receive both our food and drinks. The second factor is that when we tried paying for our food the card was "rejected" three times, but the payments went through each time. On the fourth attempt everything went through, but he had to come back once we realised we had just spent €800 on our dinner. Now typically this would not be the fault of the restaurant, but when we requested a refund of the three failed payments the staff were helpful but very condescending.

Summary: The food is good if you know what to order, and besides the issues with payment the restaurant was an overall...

Re-review of the restaurant. We've visited several times over the past decade but this has been yet another disappointing visit. Make no mistake, the quality of the food here is beyond question (although not Michelin star worthy). However, the service is extremely poor. Seated by a dismissive wave of the hand by a bar person who then turns out to actually be our waiter. Empty table that is then gradually assembled with cutlery and glassware when they can be bothered. I've seen previous reviews that the bread an butter presented was extremely good. This was not our experience. Cold, dry bread rolls. So dry igrabbed a bottle of the olive oil from the bar since it didn't seem to be coming our way any time soon. The menus were missing a number of the pages so we had to make one good one from the three copies we had. However, we still had to ask for an new one for the wine as the white section was completely missing. Our waiter then tried to fob off one of the open bottles they had lying around as "tres bon" as a Pouilly when it stank of acetone and was actually a Fiano. Do not go here unless you are of a particular complexion as you will be treated poorly. If you can get psst that you WILL enjoy the food which is very well cooked and generally well presented but NOT for the price you will pay. Just walk 300m into the square and have an excellent meal at one of the excellent restaurants...