La Prunelle — Restaurant in Montreal

I can't believe there are any poor reviews on this amazing restaurant! We almost didn't come here because of the reviews...which makes me think, before I start, I should address some of the "logistics" of Montreal dining.

Montreal has a heavy French influence; this is also a French restaurant. That being said, waiters and waitresses tend to leave you alone at your meal, because constantly approaching you, and also giving you your bill before you ask for it, is interpreted in French culture as asking you to leave, which is incredibly rude in French culture (as well as other European cultures, such as Italian), since when the French do dine out, they take around 3 hours for a meal. This is not bad service, and no one is picking on you for being American, relax. If you don't want to take 3 hours for your meal, kindly tell your waiter or waitress you are in a bit of a hurry, or simply walk up to them when you want your bill. This is not rude, it is just not the norm.

Also, because this restaurant is French--and the French are European--the plates are of course relatively small, compared to the plates you may be used to seeing. American-Italian, and American-Spanish meals are very, very large, but if you actually go to Italy or Spain, the plates are small, hence why the tend to have multiple courses. However, the multiple course option at this restaurant is excellent, definitely enough food, and definitely a great price for the quality. They also don't MAKE you order the multiple course option, as someone has suggested here--you can order just an appetizer or just an entree or even just a dessert, I did this.

Finally, the concept of BYO--bring your own wine, beer, or liquor. This is a concept that is common in Montreal, as well as the New York Metro area, and other large cities such as Philadelphia. In some cities, liquor licenses are very expensive, and restaurants that tend to focus on the food and not cocktails often opt for the BYO option. Yes, this is a real thing. Almost half the restaurants in our borough are BYO, and I personally LOVE the concept because it saves a ton of money on the wine I would buy from the restaurant, especially for French, Spanish, and Italian cuisine, which are cuisines that go great with wine anyway. There is a GIANT liquor store TWO blocks from this restaurant with an excellent and affordable wine selection.

That all being said, THIS WAS THE BEST MEAL WE HAD IN MONTREAL, and one of my top 10 meals EVER--I've been to dozens of different cities, some in different countries, and we currently reside just outside of Manhattan. I'm also Italian, so I loved taking a long time to eat a bunch of small courses. The waitress we had was incredibly nice with the questions we had about the few French words we didn't know, and the open-air layout of the restaurant was gorgeous.

So I think if you're trying to stuff your face in under an hour, this is not the restaurant for you. If you're not comfortable with the concept of BYO, this is not the restaurant for you. However, if you're trying to enjoy great quality French cuisine for a good price, then you should definitely check out...

La Prunelle showcases that unique mix at the intersection between incompetence and indifference. The meal we were served was honestly pathetic, and I would have been ashamed to cook this myself.

To start, we ordered for delivery at 1700. The delivery was instead noted down for 1900. They could not be bothered to tell us this. Not the worst but not a good start.

At about 1730, they called us to tell us they had run out of one of the item we had ordered. They quite simply sold the food we had already bought to arriving customers (or that's what we were told at least). Their incompetence was not so bad in the end because of another, more careless thing they did: the item that had ran out contained something we specified one of us was allergic to. Nice save there!

When the food did arrive at 1930, it was cold. I don't know if it would have made much of a difference because it was also tasteless and soggy. I'm 100% certain I could have made every item MUCH better than they did. The only remotely edible item were the chicken wings, which were about on par with grocery store frozen wings. Credit where credit is due, the mayo was actually really good and obviously homemade, which did make the limp, wet fries almost tasty.

I guess I'd add that while we were polite all the way through, the lady we spoke to was anything but. Hardly matters at this point because we are well into sub-one star territory here.

Oh and I should add all this was fairly expensive for no good reason, but hey we didn't pay because that was my girlfriend's birthday gift from her office. Happy birthday!!

La Prunelle may well perform admirably most of the time, but in our case the food and service we receive was pathetic, shameful and miserable. Never in my life have I had such a terrible, terrible experience at a restaurant, and that includes McDonald's and other fastfood. Avoid this wreck...

Very unpleasant experience: The place is on Duluth and the ambience is alright. The menu is quite pricey for what you get, the finesse is great but the taste is okey. If you go for the chef's menu for 51bucks you are most likely to pay extra for certain dishes. The most unpleasant part was though was the service, there was this young waiter who rushed everything and was very sloppy, spilled a glass of wine on one of us in the group. We were 9 people who were ready to leave quite generous tips but this guy insisted on talking in French with us whereas there was only one person speaking in French in our group. He kept dropping stuff in the restaurant. Didn't really apologize or offer anything in exchange of the spilled wine. My sister had severe allergy to eggs and even though she warned him when ordering he brought her beef tartar with mayonnaise, she was cautious enough so she didn't trust him, she could have had a serious situation.

We paid 310$+tips for 6 people and only 2 of us had the degustation menu, the rest had only main dish. This excludes the wine since this place is BYOW...

At this moment now we are arguing with the waiter because he was not happy with the tip we left him. He accused us saying we didn't tell him about the egg, or did not have a reservation so he had to be sloppy because of the table setting. He was not apologizing but just answering back to whatever we said. People were much older and even elderly he was not respectful. I won't come back to this place ever. Just pick up another place on Duluth there are many other nice places for you to be treated for what...