Au Fil du Zinc — Restaurant in Auxerre

We had 5 courses menu and the food and wine was very very tasty. The personnel was friendly and trying to do a good job, but they were understaffed, which resulted in somewhat poor service. The problems were the following:

-Bubbles were served not in a correct glass (in a glass for white wine). After that, a waiter wanted to poor white wine in the same glass from which we drunk bubbles. We had to ask to change the glass which should be a standard thing. During the glass change, one glass was broken. That of course can happen but it shouldn't. -Another waiter brought water, tried to pour it, saw that it will be difficult (dripless) and gave up. So we had to pour it ourselves. -The waiter brought a bottle of wine, but served it only after we explicitly asked. In a restaurant that aims to be fancy a waiter should monitor the glasses and pour wine when glasses run empty. -A waiter opened a bottle of wine, served it, and then mixed the rest with the remaining content of another bottle. That should not happen.

Another problem is that the interior didn't look as fancy as the restaurant aims to be. The ceiling and the walls were nice, but the floor, windows and radiator made the place look cheap (which it wasn't based on the bill). Also, a fancier atmosphere could be created with using less bright light.

One a positive side, the cutlery was changed for every meal and the personnel was responsive to our requests and asked whether we had allergies. The food was...

The atmosphere was very comfortable and the service attentive and helpful. My wife and I spoke no French but the waitress spoke English. The Sommelier didn't speak English but introduced us to magic. The degustation/tasting menu offered amuse-bouche and 7 courses and the sommelier took over the wine choices. My wife is not a fan of duck (I blame a love of childhood cartoon characters...) and asked if it could be swapped out. the waitress made a quick check with the chef and assured us it would not be a problem at all. Dinner was served. The food was amazing. Simple, elegant, surprising and filling. The wine perfectly matched every dish to an extent I have never experienced before. Then we came to the premier course, the duck... wow. I was dumb struck by the aromas and look of my plate and then my wife's swapped out meal appeared. 5 cherry tomatoes with some jus. Well, I thought she asked for it! And then she tasted it. She still exclaims that her plate was the best tasting food she has ever had in over 60 years of existence. I do not know what it was, other than tomatoes but it lives on in her memory today. Bravo. The night finished off with a splash of local spirit and we made out way to our room in the wonderful Au Vieux Moulin hotel next door. An...

We stopped in Chablis overnight en route to Provence and had an excellent dinner here. Firstly it’s a really lovely village and somewhere next time we’d like to spend more than an overnight to look around. The restaurant exceeded our expectations in terms of the food, my wife is pescatarian and it’s often hard to find menus that cater for her but here the fish and vegetarian dishes were tasty and interesting. We had the shorter tasting menu which still included 3 amuse bouche, 2 starters, main fish course and dessert, all excellent. We started with a glass of champagne on the terrace and had a lovely bottle of Chablis, somehow the bill only came to EUR 160, amazing value for money for this level of food and wine. Service was a bit slow at the beginning but we weren’t in a hurry. All in all a...