Brasserie Madeleine Tours — Restaurant in Tours

Well. On the plus side, on a very quiet Monday evening in summer in Tours, this place was open and had quite a few guests seated. Things started to get creaky when the waiter, oozing froideur, seated us monosyllabicly. "Dehors?" was more of an accusation than a question. Drinks were ordered and delivered promptly (not by him) which perked things up. We ordered, I requested Moules, there were no Moules (the place trumpets its fruits de mer) and without thinking it through I played safe with Poulet Fermier. My wife ordered a large bottle of Vittel to go with her Caeser. The food came, the water did not. Whilst pronouncing the Caser satisfactory, it was deluged with gloop and crowned with the kind of golden crumb chicken escalope only a freezer could supply. At least it was tender, the last time I'd had chicken as aged and tough as the one sat in a pool of ... something, was in a shack in Tanzania where they like their fowl to fight back. Unlike that one, this was lacking taste, definition or indeed, salt. As our waiter friend had failed to place any on the table, I joined my wife, now gasping her way through her sodden salad and desperate after 20 minutes waiting, for that Vittel, searching for our waiter. He was otherwise engaged, giving the cold shoulder to a French couple which at least showed he could be obnoxious without prejudice. Eventually, after listening to a sprightly and inebriated 91-year old ladyloudly proclaim her own Salad Nicoise to be worth "zero,zero,zero" he tried a late save with some acceptable desserts. Too little, too late as his colleague neatly threw an espresso at the guest on the neighbouring table. It's a "no" from us, 2/10. Tours is...

Brasserie Madeleine was a real shame, primarily due to the service.

The food was average across the board, bar the steak cookery which was well below average. My “medium-rare” steak actually ended up being medium-rare, rare and well done all at the same time (each part of the meat was cooked differently!), something I’d not yet seen before prior to this meal. The sauce with the steak was basically just butter and the tiramisu was not a tiramisu, but rather a pot of cream.

The service is what really upset me though as we were treated very strangely from the moment we sat down. My boyfriend and I are both black and in our early twenties, which might explain why we were almost being “watched” whilst eating…

It was incredibly unfortunate to see - as soon as our spoons touched the bottom of the dessert jar, we were called over to come and pay immediately. The restaurant was not full, nor close to closing, so we found the surveillance and rush to get us to pay to be rather strange.

There was also a waiter training a more junior member of staff that evening and humiliating him in front of everyone, raising his voice when the staff member got something wrong. This made us feel even more uncomfortable.

Overall, we had a bad experience at Brasserie Madeleine and would not...

We found ourselves in Tours on a cold, wet October night and needed somewhere to eat, and found Brasserie Madeleine on the main street, and it looked like they had tables free so we went in.

The lady that greeted us was very nice and seated us with no problems even though we didn't have a reservation.

On oddity is that the menu is only in French, which does seem a little strange for a place which seemed to have so many tourists in it, using their phones to translate! Whilst I know there are plenty of places that don't translate anything, the restaurant does have a touristy feel so you'd think they might have made that service allowance to do a duo lingo one!

There's a really good choice of fish and meat dishes - as well as a really random sauerkraut section - and we had the mussels, fish and chips and chicken burger.

It was all really nice, the service was great, especially the gentleman from Haiti, we also had some desserts which were a bit meh - the creme brulee didn't have the crack on the sugar for example. They all felt a bit unloved.

It's a solid choice for anyone needing a good meal. Was it wow? No. But not everything has to be. It was just a perfectly nice meal but nothing to be super memorable, and...