Logis Hôtel l'Embarcadère — Restaurant in Nantua

A lovely small mountain town with a unique Turquoise lake presents this renovated restaurant that purports serving a unique gastronomic experience to its guests. We came to visit on a Saturday afternoon, and nearly turned away seeing a sign on the door saying "we are full for lunch". We went up anyway, to see 4-5 tables taken up by large parties of 8-10, but a largely empty dining room. We were kindly seated at a lovely white tablecloth table looking right over the amazing blue lake. An interesting menu brought hope of a phenomenal lunch experience, with both prix fixe and a la carte options, including the local speciality the "quenelle" - basically a steamed seafood roll in a light lobster butter sauce. We were waited on initially by young servers who were not too sure about the menu or the amuse-bouches or bread/butter being served. After a fairly quick entree, we ended up waiting for an incredibly long time before our main courses arrived - noting we were told we would have a 20 minute delay for the quenelle. I ordered a local roasted hen dish, which came across as rather bland and dry, accompanied by a rash of sad, wilted green beans. The Quenelle was interesting, but reminiscent of south asian 'fish balls' in consistency and texture. After finishing our meal, we waited for about 30 minutes to be offered a dessert or coffee, finally giving up and asking for the check at the hotel front desk. An overall underwhelming experience - not the promised gastronomic adventure we expected, given the price structure and the amazing view. Hopefully they are able to turn around this opportunity - hire more trained staff, and offer an experience that is "slow food", without being an "unpleasantly slow...

We have stayed here several times on our trip from France home to Italy and it has always been a pleasure..a beautiful setting and the hotel accommodation very decent although nothing special. As others mentioned here, the dinner has been something to look forward to. In the past the standard was high, yes, the prices too but it was really good. ||This time, I have to say will be the last time we stay at the Embarcadere, the price of the dinner is high but the standard has dropped - if not disappeared completely. We chose the €25 menu, which has always been good in the past. This time our amuse-bouches were straight out of the freezer, so cold it was not possible to taste them, the first course was with pre-prepared and pickled vegetables, supposedly with ricotta cheese but it did not taste like it. In fact it had no taste. The main course was tepid and the vegetables completely undercooked. To cap it all the half bottle of wine we ordered was one price on the menu and quite another on the bill. In fact it had suddenly risen 30%.||What has happened here? Was the chef on holiday and they had to buy it all in ready cooked? It tasted like that. Even the bread was stale and this was a Friday evening. ||No, no...totally...

It's a pity we cannot grade places with 0 stars as this place really deserves it. Extremely disappointed and displeased by the restaurant.

Despite the fact it looked promising, the experience was a total disaster.

We arrived at the opening at noon. After being placed at our table, we had to wait 45min to place order and 1h15 to get starter.

When looking around all tables where served and even those who arrived way after us. After 30min, I had to go personally and ask the butler what if we could get someone to get our order... He really didn't appreciate it and made us wait 15 more min and we had to pay for the rest of the meal from his arrogance and being condescending to us.

Food was nothing exceptional as it looks like in the menu or website... The best is surely the marketing agency that made their website. Starter was smoke salmon which was quite hard and did not differ from average industrial production Main dish was local speciality "quenelle" with Nantua sauce. It was ok but sauce was quite water and not so much taste. You understand that we didn't want to get neither dessert nor coffee.

Paying the bill was also an experience. We had to go through the butler which guess what... Made us wait 10...