Bar des Vedettes — Restaurant in Dinan

I rarely leave negative reviews, but our experience at this restaurant in Dinan this week was so poor that I feel compelled to share.

From the moment we sat down, the service was shockingly bad. The staff were brusque and dismissive and seemed more interested in having a laugh and a joke together by the till with little effort made to make guests feel welcome.

Service was painfully slow, and we had to ask twice for the wine we ordered only to have the waiter argue that we couldn’t have possibly ordered what we did as it was only served by “carafe” rather than as a “bottle”! We subsequently retrieved a copy of the menu to check our selection, making the point with the same waiter only to be told that there was a mistake on the menu. It turned out that he also hadn’t served the wine we had ordered!

In fairness, there was one young waiter who was clearly trying to be helpful, but he seemed very inexperienced and was unable to make up for the poor attitude of the rest of the team.

The food was not good. Our “simply grilled” sirloin steak was tough, grisly, and completely lacking in flavour. We had requested a simple tomato and red onion salad with olive oil, and were told by the waiter that this would be a bit difficult to do for us. We asked if he could check with the chef. When our meal came, we were presented with three separate bowls - chopped (not sliced) tomatoes, chopped onion, and olive oil!!

I had to ask twice for salt and pepper before eventually getting up to fetch it myself.

The dessert was no better. My wife’s pannacotta had an unpleasant, artificial vanilla flavour and a skin which making it almost inedible.

Toilet facilities were extremely unclean, with a pile of toilet paper on the floor in the gents and the general impression that they hadn’t been cleaned in quite some time. You would have to wonder about the state of the kitchens…?

It is a shame, as the position of this restaurant on the quay next to the river is lovely, but this was, without doubt, one of the worst dining experiences my wife and I have had in France. With rude staff, slow and argumentative service, disappointing food, dirty facilities, and careless attention to detail, I would strongly recommend avoiding this restaurant and spending your money elsewhere.

Dinan has many wonderful places to eat — this is not...

Don't waste your money here. Choose any of the other lovely restaurants. Very disappointed. Incredibly rude and unprofessional manager and head waiter. Used to be one of our favourites until the new owners took over. Waited far too long before we were asked for drinks order, very rude when ordering food, argued us, food order arrived wrong and was a huge effort for the waiter to change it for me. Food was also cold. My husbands beer mat was just dropped from a height in front of him, we actually laughed. People across the road were being told off for sitting in the wrong place! Everything was an effort. ...

Everything about this place was perfect. We had the most delicious galettes, sweet cider, the coffee was great, and our son had a crepe with banana and chocolate. The portions were huge, the staff were lovely and the view when sitting outside was just beautiful. A few people have mentioned the owner was grumpy but we found him to be really lovely! He was very kind to us, very happy, interacted with our crazy toddler and was very forgiving of our poor French. Would highly recommend and would...