Autre Monde Cafe & Spirits — Restaurant in Berwyn

We had a reservation on a Saturday night for my birthday. We had eaten here 2 or 3 times before and it was pretty good. Unfortunately our evening was a series of unfortunate events that completely ruined the night.

First of all we had reservations on a Saturday night so we expected it to be busy. However I did not expect it to be shoulder to shoulder and the tables to be so crammed together that I had to slide across the 1st chair to get to the next so our party could sit. Not too mention the people behind us kept bumping into us because there was literally no room.

When the waiter came we told him we were planning to order the Wagyu steak and asked which wine he would pair with it. We talked about options, he made a recommendation, and we ordered both. About 5 minutes later he returns to the table and tells us they switched the steak option from Wagyu to a NY strip, but that the price was the same. As far as I'm concerned there is no comparison and I'm definitely not paying the same price for a strip as a Wagyu so I cancelled the steak and wine since we would not have any red meat to pair with it. The waiter became agitated, said that they already started pouring it and became rather upset when I reasserted that I would not need the red wine. As if it was our fault they weren't serving what we ordered and didn't tell us.

At this point the evening was pretty much ruined. Shoulder to shoulder tables, super loud, and now the waiter is giving us grief for their issues. We should have left but since it was my birthday we were determined to enjoy the rest of the food we ordered and enjoy some yummy food.

The first thing to come out was the bread service and the Croquetas. As the waiter placed the croquetas on the table he told us to be careful because it was super hot and it would burn the roof of our mouths, like hot pizza. We each took one and we could tell they weren't hot. When I took a bite mine was cold. Not hot, not warm, but cold. The rolls in the bread service were super basic, also cold, and I wasn't even sure they were homemade as advertised. They were most flavorless but I did get a mouth full of salt in the last bite, I figured they must be homemade and not mixed properly.

The last dish to come to the table was the Lamb shoulder. It was barely warm when it got to the table and was mostly fat.

At the end of the night we paid more than $100 for cold food and were starving when we left.

Maybe they were just having a really bad night. However with so many issues and excellent options close by we...

Four of us went for a little celebration, and were really looking forward to the evening. We had been before, and enjoyed the food. While the food is good, the service and ambiance is not a fine dining experience. The table setting has no cloth, no candle, no bread, no bread plate, not even a place mat, hard chairs, and just a single knife and fork. We ordered appetizers and enjoyed them, but when the busboy took our plates away he told us to hold onto our saucy dirty knife and fork. There was no place to put them but on a bare table, so we just held them in our hands! When our entrees started arriving, they came one at a time, even though we told our waitress that we each wanted an entree to ourselves. Two of us ordered the same thing, and those even came out five minutes apart! By the time three of us were served, the fourth entree of trout was no where to be seen. Our meals were getting very cold, so the one waiting for the trout told us to go ahead and eat! We finished our entire meal, sat there some more, and still no trout! After our plates were taken away, the trout came out! We mentioned to the waitress that the meal was very poorly timed, and she whipped back that most people share their meals, so it just comes whenever! (Seriously, it takes five minutes to cook trout!) Sarah was our waitress, was dressed in blue jeans, never cracked a smile, barely spoke, and acted as if she really didn't care what we thought. We ordered desserts, and to compensate for the 20 minute wait for the trout, she took $8 off of our meal for one of the desserts, and never once apologized for the problem. The dinner was over $180 for the four of us, and was truly not the fine dining feel that we had hoped for our celebration dinner. I was so angry with the place that I couldn't even sleep. Food isn't everything when you want a nice night out. A little comfort and grace goes a long way! ( and a...

Autre Monde is only open because of the geographic location. This restaurant would not make it in Chicago. First of all, we are vegetarian, and I'm guessing that the restaurant only survives because they dip a lot of stuff in bacon. That's fine, but if you want really good, interesting, TRULY inventive food, drive to Quartino or even Davanti Enoteca. Second, the service is terrible. My husband and I ordered several small plates and the waiter bought them out one by one, staggered over the course of over an hour. It was bizarre. We couldn't really sample, because we were full before they brought out other items. The server never asked up if we wanted more wine--we had to flag another server. He randomly asked us if we wanted more pita, and we said, "sure." It took 15 minutes for the pita to come out and he had the nerve to charge us an additional $4 for pita, when the hummus had been eaten a while ago. The server later apologized when I told him the "staggering" of small plates was strange. He said he didn't want to "overwhelm" us with food. What? You can't serve 4 small plates at once? At least ask people what they prefer. What a terrible meal. Overpriced. Overrated. But one of the only games in town. That is the only reason this place has been open for 5 years. If Autre Monde ("another world") refers to mediocre food and really poor service, I prefer a different world, thank you. I wish I gave that $100 to charity, instead of spending it on basically tasteless food and overpriced cocktails, served...