L'Art de Vivre — Restaurant in Narbonne

We were excited to dine here to celebrate my husband's 65th birthday, but the overall experience was disappointing. The setting was somewhat reminiscent of a sterile hotel banquet room. Although there were a couple of round banquettes, the other seating was at banquet style tables more suited for 6 or 8 people than couples. There's a nice view of vineyards from tables near the window, but the lighting is somewhat bright and there is very little in the way of decor. Perhaps the star of the decor is meant to be the elaborately plated food and unusual decorative serving plates and dishes. In any case, the evening began well enough with the main server, a blond woman, asking if there was any food we didn't eat. After informing her that we didn't eat "raw fish, oysters, or broccoli," our first course arrived shortly thereafter - an oyster for my husband and a piece of raw fish for me. When we pointed out that they'd just brought us what we said we didn't eat, the young man who'd brought it apologized profusely and said he'd replace it -- which he did. Instead, they brought us a zucchini flower stuffed with chicken, zucchini cream, and pumpkin seeds. It was the high point of the dinner. Upon finishing this dish, I carefully set my knife and fork on the side to signal that I was done. Apparently, that was not the correct thing to do with my utensils and the blonde server was quick to correct me when she retrieved the dish. "You will keep your knife," she told me. "You may use the bread to clean the knife like this," and she then proceeded to wipe my knife on my bread and set it back on the knife stand. Our forks and spoons were replaced between each course in which they were used -- but not the knife. I do not know if they have a shortage of knives, but I found it patronizing and inappropriate to have the server correct me in the middle of a meal that ended up costing more than $500 for two people. If that was the only misstep, I could have overlooked it. However, many of the courses were really unappealing -- haute cuisine that seemed focused more on visual presentation than on flavor and texture. We had a green bean tart that would have been quite nice if it hadn't been swimming in squid ink. Then some grilled mackerel that was overly fishy with a gloppy sauce on top. And then the main course was pigeon with candied pigeon legs. Not my favorite - or my husband's. Silly us - we never thought to mention that we didn't want pigeon. There was a pre-dessert of a blackberry compote that would have been nice had it not been paired with an olive oil ice cream I didn't like. And then a dessert of some praline cookies that crumbled before I could get them to my mouth, paired with purple shiso sorbet that was also not good, in my opinion. They then offered us a post-dessert, which we passed on. By that time, we'd been there for nearly three tedious hours. I will say, the wine pairing featured some very good wines, which at 98 euros a person, you might expect. It was certainly one of the highlights. Still, at this price, I don't know that we've ever had a worse dinner. Oh and by the way, if you're wondering, they do allow pets despite the fact that it's an indoor restaurant. There was an intermittently yapping dog beneath a...

Me and my gf ate here for dinner. It was the off-season so we were the only people in the restaurant, that had nothing to do with our experience. Most of the negative experience is related to presentation and post dinner. Every Micheline star or high dollar restaurant I've eaten at will generally give you instructions or guidelines on the best way to eat each dish. It's a "modern take on cuisine" so there were many pieces to each dish and we're like are we supposed to combine these, eat separately, does the bread they brought out go with this dish or the next? One of the dishes was a 100% mushroom dish and they asked how we liked it and I said I wasn't a big fan of mushrooms. They left and came back and said the chef is changing my next dish because it's also mushroom heavy which also will change my wine pairing. Keep in mind I didn't ask them to do this. That's great news! They finish the main courses, bring us a cheese course, then dessert. We get the check and the cost for the meal courses is almost double the menu, they charged us for the glass of wine that changed with the food pairing, and they charged us separately for the cheese plates. None of these were communicated or expected. We did eat the cheese and drink the wine so I paid but it was a very poor experience and I would recommend to just eat somewhere else. This was close to €200 more than the Michelin star restaurant I went to the year...

We stayed in the Hotel and booked the restaurant rather than the beach club which is a few minutes drive away - more for ease than anything else.

We were a bit taken by surprise because L'art de Vivre was something incredibly special. My goodness, this was better than any of the Michelin starred meals we've had in the UK.

Exceptional from start to finish - the food, the service, the atmosphere....just incredible. We will return on our next visit to the South of France and go to...