Restaurant Le Gindreau — Restaurant in Cahors

This was meant to be a surprise anniversary dinner and, indeed, it was from the beginning to the end. I chose Le Gindreau after reading enthusiastic reviews on Pascal Bardet’s kitchen and the quality of accommodation. The place is stunning, the apartment is nicely designed and well equipped to host two people with a pet. The hills of Lot are beautiful – the guests can enjoy spectacular view from the balcony. Then comes the restaurant and the art of its head chef. Both the concept of making each course a set of small dishes with a common denominator (lobster, foie gras and fowl) and the execution with great attention to the smallest detail were a signature of a unique talent and creativity. A meal to fully satisfy one’s palate and eyes. On top of that, the service was very friendly and efficient. A perfect dinner? Well… almost. The surprise came with the bill. The food was – for a restaurant “etoilé” – unusually inexpensive (EUR 108 per person). The wine, which was obviously fantastic, turned out to have a EUR 481 price tag per person. That is EUR 120 per glass. To be fair, when I was booking our stay and dinner over the phone, I was informed about a “special menu” and, most probably, the price was mentioned. Unfortunately, being a foreigner speaking very little French, I must have missed this important bit of our conversation. In retrospect, I think that this kind of “detail” should have been confirmed in writing to avoid potential misunderstanding. Finally, a word on the sommelier. When you are serving an epic wine, it shouldn’t hurt to add a bit of a story to each glass. A few words about the wine maker, the blend, the vintage. The lady in charge of drinks was generally polite but didn’t go an extra mile to make this wine pairing dinner an exceptional event which would justify the super premium price. Paradoxically, the epic wines left quite a bit of bitter...

So nothing was wrong here, but the thing is, if you spend 250 euros on lunch for two people at a Michelin star restaurant, you just expect a lot more. I hope the chef and staff use this feedback to improve. The place is beautiful and the views are amazing, but the experience is sub par.

The Amuse: The bread base and cups to serve the tiny starters are old and the flavours not 'exciting'. We asked for wine pairing with our starter and just got 2 glasses of wine without any explanation of what they were. I had a very flavourful special starter. Really nice, but this came with a 10 euro supplement on an already 88 euro 3 course lunch menu, which I think is pretty crazy. The main course was a boring small piece of veal, and for dessert, I had a dish with figs.

What illustrates my experience the best is that I had a fig dessert two days before in a tiny French town, in a tiny local restaurant that served 4 courses for 30 euros and that dessert, even though presented less delicate was WAY MORE TASTY! In the end, that's what it comes down to.

Also, I think details matter, especially in the world of the Michelin star, and serving bad coffee in a cup that's too hot to touch, but doesn't have an ear to hold the cup is just a bad way of leaving the restaurant. I told the chef when we were chatting after, but he thought I was crazy, because thats how he likes to drink coffee.

Finally, we made it very clear we are not French native and the staff spoke perfect English, but we had to ask with every interaction if they could please slow down their French or switch to English. I've been to a lot of starred restaurants, and they need to change things if they want too keep theirs...

My husband and I were disappointed, he was really excited to finally try a Michelin star restaurant. I am a French native and have done a lot of very good restaurants but none had a Michelin star. The food was good but the service was really below our expectations. The outside terrasse is really nice, all in the shade with a great view. The hors d’œuvre were really good, as well as the cocktails and lunch menu. My husband ask for a glass of champagne, no options were offered and I glanced that the bottle was a Veuve Clicquot and was $18/flute. The menu as well as the lunch menu and some « suggestions » were dropped off without explanation. The carte des vins was brought to us after our first course was done. We did enjoy the table service for the rabbit as main dish. We were asked if we wanted some cheese but I had to request to have them presented to us. Our dessert arrived and was delicious even though maybe a little boring a vanilla tarte norvegienne (vanilla baked Alaska). We finished our dessert and water and then proceeded to wait 30min without interaction from the staff, to either ask if we needed more water or how we were doing (someone had already felt ill due to the heat earlier during the...