Le Petit Chef - Calgary — Restaurant in Calgary

Our dining experience landed on the 6th day Le Petit Chef Calgary opened its doors to the public. I made reservations online about a month in advance in anticipation that the restaurant would be booked. We were required to place a $50 per person deposit (not per reservation) that was non-refundable. The deposit would later be applied towards your final bill. It should be also noted that you are required to pre-select your dinner course option. You are presented with 2 mutli- course meals and a Children's Course to choose. There were no other options to deviate from. Upon arriving at the Hotel, there was no one there to greet us but a wooden cut out of a Le Petit Chef figure with a bubble that provided instructions to the 2nd floor (up the staircase). With the program being a dinner & show and the price you would have to pay, you would have hoped for a live person ready to greet you personally, especially when you find out later that everyone must arrive before they can start the program. Let's just say dinner was delayed due to people being late. While you waited you had the time to look around at the table and your surroundings. Unfortunately, that was not a good thing. Apart from the projected images on the table, the restaurant looked like a ill prepared or poorly arranged atmosphere. It felt like a "pop-up" temporary restaurant you would find randomly set up. The bar and booths looked more like storage areas. The lighting was obviously low for the media projection to work however you can tell that the space did not intend to have this type of restaurant planned with holes cut-out in the ceiling for the projectors and zero feature lighting. Floors were bare concrete, the entrance to the restaurant was a black currant, and the coat check was a rack on wheels by the door. I would not wear an expensive coat there as they offered no ticket for the coat and at the end of the night it was a free for all to grab your own jacket. The sound system was not very clean/clear and the cute little music that played throughout the night got quite annoying after the 1st hour of dinner. There were technical delays throughout night as the program needed to reboot. Dinner was good, however the temperature could have been better managed. I am of the school of thought that if its supoose to be cold, I like it cold, and if hot, you guess it... HOT. Everything felt like it was just sitting at room temperature waiting to be served. The salad was great but warm. The Cheese and balsamic dressing was very tasty. The Seafood Bisque was a mixed story. The seafood pieces in the soup was awesome but cold. Big Shrimps, Crab Claw, nice sized fish were all nicely cooked; that all being said, the broth was warm and lacked depth & was watery. It did not have the rich flavour of what a Brandy Lobster Bisque should offer. The Steak was seasoned well and cooked to my liking if Medium Rare is your thing. I would be proactive here about how you prefer your steak, as they will not ask you how you like your steak done prior to serving BUT will ask after, if you want to have your steak cooked more as it reaches the table. You are probably thinking "well what's wrong with that?" The problem is, this is a coordinated dinner event. Meaning, at the beginning of the evening, you are told (if you weren't already late getting to the restaurant) that ALL individuals in the entire restaurant must be finished with their plate before the next course can be served. Sorry to all the slow eaters or to the people who like to enjoy, chew your meal, or brought kids... you'll get glares from the other people in the restaurant or at your shared tables. BTW, there is a high chance your party will be seated with other guests (sharing tables). Last course was a dessert in a CUP. I spent almost $200/person to end my meal with a dessert in a ramekin. Zero for any artistic effort. I don't know how to express how disappointed I was. When the final bill came, the server will then tell you they automatically include a 20% gratituity and charged tax on that 20%.The...

We attended as a group of four to celebrate a milestone birthday on February 18th. It was an incredibly disappointing experience.

The meal is billed as an immersive experience, and the whole gimmick is that short video clips are played on your table of a tiny chef preparing your meal before it is served to you.

We arrived promptly at 6, as requested, as all the diners must eat at the same time and they were beginning the show at 630. However, they didn't start on time, giving us over 45 minutes to listen to the same one song on repeat for background music. It didn't set a great tone. I chose an IPA to drink, and was happy with it.

One of the "four rules" of the evening was to be mindful of how slowly you eat, as they couldn't start the next course until everyone was finished. It didn't appear based on the timings of our evening that anyone was "too slow" but be aware this would not be an accessible experience if you had any challenges in that area.

The caprese burrata salad started the meal, and I was surprised that it did not match the projection displayed, with different greens served and almost non existent tomatoes, but the flavors were lovely.

They also changed the soup course, where we received a broth based seafood soup instead of the lobster brandy bisque on the menu. When asked we were told that they hadn't printed new menus yet (nor changed it on the website).

The main course was grilled steak. This also was off to a bad start for our table as 3 of the 4 of us were served and then after watching several other tables get served, we had to flag down a server to get our fourth serving. The steak was grilled to various levels of doneness at our table, from medium rare to rare. It was obviously a concern at other tables in the restaurant, as they offered to cook our steaks further after most of us were half way done our meals. The vegetables and peppercorn sauce were lovely and salted well.

For the main selling feature being that these projections match what you are being served, it was very disappointing that they didn't! They were clear that the projections would not match for the vegetarian or children's meal, but they didn't match for the standard meal as well. The projection for the dessert appeared to show a saffron, cardamom, rice pudding dish being prepared, while we received a lavender creme brulee. I would note that no one at our table could detect the lavender in the dish.

Finally the evening ended with a celebration for all those marking an occasion and our party member received a cupcake and glass of sparkling wine.

We were unaware that there was an automatic gratuity of 20% added to our bills, and then we were taxed on that 20%, so in the end this was $200 each. Save yourself the experience we had, get a $200 fine dining experience at a different restaurant where you can pick the food you want and have it cooked well, and then go home and watch Ratatouille. You'll be much more satisfied with...

Visited Le petit chef on April 27th 2024. A few months back I saw an ad for what I thought was a cute date night.

They asked for a $100 deposit for two meals. One a vegetarian option and the other a striploin steak “classic”.

The vegetarian option was surprisingly priced the same as the steak option even though the only difference was a squash soup and the gnocchi. I have a hard time believing potatoes cost the same as the steak? Or a bowl of cream and squash is the same as the seafood in the soup. Granted the Alberta trout in the soup was one singular piece that was about 1 inch by 1 inch and maybe a quarter inch thick if that.

Now I assumed, even though the deposit was $100 there would be extra expenses like drinks and maybe the balance of the meals. I’m thinking $30-40 for the meals each plus drinks.

When the bill came, it was $504. Now we did choose the tier 2 drink option which we looked at and was the most expensive wine option. It would probably be about $6 dollars a glass if you drank it at home for the cab sav otherwise the rest would be cheaper. And okay, I get it’s a restaurant and you need to make some money but holy hell, 400% markup is a bit much.

But the real kick to the knackers was that the deposit was useless as each meal showed up as $129 which with the deposit makes this meal $179.

Pick Hys, Caesar’s, the Keg, literally anywhere else and you could get a better meal at a fraction of the cost.

By the way there were about 1.5-2 minutes of le petit cheffing experience in between courses which could be compared to Pixar shorts if you got an amateur to do it. But we will give credit it was somewhat cute.

If this were maybe $75-100 per person plus alcohol maybe you wouldn’t feel like you just got ‘la grande’ screwed and we would have given a better review.

I think the problem was the entertainment was subpar, short and music repetitive but also the food was not 179$ worth. It has the ideas of cute novelty date but fell short with the insane bill and this should NOT be considered interactive. The user does not interact at all with the show by any means..it is set and remains the same for each person. You cannot interact with le petit chef..It’s as good as a PowerPoint presentation in the early 2000s.

We will give credit where credit is due… The servers were very nice and Sophia was awesome.

P.S. the Old Fashioned does not contain bitters…you’re drinking a glass of straight Buffalo Trace and sugar..which it does say on the menu...