Brasserie Du Parc — Restaurant in Houston

I've never encountered a restaurant that went from a 5-star experience to a 1-star experience from a first visit to a second visit, but this place managed to pull it off.

I took my wife here last year and she loved the place so much that she couldn't wait to come back. This year was a complete 180 from last year. They seemed to be either overbooked or understaffed, probably both.

Food took forever to come out. About 50 minutes after we ordered, we asked the waiter about the status of our entrees. He let us know that the kitchen was behind. He sounded frustrated. We never saw him again; he completely disappeared and while we thought we saw him around, he never stopped by our table.

We proceeded to see random people running items from the kitchen out to various tables. They weren't the waiters covering those tables. I'm not sure if they were kitchen staff, managers, dishwashers, or what. They all seemed frazzled and rushed. Of course, none of the food was coming to our table, but we clearly won't the only ones encountering delays and poor service.

At about 70 minutes, and now no waiter, we gave up and went to the host table. We asked to cancel the rest of our order and offered to pay for what we'd already received. The host went to get a manager, but another lady came out letting us know that the manager was tied up facilitating in the kitchen and was trying to offer alternatives to us leaving.

My wife was ready to leave, but I saw one of the random employees drop two plates at the table we'd abandoned. I suggested to her that it might be better to just finish our already-delayed meal rather than waste another hour going to another restaurant, ordering, and waiting for food. The lady at the front said she'd "take care of the bill."

The food that was brought out was a disappointed. The duck confit was clearly rushed through the cooking process, but was still pretty good. The shrimp and grits were a complete miss, though. They clearly didn't have time to get the flavors they wanted, so they just dumped a bunch of garlic butter into the dish and called it a day. My wife couldn't finish her meal so we swapped entrees midway since the excess butter was making her miserable.

The same lady (I'm guessing an assistant manager) kept offering us drinks. We made it clear we didn't want mimosas, so they started offering coffee. I don't think they were intending to come off pushy, but after a miserable 80+ minutes, it felt that way. Finally, we agreed to a couple of coffees with dessert just so they'd stop suggesting stuff and let us enjoy our food.

The desserts were... okay. Just like the appetizers and entree, they seemed to be hastily assembled and lacking the flavors we'd expect. My wife seemed suitably happy with the Strawberries Melba for dessert, but my chocolate pot de creme was... bland.

I've worked in hospitality before and I know that "I'll take care of the bill" means different things at different places, but this is the first time I've ever encountered-- as an employee or as a customer-- where that meant we were issued a bill for the full amount of the food we ordered, despite the fact that we nearly walked out due to the horrendous service. The only items that were "comped" were the coffees that we didn't even want.

My wife had previously made it clear to me that she wanted to come back here regularly, so as we were walking back to our car, I suggested this was just an extreme off day and next time would be better. This time, she made it clear that she'd be okay if we never came back again. Honestly, I can't blame her.

I'm leaving the second star on here because the first experience was so good. All I can say is that this place is no longer the amazing location that we...

The best part of this place was the atmosphere. I absolutely loved it. I researched French restaurants in Houston for 5+ hours over 3 days believe it or not, and I decided on this one after reading many menus and reviews. The atmosphere was better than I pictured. We are from a medium sized town in North-West Texas, so I was excited to try some more cultured food. I haven’t been to France in around 10 years, and I was more than excited to have some French food, and I was really looking forward to the experience. We sat by the window. Parking was a bit difficult, but not too bad. We had the escargot as an appetizer and loved it! The bread was great, and who we eventually assumed to be the server assistant was wonderful, we thought he was our server at first. He consistently, but not too often, offered us more refills on bread or drinks. Very friendly. Our server was good, he just didn’t seem as friendly to us as he was to other tables beside us. We are servers ourselves, so we just assumed it may be because we were a two person table on a date. However, we requested to hear the dinner features, and he seemed to read it from his book. There were only two features, the catch of the day and the actual dinner feature. We memorize up to 10 features per night without having to peek at our book, so we were a bit unimpressed. What really rubbed me the wrong way was when he dropped off our check, then came back 10 minutes later after we had all the cash in the book ready to go, and said he had forgotten to add a drink to our check. We just didn’t understand how he forgot to add it if we had already received the check and paid out. I still don’t totally understand it. But I didn’t complain, after all my boyfriend was paying lol. Just rubbed me the wrong way. As for the food, the escargot was good. We split the Caesar salad after seeing it on the website which looked amazing. Like I said, I did a lot of research. Our server asked if we were okay with anchovies, and we said we wanted them. I was excited to try it, and it’s a big reason we chose this restaurant because of the picture on the website. The salads came out without anchovies. We waited a few minutes for someone to check on the salads since we weren’t eating them before we decided to just walk up to the expo and ask for the anchovies. At least we got them eventually. For entrees, my boyfriend got the dinner feature filet mignon. He ordered it medium rare and it came out medium well to well done. No way to eat a filet mignon. It was topped with whatever made it “special” that was also dry and spongey. My salmon was totally dry. It may be because of the hold up on getting the anchovies on our salads. I don’t believe there was any manager, as we only ever saw the server, expo, and the server assistant. To be honest, we expected better, but to be fair, we are servers as well, so we judge pretty harshly! Lol I would visit again, but I hope our next experience is better. Our dessert and drinks were good, I highly recommend the Bonnie Prince with the earl grey...

Came here for my cousins birthday 5/3/25 Sunday brunch, it was our first time here and we chose this restaurant because we saw it on Houston’s restaurants weeks page. As soon as we got seated our waiter (wish we could’ve gotten his name, but he was Hispanic with glasses) was rude already when we were ordering our drinks. We asked for the blueberry craft mimosa and regular tap waters for everyone in the table. He proceeds to ask if we wanted tap water , bottled water or sparkling water.. again we said regular tap water .. he says okay and starts walking away, we he was walking away my cousin made a comment to us about the water and so the waiter turned around thinking he was speaking to him and right away came at him with an attitude saying “OKAY DO YOU WANT BOTTLED WATER OR TAP BECAUSE THERES A DIFFERENCE???” threw us all off guard and for the third time we all had to speak up and say “we just need regular tap water” at that point he had already ruined the experience, we felt uncomfortable but decided to stay and thought hey maybe he’s having a bad morning … whatever. He brings our water out and the mimosas which had a red color so my cousin just wanted to make sure they were the blueberry misosas and not the raspberry ones and the waiter got an attitude once again telling him “IT IS BLUEBERRY BUT WE USED FRESH BLUEBERRY SO ITS THIS COLOR, NOW IF WE BOILED IT THEN IT WOULD BE THE DARK COLOR YOU WERE EXPECTING” and walks away. Minutes later we order our three courses.. for the first course I ordered a Caesar salad , when he brings it out I noticed fish in the salad which I don’t like seafood ..and never once have I’ve been to a restaurant where they put damn fish in a Caesar salad so when he came back to the table I asked him if he can bring me a new salad without the fish because I didn’t know that’s how they did that here.. he looks at me with a bothered annoyed face “WELL IT COMES WITH ANCHOVIES SO HOW DO YOU WANT IT?? At that point I had already held my tongue back and I finally snapped calling him out asking him what his problem was because from the moment we sat down he had been giving us straight attitude for no reason when we have not done not one thing to him to act that way towards us.. I guess he wasn’t expecting anybody to put him in his place and started apologizing blaming it on how loud the restaurant was but it wasn’t loud at all. Our experience was ruined before we got our second and third course so we decided to close tab and go somewhere else. The manager there is rude and unprofessional too, seems like they all need training in customer service and how to properly talk to people.. I get its a French inspired restaurant but let’s not...