Restaurant Le Chalet du Mont-Pèlerin — Restaurant in Chardonne

We had a horrible experience here… avoid at all cost. For locals & tourists.

We stayed two nights down the road at the Mirador hôtel and decided to come eat here from recommendations of a local friend. And it was up the road.

First we got served with a COLD fondue that we had to heat up ourselves with our fire. Didn’t say anything and let it go…

However then ordered a KIDS SIZE PORTION of gnocchi for our son who is Two yrs and asked for it to be tiny we asked for 4-5 gnocchis if anything and asked for tomato sauce instead of the truffle sauce they had. They gave us this request.

Upon getting the bill we seen we got charged $22 for my 2yr old sons portion of maybe 8 gnocchis. When asking why it was so much for his plate he said it’s because he charged us half of the truffle gnocchis price. Which is outrageous since he put canned tomate sauce and not truffles on it. When your bill is $400 you think they would’ve charged us a child’s price portion at the very most if not waived the cost for 8 gnocchis.

He was so unbelievably rude and made us all uncomfortable. His excuses and attitude were extremely poor. We advised our hotel to not recommend people to come eat here and warn them of his tourist trap up the road.

The food was mediocre at best and we were invested by flys while trying to enjoy our meal which was equally as terrible. When we asked for them to open a window...

Food is good, view is incredible, but service is extremely slow, and quite psychorigid (kids menu, 2 scoops of ice cream: once your kid chooses his ice cream flavor, impossible to have a change of mind!! Going from 2 vanilla to 1 vanilla, 1 lemon is mission impossible...they tell you that it's in the ordering system and if you want a different flavor, you have to order an other ice cream...🙄

Update following the owner's reply: not only is your defensive and slightly aggressive response the image of what we faced when visiting, but so that things are clear: the dessert in the kids menu needs to be ordered at the same time as the main course. We asked for a change in flavour about 5 minutes after ordering, when the main dish had not even been prepared (considering the time we waited to get our food), let alone served. Ok, a change of mind might be a hassle, but we came mid-afternoon, terrace was 2/3 full, inside was nearly empty, so nothing to do with lunch rush and we didnt even complain about the slow service. being a bit flexible is part of what is called providing a service, which is also what we pay for when eating in a restaurant, and often what makes the difference between "just" a restaurant and a good restaurant. So if you will not accept your customers' observations about their experience in your restaurant, better not...

The view is amazing.

The service is super slow. We waited 2 hrs from the time of ordering for our fondue.

The wine service is awful. I had a few questions about the wine. The sommelier did not come despite the waiter’s request (20 min). My group and I were on a budget so we ordered the cheapest half bottle of wine on the menu.

When the wine came to our table, the sommelier informed us that he didn’t have that wine and he has selected a similar wine.

At the time of the bill, it turned out the wine (half bottle) was double the price of our initial wine. It was more expensive than some of their lower end full bottle wines. We specifically chose a cheaper wine as one of us had to drive, one had to take care of a small child, and one was on a budget.

We brought this attention to our waiter and he responded that he needs to talk to the sommelier. Sommelier said he wanted us to enjoy the experience so he selected a much better wine than what we had chosen. He was willing to give us a 10% discount which amounted to 5 CHF.

Unfortunately we had to argue our point for several minutes before they agreed to charge us the price of the...