L'Escale — Restaurant in Saint-Gaudens

Food: We ordered the Entrecôte and camembert. The entrecôte was fine, averagely cooked, with chips that were again, fairly average. The salad was in a dire state. Poorly selected leaves with a dressing that felt like it was out of a packet. I've eaten much better food in France. The quality of ingredients are good, but the cooking is very basic with not much creativity applied.

Service: It was just the chef providing service for the restaurant. In the dead season of November it is fair enough, since there is not enough demand to justify the cost of hiring someone else. Unfortunately in this instance, the chef giving the service was clearly not trained appropriately to do so. I made the mistake of asking if there were any sauces like a pepper sauce to go with the Entrecôte. This was interpreted by the chef as blasphemy. How dare I simply have asked for a sauce to accompany such a high quality piece of organic entrecôte.

Just a friendly reminder to the chef that cooking is only one part of the experience in eating in a restaurant. You are also responsible for providing a good service with a decent ambiance for the clients. In this instance, you could have simply said "No, we do not provide sauces here", instead of immediately launching into the ethics of French cuisine and why the idea of having a pepper sauce with a piece of steak is a criminally insane idea.

I'll be avoiding this restaurant, not just because I don't need a lecture about French cuisine every time I ask a question, but simply because there are other options such as El Almacèn de Cirès where the chefs are innovating with good,...

I would say that the atmosphere was positively frosty. I booked a table via the “the fork” app for 1930 on a busy night in the town on a weekday in September. Arrived at the restaurant to find the owner had cancelled our booking 3 minutes before our arrival. The restaurant was full and he’d obviously accepted his quota of bookings for the evening.

Although I am English I speak very good French and was told by the owner that you can’t review on the fork if you’ve not been customer we haven’t, but if you don’t want to be treated like us then go somewhere else. We eventually found another restaurant not too far away that would take our table of 4 English that were on holiday. A very grumpy man in a not so nice environment. Give it a swerve if don’t want to be treated badly with his great customer service attitude. By the way I hope he understands how important it is to have tourism. Or...

Très déçu aux vues des notes précédentes. Je ne compte pas comment les gens notent: un peu de clairvoyance et de d’honnêteté. On avait réservé pour 5, et nous voilà avec notre table à l’extérieur complètement mouillée : solution de secours: s’entasser à 5 sur un banquet à l’intérieur prévue pour 4. Du coup, près du pass: beaucoup d’amateurisme (là service qui demande ce qu’il reste comme plat… on rêve)… on a donc pu apprécier le fonctionnement: les enfants servis très vite qui avaient fini leur plat avant que les adultes soient servis…. Pour aller aux toilettes il faut passer par les cuisines: toilettes très glauques (on vous épargne la photo), pas d’essuie main… hygiène très limite. La serveuse part à 22h laissant le chef seul… bon… les plats: quelconques (les frittes sont meilleures chez mac do désolé mais froides,molles et baignant dans la graisse c’est pas des frittes: j’aurai préféré des pommes sautées). La viande correcte pourtant le plat avait l’air appétissant (voir photo). Le Saumon et ses légumes (riz et carottes râpées) moins que quelconque. On en est resté la: pas de dessert puisqu’il manquait la moitié de ceux à la carte! Les mignardises des enfants, c’était juste un glace aux bonbons… Finalement seul le vin rosé des 3 petits cochons roses sauve la mise et à permis de gagner une étoile! 3 cochons: 3 étoiles. Pour le reste, ne vous fiez pas aux étoiles. A croire que c’est les amis et les...