L'essentiel — Restaurant in Saumur

The many positive reviews, mention on the Michelin site and their own description on the web, set the expectations quite high. Unfortunately for us, it did not meet the expectations.

When you enter you will be amazed by the very stylish decorated restaurant rooms and welcoming host. All of them were very positive, friendly and too fast! The speed of service is to quick and very impersonal. Well divided tasks between the staff and very minimum interaction with the guests while that should also be part of the experience as well. Maybe also to do with the language barrier. We had to ask them to slow down with serving the courses. With the wine no real explanation was given with the pairing, just mentioned what the grape was.

All of the products are of quality but the combinations on the plate are not spectacular, apart from the goat cheese dessert. I would be able to prepare dishes like this at home while when I go out for dinner, especially in a type of restaurant like this, I expect to be surprised by creative dishes and flavours. Also when it comes to the wines pairing. None of the wines we tasted in the pairing (7, as we both had different dishes) had the wow factor.

We had a nice evening, quality of individual food products is good, but they did not manage to create interesting dishes, all quite simple. The service staff did not add anything extra, so we would not go back unfortunately. Lots of potential though due to the decor and good...

My wife and I have purchased a home near the town of Saumur and as part of this, we have a separate cottage that we will be renting out as a luxury retreat. As part of our business, we wanted to try out local restaurants that we could potentially recommend to our guests. This place will be firmly at the top of our list. We are foodie people ourselves and eaten at some of the best restaurants in Europe and the UK, including many Michelin star establishments. This place ranks right up there with the best we've tried. The food was presented like art and tasted like heaven. We opted for the 3 course menu, with the 3 course wine to match the dishes we'd chosen. The staff were extremely attentive and knowledgeable, and even tolerated my mediocre French, even though they spoke perfect English. We will certainly be sending our clients to L'essentiel, and we will definitely be going back there ourselves. Oh, by the way. Do not expect a normal Michelin Star price, because this place is also very reasonable considering...

The 3-course-meal started out nicely, but deteriorated rather quickly. It was very unremarkable all in all and I wouldn’t have posted about it at all if it hadn’t been for the Gruyère I was supposed to get as third course. The waitress served the plate explaining that it was Gruyère with tortilla chips and two sauces. The chips and one of the sauces, which tasted like cheap jam, were bad enough but the cheese tasted very rubbery and turned out to be Emmentaler, which I pointed out to another waitress, who first denied it and insisted that it was Gruyère. It was such a ridiculous situation, the pieces of cheese even had the very distinctive large Emmentaler holes in it, so without trying she should have known it couldn’t have been Gruyère. In the end, she saw that I was right, but only said “Ah yes. Oh well.”, laughed, took the plates and left. No apology, no explanation. I was speechless and would most definitely not recommend this...