Rouge — Restaurant in Calgary

Rouge

My sister and I had been wanting to eat at Restaurant Rouge for quite some time. Our busy schedules only made it happen on October 18th 2018 as my sister had her birthday dinner at that location. The food we ate was exactly what we expected; delicious. BUT…….the service offered by the waitress assigned to our table was lamentable. Here are a few "highlights" of the evening:

Upon observing that several glasses were placed in such way that it made it difficult to determine which one belonged to whom, one of our guests asked our waitress to assist her in determining which glass belonged to her. She responded in a condescending way saying: "water glasses were always on the right". At first, this may seem inoffensive. However, all it took was a quick look at the table to legitimize the question asked.

A bottle of wine was ordered. At some point, the guest who had ordered that bottle asked our waitress to pour some for others siting at the table. The waitress said: "we don’t do this here". It left many of us confused. We enquired further to understand what she meant. It turns out that she thought that a bottle of wine was brought in from outside. Problem is we had not brought in our own wine and there was no reason for her to believe that we had. Why make that assumption?

Earlier in the evening, someone had called upon her to assist and get an additional drink. She turned around and said: "What?". While I had noticed that the tone was pretty abrupt and had an undertone of impatience, I did not comment as I gave her the benefit of the doubt. In light of the other occurrences of the evening I now wonder …

Later in the evening, a guest asked questions about the menu and as she was about to place an order, the waitress said "I will take your order when I take everyone else's". It was unequivocal to all of us that she was once again being rude and condescending.

Lastly, when our orders came, our main waitress had not properly instructed the other servers/waitresses as to which plate went where. They were confused to such a degree that OUR PLATES WERE MOVED OUT OF OUR SIGHT to try and figure the whole thing out. It is at this time that one of the guests advocated for the group and said that she had enough of the waitress. That same guest continued on and said that it was inappropriate to place a plate in front of a client, remove it, disappear with several plates and later come back with them.

Our waitress disappeared and never came back. Notwithstanding the fact that the replacement crew was much better, we were surprised to hear someone who appeared to be the Manager, say that our previous waitress was one of their best! Considering the poor service we had received, what should we make of this comment? Any person with a little bit of insight would reassess the situation and determine whether or not had been the author of their own demise. However, after discussing between ourselves, we were all convinced that we did not deserve any of it.

This raises another question. If this is the best or one of the best waitresses; it is unfortunate that while a Chef is providing us with the best food, a waitress is negating it all!

Our most vocal advocate said that she would not return to this restaurant. I interjected and said that the food was too good for me to concur. 24 hours later, I changed my mind. No food is good enough to accept to be treated in a condescending and unprofessional manner.

It is...

This review has a bit of story associated with it to show the care that the team at Rouge has for their patrons and tries their best to make things right in the case of unfortunate circumstances. Apologies for the long read but worthwhile if you're hemming and hawing about coming here and worried about the price and/or a potentially negative experience.

We first tried Rouge with some friends as part of a celebration and informed multiple servers of our dietary restrictions. Unfortunately, our table was handled primarily by a new server and the dietary restrictions were not passed along to the kitchen and conflicts between these restrictions and the tasting menu were not identified when we ordered. This made the dinner horrible for one in our group who could not eat 4/6 courses in the tasting menu due to dietary restrictions and we left with an apology from their team but a bad experience overall.

I left feedback for the team at Rouge and their manager reached out to us to offer us an opportunity to experience Rouge again. We opted to try Rouge again and ordered a la carte instead and had a great server taking care of our table.

All I can say is wow, what a night and day difference between our first experience and second experience. I suspect our second experience is more in line with what a typical experience at Rouge is like.

The staff at Rouge are professional, kind, attentive, and just overall great! Thank you so much Rey and Miyuki for making our night so great and memorable. The team strikes a perfect balance of ensuring you're taken care of without intruding on your dining experience.

We ordered two appetizers, three mains, one dessert, and a few drinks.

The Poached Atlantic Cod is possibly one of my favorite fish appetizers in Calgary now! It is delicious and flavourful without being over the top. I normally dislike olives but the way they did the olive tapenade was just spectacular and matches the cod/potatoes perfectly. My wife had the beet salad and it was a bit salty for her palate. The thing I discovered with the dishes at Rouge is that they're meant to be a whole plate experience. When I tried her beet salad with some of the fried goat cheese and yuzu curd all in a single bite, it was so balanced and delicious.

Our mains were delicious. We ordered the lamb, beef brisket, and arctic char. Again, the fish dish stood out as my favorite. The unique twist on a risotto with a barley grain provided a very unique and delicious risotto with a textural twist. The proteins were cooked perfectly for our needs and overall the mains were very tasty.

For drinks I tried the El Rouge and it was absolutely delicious! My wife had a grapefruit lemonade made by Rey and it was out of this world tasty too. The team at Rouge is incredibly accommodating and offers great alternatives if you order something that isn't offered on their menu.

The ambiance in the restaurant is great. It's fine dining without the pretentiousness that some other fine dining places have. The cozy tables nestled in the old home layout is fantastic.

Thank you again for letting us experience what true dining at Rouge is meant to be and we look forward to...

My wife and I have wanted to try Rouge for quite some time, so we saved up and for our seven year wedding anniversary we booked a table, Feb 10 for dinner. We went all out and ordered the Chef's tasting menu, 6 courses $120 per person, we were really excited. I am going to be pretty harsh in this review, we were both very underwhelmed, disappointed and at the end of 6 courses we were both still hungry. There was another table in the same room as us who did the same Chefs tasting menu but were 4 courses ahead of us, when they finished and left they said I feel bad for you for what is coming next and they were not wrong. I am by no means a picky eater and it's not often I have any complaints on my meal, feel the need to say anything or send anything back but when I am paying $120 per person I am expecting a great meal.

The "complementary" honey butter and bread was great. The Salmon dish was fine, nothing wrong but nothing fantastic. The chicken soup was very odd, dried little bits of chicken with 2 pickled mushrooms then a broth poured over, the 2 mushrooms were the best part, the rest of the dish was again nothing special. The foie gras was actually very nice and we both quite liked it.

The main dish was the lamb, I absolutely love lamb and I was most excited about this. This was by far the worst dish! Minced lamb wrapped in charr formed to look like a large sushi roll was then cut into 3 and served on a bed of barley risotto. When the server asked how we were enjoying the dish I told her if you ask me an honest question I will give you an honest answer, she said we welcome your feedback. Lamb is meant to be tender I had to saw into the dish. The texture was chewy, underseasioned and the barley risotto was rubbery with a slimy texture and very underseasioned. My server brought me a bit of salt and I was able to finish the lamb, I only finished it because I was quite hungry at this point but the barley risotto I could not eat.

The blue cheese cheesecake, let me first start off by saying that I really like blue cheese. I took one bite of this dish and was so overpowered with blue cheese that I could not eat it. The graham cracker base and berry compote on top was absolutely amazing, so I pushed the blue cheese cheesecake off and just ate that. When the server came by I told her how we both felt about the dish and she was kind enough to bring us a plate of the base and the berry compote.

After that was dessert and it was fine, the truffle that was server with the bill was really good I liked it even more then the plated dessert.

I will say this, since I did speak up to my server my criticism was heard and Rogue was nice enough to comp our drinks. With tip we spent $300.00 and after 6 courses, I was still hungry and ended up going to get a burger after. Unfortunately saving up for Rogue was not worth it and did put quite the damper on our big...