LAFETE．法月 — Restaurant in Taichung

I went here for an anniversary dinner recently. I was seeking an intimate experience, not too crowded and not under bright lights. On this side of things, this restaurant delivered. The staff were professional and friendly (although it must be noted they did not speak English - which is no problem as most of the communication was conducted in Chinese).

The menus change each season, and we dined on the summer menu. Visually, the presentation of the dishes is excellent. This is an ideal place if you care more about taking photos of food than enjoying the taste. As for taste. Well, nothing tasted bad per say, but nothing wowed us either. I spent over 8000 NTD for this dinner so I expect my taste buds to be wowed but rather than a wow they just got a tickle.

The dessert saved the day. It was a mango dish that they prepared in front of you. I observed the waiter would considerately let the diners know in advance that she was about to begin the spectacle, in the event they wanted to catch the moment on video. However, when it was our turn there was no warning, she just blindsided us and started preparing it without informing us. So I rushed to try and capture the moment on video, so to preserve the memory but it was too late. I don't understand why she didn't warn us but everyone else got a warning? An amateur mistake like this on an otherwise perfect night ruins the occasion a little bit.

Most of the food is chilled or cold. Only the main meal (the steak, which was cooked as requested) was hot. Maybe it was because it's summer, which is often unbearably hot and sticky in Taiwan, that most of the dishes were cold. But some of the choices were bizarre. For example, one starter was sweet potato swimming in some sticky, warm water that I wouldn't feed to my worst enemy. It was unpalatable.

Finally, I paid extra for the special birthday/ anniversary surprise. The waiter brings out a flower and a special cake. The flower is edible and the guest is invited to smash it using a clapping action to break it into petals which fall over the cake. Well, as you can surmise from earlier... we weren't given any preparation or warning it was a photo moment. Everything felt rushed. Not only that, the anniversary cake was still hard as it clearly hadn't had time to defrost.

You pay a premium price to dine here but get a relatively poor return...

The food is good but for it's price, it should be much more better. Our dishes were served with broken piece of a beautiful decoration ( it should be served in a whole piece but one of the dish was broken). If I were the chef, I would have replaced the broken piece. This is unacceptable for a up to standard french cuisine.

The services are poor. The waitress kept on coming back and forth to confirm our orders. We are a group of six and she just tried to memories our order without marking down in writing. It ended up that she reconfirmed our order more than 5 times and unfortunately, the order was still incorrect. Very annoying to see her coming back and forth even though she tried very hard to cover her embarrassment by smiling.

The table tidy up services were also poor. It's really sad to see the place with good food but messy serving and services.

One point to add, the toilet is upstairs, not friendly for any people whose mobility is low. The waitress said that they mentioned the same when we made the booking but I didn't see any when I booked online.

Not recommend to go if you care about good services matching with the...

Loved the intimate setting. Food is alright. Some dishes were questionable in taste. The mango dessert was the highlight.

It was disappointing that the female staff didn’t give me a reminder of when to take the video when she prepared the dessert. But I overheard her give the other customers a kind reminder. So I missed the...