Restaurant Francis Mallmann en Provence — Restaurant in Aix-en-Provence

Quality price-ratio completely out of balance in the bad sense. If the man which lent his name to this place is still alive, it is high time for him to visit this restaurant incognito, with all due respect for his probably great capacities as a cook, from the little I have heard about him. If he is dead, I think he rolls over continuously in his coffin from shame. A lot of the food was smoked, and so am I still after 5 hours, which does not speak in favor of fume extraction, especially if you know that we were seated outside. The texture of the lamb I ordered was difficult to swallow. After chewing it from left to right like a camel for over a minute, the only 2 solutions left were to swallow it as it was at that point or to spit it out. The tiny fries were worthless and the green beans were burned instead of grilled. The empanadas were o.k.. the grilled bread was burned outside and smoked inside that I preferred to leave it on the plate after a taste. The other bread was too dry and 1 little cheese bread was o.k. . The steak was either from germany at 55 € and the other from Poland at 45€, contrary to what I would expect in what they themselves call an Argentinean restaurant. I had hoped for Argentinean meat which is considered to be amongst the best in the world. The service in a place were the main dish is approximately 45€ and the starter approximately 20€ should be perfect, and it wasn't. The waitresses did not know that the side on which food is served is the right and the one on which dirty dishes are evacuated is the left one. They did not know it is not-done to cross with their arms in front of the customer and they did not know that it is not-done to grab a glass with their fingers on the border where the customer will put his lips to drink.... There were only 2 toilets and 1 of the 2 was peed all over by a until then ungrilled porc. As you can see, it isn't because you have the money to pay for this place, that you have manners worth to visiting it. Then again there should be a toilet tender to clean the toilet after every single visit, in a place like this. The prices asked easily allow to include this apparently necessary service. We'll never...

This was our third visit to Restaurant Francis Mallman over our recent visits to the area and — unlike the previous — rather disappointing. Oh, the venue remains excellent, the staff and service also very good…but the food was well below the standard we’d previously experienced. An entree of grill asparagus comprised some reasonable green asparagus, but large, tough and rather aged white asparagus. My beef fillet main was a poor quality cut that had simply been grilled, as on any barbeque. But it was unseasoned; nor was there any sense of the woodsmoke. Worse, the accompanying chimichurri — a Mallman specialty — lacked every required ingredient apart from oil and parsley. The steak is served with smashed potato — a large potato cooked in its jacket, then flattened on a hotplate. These are nice if the potato is decent, but mine was old, floury and dry — a couple of charred onion rings did little to enhance it. My wife’s roasted half chicken was juicy but rather over-salted. She said the accompanying burnt tomato and paprika potatoes were OK. The Chateau has some reasonable wines. Desert, too — fresh citrus segments with coconut ice cream, garnished with grated white chocolate — was reasonable. But none of this was worth the 250 euro bill, which included two glasses of basic champagne and two glasses of Chateau wine. I’m not sure I’ll return — there are better restaurants nearby offering excellent food and much...

Bearing the cost of their menu in mind I expected the food and service to be top notch, it wasn’t.

Their empanadas starter had good flavourful filling, however the pastry was rock hard, dried and tasteless. They were either pale or burnt.

Their wood fire oven is very prominent and they’ll cook as many menu items as they can with it, even when they shouldn’t. They lack the expertise to use this method of cooking for fine dining. Inconsistent, over cooked or undercooked.

For the main I ordered the ribeye on point. It was cooked well done on one side and blue on the other. The stake knifes were dull and made eating the steak or cutting the sides nearly impossible. The overall plate concept was poor, the chimichurri didn’t work as the sauce as it was bland, like it was from a condiment jar from a supermarket. Leaving poorly executed smashed potatoes dry and overdone, accompanied by underdone onions.

The meal was a waste. From time to time if the head chef ate his food rather than just looked at it, maybe they could fix their problems.

My recommendation is to skip this place, get cocktails, a cheese plate and desert in the cafe next door and with the rest of the money you saved you could probably pay for another night at a...