Brasserie Memere — Restaurant in Closter

3 stars- I really wanted to love this restaurant after reading about Chef Thomas Ciszak. He was a chef at several restaurants I have dined at in the past. Brassiere Memere is located in Closter NJ which with NYC traffic for me is almost 90 minutes away. I was meeting a few friends that live in New City NY and we narrowed our choices down to Brasserie Memere and Hudson House in Nyak which I had an amazing experience in the past. We got there just before 8pm and they close at 10pm. If you read any of my 400 reviews on Yelp you would be hard pressed to see me give a restaurant less than 4 stars, and many are 5.

The restaurant is located in a large strip mall which was a little unexpected. We were greeted by the hostess who had a great personality, was warm and gave us the choice of indoor or outdoor seating. It's July 4th weekend so the restaurant was slow. It is a large space, comfortable seating and a nice bar. They have a pretty extensive menu of appetizer, entrees, soups and more.

I observed several of the servers helping other tables and though everything was going to be great. Our waiter explained the specials and we ordered a pitcher of Sangria and 5 appetizers. They were the Salade Betterrave- Beet salad, Tuna Tartare, the Jumbo Lump Maryland Crab Cake, the Tarte Memere- Tomato confit, basil, mozzarella, parmesan. and the Baked Camembert-fig&hazelnut jam, baguette. We enjoyed all of the appetizers, although the pitcher of Summer Sangria was heavily watered down or had too much ice in it. It was overpriced at $58 and unacceptable to be served that way at any price.

We ordered our entrees about 40 minutes into the meal and had the Saumon- Scottish Salmon, the Steak Frites, the Filet Migeon, and the Miso based Sea Bass. Our entrees came out about 15 minutes later which was fine and everything tasted good.

After this point is where everything feel apart. Our waiter Gabriel was polite, although was not very personable. The rest of the experience was either a lack of training our he may not like the job. He did not come over at any time during the meal to refill our water glasses. Also remember it was a hot day. He never came back to ask how everything was or if we cared for anything else.

After about 30 minutes we thought he disappeared. We found him sweeping the restaurant floors and I think mopping them as well. We had to ask to order coffee, tea and desert. About 30 minutes after that we had to ask for the check. The bill was $400 and we felt that the experience should have been so much better, even if we spent half of what we did.

My friends live about 30 minutes away and wanted to come back for brunch today and just could not bring themselves to every go back based on their first impression. The one saving grace was our hostess who as we were leaving, thanked us for coming, handed us two small bags which contained 3 croissants which was a nice parting gesture. We felt so bad because she was so nice and wished she was our server.

This morning I called the restaurant to speak with their manager as I thought they should know how my experience was. I told her about all the positive points as most of the time if a customer has a poor experience they do not tell anyone and just do not ever come back. I felt that the owners put so much time and effort into their business that they should be aware. In my opinion Gabriel either needs some training on the basics or this just may not be a suitable job for him. The manager was very nice, expressed concern and said she would be retraining him. She says she hoped they have the opportunity to service us in the future, although did not invite us back or offer to do anything to make up for the poor experience we had.

I would say that based on my experience alone I could not recommend Brassiere Memere. You only have one chance to make a great first impression. There are a lot of comparable restaurants that "do it right" every time or when they are made aware of a poor experience do everything in their power to bring that customer back so they become...

My sister came in from Atlanta and wanted to try a French restaurant for Mother's Day. She chose this one. We understood that for Mother's Day, there was a prix fixe menu. No problem.

The service was really bad. I am not only talking about bad service due to a busy restaurant. I'm talking bad service where 3 out of 4 people order soup as an appetizer and the waiter comes to the table with one soup spoon. When we pointed that out to him, he came back with 3 additional spoons. (I was not having soup). We asked for bread. It arrived with no butter, so we had to ask for that. I had to ask for a steak knife for my meal. No one re-filled our water glass. The wait in between receiving courses was so long that by the time dessert was ready to be served, we were ready to ask for it to go. (I watched another table with another server and the things that I am mentioning above, did not happen for them).

That said, onto the food.

The carrot soup was meh. It was missing something, aside from salt. The seafood soup was incredible and the best thing that any of us ate for the entire evening. I had the foie gras and it was just OK. 3 people had salmon for an entrée. 2 of the salmon entrées practically looked raw. I had the filet mignon. The sauce was good, but the meat itself needed some simple salt and pepper. The sauce saved it. For dessert, we all had the lemon tarte. The pasty portion tasted old. Everyone at the table ate the custard and blueberries, and left the pastry alone.

As I left, I told the hostess that our service was exceptionally bad, and she was profusely apologetic. Would I come here again on a less "busy" day? Hmmm. I doubt it. I could excuse some of this due to the holiday. But, these weren't errors due to being busy. These were "my mind is anywhere but in this restaurant" type of errors. The food wasn't enough to distract from the...

This place just opened and i made a reservation on valentines day. The place was quite packed (both of the owners were there and seemed as most of the customers were their friends or acquaintances since they just opened). We opted for the prefix valentine menu. First of all, the service was reallly slow- we had a 8:45 reservation because that was the only one available (the place closes at 11pm).. most of the tables were empty by the time we were eating our 1st course.. but the waitress who was busy chatting and serving other bigger tables, wasnt just alert and super slow at checking on us. Husband and I would at minimum spend 15-20 mins after finishing our plates between courses waiting for our server to come by or check on us. The table next to us was giving me the eye at one point, also wondering where the server was.. The food was alright, it wasnt impressive. Then finally when it was time for our dessert, which we placed the order beforehand when ordering our food (their macarons seemed to be the highlight ). The server forgets and asks again, which we didnt mind so much until she comes back after checking with the kitchen that the macarons were all out. Shouldn't the kitchen prepare enough- it was part of the prefix dessert menu that they were only serving for that day. And there was a reason why we placed the dessert order beforehand. Anyway, the server didnt seem to care much and asked us what our second choice was (i mean at that point, you dont have a choice- there were 3 choices on the menu and of course myself and my husband were getting the remaining 2). Anyway, the experience was much lower than my expectations, I was actually excited that this place had just opened since it was just a few minutes away from my house. Will i be returning?...