Restaurant À l'Échevin — Restaurant in Colmar-Ribeauvillé

First of all, I really dislike leaving bad reviews. If my experience is not that great, most of the time I will not leave any reviews at all. It takes a really bad experience for me to leave a negative review. Unfortunately in this instance, this is one such experience.

I am sorely disappointed in this restaurant. Simply because pre-covid, I had dinner here and it was simply one of the best meals I have ever had. The service back then was stellar and attentive. That is why this time round when I came back to Colmar, I was so excited to dine here again. I specifically booked myself to dine here with my husband.

Unfortunately this time around my experience was beyond negative. It was appalling.

It started the minute I stepped in to the restaurant and immediately I felt negative vibes from the 3 female servers. They were staring me down as if I did not belong there. This is pretty unusual in Alsace where most of the time, people were super friendly. I brushed it off because I was excited for my meal.

The second sore point is that throughout the whole 4 course meal I was totally ignored. Yes I do not speak french like my husband but in my experiences in high level restaurants, the server will at least try to explain to me in English on the courses that we were presented. If not they will at least acknowledge my existence. Lol. Yes they all spoke English because i heard them speaking to the other clientele. In this instance, no attempt were even made to even look my way. It was as if I did not exist and my husband was dining alone 🤣🤣🤣🤣

By the main course, the server completely forgot the basic fine dining etiquette of serving ladies first. Instead she served my husband first. I guess I'm not worthy of any attention eventhough the whole reservation was under my name 🤷 😌 😕

Last but not least my lamb was partially uncooked. Blood was oozing out of it. It was completely inedible. Lucky for my husband he got the fully cooked delicious lamb. At this point, I was thinking, are these people seriously trolling me??? Lol

Unfortunately, funny it is not. It has been 2 days since I had dinner and I'm still feeling sickly from the meal. My stomach has been cramping and I have had many symptoms of food poisoning.

Right now I feel pretty annoyed because I came to the restaurant to have a great experience. I came out of it being ill and feeling like dirt on the bottom of someone's shoes.

I have been to so many fine dining establishments but never have I experienced such appalling service and quality of food.

So if you want to spend hundreds on meals, get food poisoning and treated like you are not worthy, please come here.

Otherwise there are so many establishments in Colmar that is more worthy than this one. Le Quai 21 is one of it.

This lack of quality explains why the michelin inspectors no longer awarded them with any stars. Such a shame cause it used to be so great....

Most of our dishes were tasty and up to our expectations, except for the veal that was overdone and too plain. We ordered a la carte and we felt portions were too small for that. The cheese plate was not selected for cheese lovers, more for tourists and the champagne that was brought out in replacement for the ruinard that they were out of was too acidic and did not compare. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY: the service was absolutely unsatisfactory, the greet time was about 10 minutes, we had to waive our server down to get poured or order more, plates were auctioned at the table and we had to actually audibly call out for our servers attention on 7-9 occasions. We announced a birthday at the table with our reservation and yet they didn’t bring the birthday desert until 20 minutes after we asked for the check and were getting out of our seats. We had also mentioned before we would like a coffee service but were never offered any. This place JUST CANNOT in any realm of reality have any michelin...

We came all the way from Basel to celebrate an occasion at á l’Échevin and were not disappointed. On the contrary; the food was delicious, the service was very professional and friendly and the Ambiente was cosy and beautiful.

The cuisine at l’Échevin is typical french on a high level with slight modern or foreign references. For the main we ordered three different dishes: beef filet, venison filet and pigeon (first pigeon in my life;) All three pieces of meats came accompanied with different, carefully chosen and prepared sides. The pigeon was perfectly done and incredibly tender.

Sadly the beef filet was served rather well done then medium, as ordered, therefore I give only 4 stars.

Finally, the deserts were an art piece, as you can see.

We had a wonderful evening at l’Échevin and will certainly come again once we have something...