Chez Christine — Restaurant in Carcassonne

Lots of potential but also lots of holes to fill. Should be 5 stars for the price being charged. Bit style over substance, flavours should be bolder.

The good: warm welcome, great venue, main courses were well thought out and executed, delicious bread, wine and desserts made me smile although they were on the basic/canteen side.

The bad: very slow service due to lack of staff which made it pointless mentioning anything as just wanted to eat by the time starters arrived. My 20euro starter of white asparagus essentially consisted of some overcooked, underseasoned waterlogged stringy asparagus w a little herring roe , the candied egg was lost in the water-didn't feel like any value was added to the asparagus and could have done better myself.

My partners starter of mushroom, poached egg, brioche was underwhelming and once again watery from the poached egg dumped ontop. No bad, just not really that good.

Creme Catalan tasted nice but was scrambled egg texture from being over cooked.

My spritz felt like Campari and tonic w no ice, served in a white wine glass @11 euro.

Chipped plates and glasses which we asked to change.

No plates w bread which left the table covered w crumbs and mess the whole meal, butter was melted into a puddle and being asked to re use cutlery for each course would be ecceptable in a casual cheap bistro, but this place paints itself as something different with its prices and menu. Not a good look using the same cutlery from egg or shellfish based starter into a main course. Empty bottles and glasses littered the table.

These points are constructive and designed to help the place improve the experience.

As a proffessional chef who visits regularly, I'll try again for lunch in a few weeks because I believe with the caliber from the michelin starred team @cityhotel behind this restaurant and the will of the team it could be great, just needs to look at the smaller details, value for money and improve...

Living in Carcassonne, and running hospitality here and in other locations in Europe, plus always recommending their sister restaurant (which I think is the best lunch in Carcassonne by a way), I felt I'd leave a review that might help.

The positives should start with the location and the décor, both well though out and of high quality, tables nicely spaced and the terrace is very tranquil.

I had the set 39e menu which was excellent, well cooked and presented, nice touches and well thought through. The wine list is good going up to excellent, not a dud on there and all reasonably priced, imo.

The 29e menu is a mixed bag, very good to plain lazy - the main - given what you can get at 4Temp/Agape/Au lard au Cochon, was quite disappointing.

The main issue though is the service. It was at the very best perfunctory, at worst rude - when I was asked about the dish and was replying, the waiter walked away to another table to answer a question - also, quietly placing a spoon for the (excellent gazpacho) soup, when requested, on the table so as to not disrupt the conversation, is a very different skill to dropping it as you pass so it bounces off the table. Its just not the standard you'd expect of the proprietors name.

I know this seems picky, however I work in the industry, and have high thoughts of the sister restaurant and hotel, this is weak service, disinterested and just the right side of rude, if that exists in a service industry.

The sister restaurant is brilliant across the board, this is surprisingly weak. To be fair, guests have praised it, and others 50/50. I'm of the hope it becomes consistent because the good sides are really very...

poorly trained staff without supervision.

We had dinner here on August 19th and it was not our best experience during our week in Carcassonne, actually it was even the worst dinner we had during the entire holiday.

The staff doesn't seem well trained and doesn't really know what to do. They sometimes run around like crazy.

The food was just okay for me not great, but the fish my friend ordered came raw on her plate so we sent it back. They then re-cooked the fish again and after a while when I already finished my main course my girlfriend could finish here main course.

But the bad thing was that my girlfriend hadn't finished her main course yet and then the dessert arrived. Normally the staff would say, okay sorry we will come back later with dessert and please eat your main course first, but nothing could be further from the truth. They simply put the desserts on the table and told us to take our time on the desserts. How can you do that with whipped cream? It melts anyway. Really strange and very unprofessional. So my girlfriend now had a main course that wasn't finished yet and a melting dessert on her table and the staff laughed a little and went on.

We could not understand this unprofessional behaviour especially because it is also a expensive restaurant. So we paid a lot for a...