La Paillotte — Restaurant in Albertville

Hello guys,

I have just been eating with my colleague today 26.01.2023 at the restaurant around 14:30 and bellow you can read my overall experience:

1. We wanted to have a dinner 2 days ago where the restaurant was almost full. The waiter introduced a table, which was incredibly small and in my opinion 2 adults cannot eat properly there. Apologies were presented and we went home.

2. In 2 days time, we decided to give it another try and visited the place where there was not a single client inside the place. We were the first clients who wanted to sit inside. The waiter along with another female waiter said that we cannot sit next to the window because we are only 2 people (again I want to underline that there was nobody inside) and the manager will not allow it. We kindly requested to get approval from the manager who accepted our wish. So far so good.

3. After waiting about 5-6 minutes, we placed our order which I believe was taken by the manager. We some kind felt some frustration by the 2 waiters which gave their best to deny our request to have a nice view next to the window.

4. First part of the order: 1 x Onion soup (we were told by the manager that it is not vegetarian and it has meat inside). It was ordered and after all my colleague could not simply find meat in it. The soup was delivered for let's say something like 10 mins along with 1 x red wine which was okay.

5. The second part of the order: 1 x beef steak medium, which was not tasty at all. The steak was medium though. 1 x pizza La Paillote and I have strongly emphasised to be without onion since I am allergic. We waited a bit more than 40 mins for delivery, which in my opinion is extremely slow having in mind the low number of clients eating and for how long such a simple pizza which consists 4 products (which I exclude the onion, making it 3 products in total) can be made at that moment. Guess what, my pizza arrived with onion, even though the manager wrote it in her notes that it should not contain onion. Meanwhile, there was a French couple ordering burgers which was delivered faster than our order and eaten before ours to be delivered.

6. On top of that, the moment that the French couple left the restaurant, me and my colleague were again along inside the restaurant, the female waiter decided to vacuum in front of us. I am sorry guys but vacuuming should be either done before the clients arrive or after that but never while customers are having their lunch. Again we felt this frustration in the female waiter. For the record, I have couple of pictures proving this statement.

7. We called the receipt and a 3rd waiter came to deliver it. He asked if we were satisfied from the food and we were very short in our answer: We are sorry but it was horrible experience. The waiter offered us a free coffee or something like this but we just said no thanks.

PS: There was a British waiter who was really kind, smiley and service minded. Greetings to him !

To sum up, the overall experience was AWFUL and we will never repeat this mistake. So guys, have the above mentioned in mind and think twice before...

Probably the worst meal I’ve had anywhere in the world. I rarely dislike food, but this felt like they didn’t even want to pretend it was good. (Insert classic comment “if I could give it zero stars I would”. But I genuinely would give it zero) I expect some places in ski resorts to be a bit substandard and pricey but this was another level of disappointing. Of five meals ordered, one was acceptable, the others all pretty terrible. Carbonara served completely cold and dry, pizza dough more like a crispy pitta bread, lasagne couldn’t be finished by the hungriest guy I know. Our mistake for ordering frogs and snails (typical British tourists in France), but at least they could have tried to warm the food… Apparently the duck was alright, so if you want to go, get that! But do yourself a favour and go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Make yourself some toast, you’ll be more satisfied. Then, time for the bill… card machine stopped working, so we have to get more cash out, which had a €5 charge (had to argue to take this off the bill). Finally, when paying they asked if the food was good. I said no, and gave some details. Then they asked “why didn’t you say anything?”. We did! The guy who asked this was the one who had to microwave the carbonara to get it above freezing!

*editing the review to add a few things. The mens toilet door would only open about 30cm. You have to squeeze through and stand over the toilet to get in. Seems like a wooden panel had fallen off the wall and was blocking the door. I could see pizza dough being made downstairs. I just don’t understand how a chef can be happy with that. I’ve made a lot of dough, it is very a very basic skill. If you said something to the staff that they didn’t like, they would say they don’t speak English. Which is a legitimate excuse, except they’d been speaking with us all evening in English. Also, their English was very good, which I did appreciate because my French is awful.

A few positives for the review; cosy atmosphere genuinely nice waiters I ate my whole pizza because...

The manager is insane! The waitresses got a few things wrong with our order, which we really didn't mind, she happily changed when we highlighted and was very apologetic - the beers were wrong, my husband was sent the wrong pizza (although he was pretty chilled and said he'd eat it) and the wrong accompaniments were sent with my steak. But when they steak was massively over cooked and I asked for it to be changed the manager took great umbrage and not only refused to change it but refused to serve me anything else 😂 When our bill finally came, the beers that were wrongly sent to our table had been added so we asked for them to be removed and we're told we had to pay for them. When we refused the manager went ballistic, told us we were never to step foot in her restaurant again and made some pretty personal comments about me and my husband. We've been coming to VT for a number of years and love it - we were last in this restaurant in April and the staff were great. Sadly this manager should not be dealing with customers, she's ruined an otherwise lovely little place. Even if we hadn't been banned (for pointing out the bill was wrong) we wouldn't...