Bistro D'Hélène — Restaurant in Idaho

We were at the co-op and noticed this place today and was excited to try it out. Do not get fooled by the amazing looking photos posted by the business. It’s the complete opposite of a “French Bistro”. We came midweek shortly after they opened and there were only 2 other 2-tops in here.

Service was a 2/10 (took five minutes to get menus, never was checked in on throughout the meal until she was flagged down or she was bringing us something. Could tell she was either inexperienced or did not care at all.) Food was a 4/10 (Croque Madame saved it from being a 1/10) Ambiance 5/10 (sorta cute I guess, but carpets are so disgusting and covered with food and who knows what else, they definitely don’t vacuum every night. The bathrooms also haven’t been cleaned in a while, garbage overflowing even though restaurant just opened an hour before we came, toilet/floors/sick filthy…)

Started with a Ham & Swiss croissant which was obviously microwaved. We had to saw at it to even cut it open, and biting into it was almost impossible. Reminded us of a frozen croissant that was reheated too long.

The Asparagus Salad was just raw, uncooked asparagus, two big pieces of burrata and some cooked tomatoes with a drizzle of oil and vinegar maybe? There was no flavor at all, no bread or anything for burrata, just an odd ‘salad’. Definitely should be under appetizers & come with something.

Croque Madame was the saving grace for this review, it was actually pretty good (outside of the slightly still raw egg served on top.) If the egg was cooked a bit more this would have been a great dish.

We asked for a side bread to go with the burrata and the check whenever she had a second (considering how slow everything else took we just wanted to have that ready to go when we were ready to pay.) She brought both out, and asked for our card. We still have full plates of food and didn’t even get to look at the check since she had just dropped it. The tip options were 20%,23%,25%…. We’ve both worked and grew up in the food industry and always tip well, but the fact that 20% is the starting option with rough service, uncleanly restaurant, and mediocre food…. I hope the owner sees this and uses this to improve. This place could have sooo much potential, but currently is a place you wish you never spent...

This hands down was the saddest dining experience I have ever had. After hearing so many amazing things about this place, we made a reservation about a week in advance for Thanksgiving, highly looking forward to the menu because of some allergies. About two hours prior our reservation we get a call letting us know that the oven malfunctioned and they would need to move our reservation to a sister location. Understood! Things happen. Upon arrival we were sat at the bar, letting us know they were unable to serve us until they moved all the food over. We ordered three drinks off the menu and told only one was available. We tried to order an appetizer, but were told we needed to wait for our reservation. This sister restaurant had a full book of reservations they were serving on top trying to accommodate the moved reservations, causing both sets of diners to wait abnormally long. They started to bring in all the food, a bunch of uncovered pans and warmers unloaded out of a car. After waiting at the bar for over 1.5 hours we were finally sat. We were told that most things on the original menu were unavailable and we needed to order off this current restaurants menu. Because of this the diner with food allergies was unable to order. We ordered an appetizer, three meals, and a bottle of wine. The appetizer never showed and the bottle of wine showed up half way through the meal. When checking out we asked for the receipt, as the total felt substantially higher than it should have been ($300!!!!) and was told they were out of receipt tape and couldn’t provide us a receipt but they were “sure” it was correct. We also asked for three pieces of cake to go, and had to physically track down the waiter to get them after waiting for 25 minutes. He left, and grabbed our cake ungloved, out the back of a car. Honestly, I hate to be this person, but I feel absolutely ripped off, deceived and that this establishment was not able to accommodate everyone given the situation, but still proceeded to keep reservations to not lose income. The service, the food, the ambience, I really wish I could have $300 and my...

Quite possibly the worst dining experience I've ever had. After walking in and being assaulted by acrid smoke, we should have left but the place seemed cute and the server/host seemed very welcoming at first. We ordered drinks and an Arancini appetizer. We got our drinks and after 20 minutes of waiting, asked about our appetizer and were told it was coming out very soon. She then asked if we wanted to order a main, when we replied "No, we don't have the time to wait around here all day," the server was not having it and proceeded to just ignore us. When she finally brought food to another table we acquired again about our appetizer, she became incredibly rude and informed us that she put our order in 23 minutes ago and there were other orders to be made before ours. At this point we got up to leave, the server said she'd take care of us up front but my boyfriend put the kibosh on that as we never got food, he didn't drink his wine and had terrible service.

I have never walked out of a restaurant like this before, but this was warranted. My main question is, is the chef back there preparing one thing at a time? Doesn't seem too efficient. The three other couples in there also had quite a wait for their food. Definitely wouldn't recommend and will...