2nd Street Bistro — Restaurant in Livingston

I was really hoping for more from this place. If Bourdain had gone here, it must not be too bad, right? Well, we finally bit the bullet and reserved ourselves a table online, anxious to try a steak or pasta from the menu.

Arriving about twenty minutes early, they were still able to seat us. That was a plus, but it foreshadowed the fact that not many people were dining there anyway. When our waitress showed up, she had asked if we have ever dined on a Prix Fix night. What is this Prix Fix? Apparently it's a night where they serve a five course meal and the regular menu is unavailable.

Okay, I wish we would have known beforehand that our meal would be determined for us. Nowhere online, on their website or Facebook page, does it say anything about this Prix Fix. We decided to stay and try our luck, anyway. Bad idea.

Every single course was sour beyond belief. Two days later and my tongue still hurts. The first course was a smoked salmon gnocchi with a tart lemon sauce, the second was a tart rhubarb soup with goat cheese and almonds (absolutely terrible), the third a crab salad with a manchego cracker and tart vinaigrette (the most edible of the five), a shrimp and scallop main course with a tart chili sauce, and finally a tart strawberry lemon sorbet for dessert. I almost wonder if they had to use up a bag of Sour Patch Kids.

I would have forgiven the lack of notice about the Prix Fix had the food been decent. Aside from the soup, it really wasn't terrible. It just wasn't really that good. And, nothing on the Prix Fix was anything we'd ever order off a regular menu.

I guess the saving grace that allows for two stars was the service and a somewhat reasonable price of $35/person. It's just too bad we had to spend more on a second dinner since the portions...

We really wanted to love this restaurant but unfortunately it fell way short. The reservation process was easy enough; submitted a reservation request early in the week and got a response a couple hours later to confirm.

Upon arrival, the maitre d'hotel gave us a lovely backstory about the table. The fun story made us feel quite a bit better that we were placed right next to the front door, one table over from the toilet and an easy earshot from the staff gathering area, despite there seemingly being other available tables.

The appetizer, escargot topped with a puff pastry, was amazing. The soup, butternut and duck, was really tasty. But then the salads came; one was fine. The other, not fine. The lettuce had not been washed properly. Small pieces of grit in it. The entrée, fish, had the same frisée type lettuce on top of it and again, little pieces of dirt in the lettuce that would spoil even the best tasting of dishes. Aside from the small pieces of grit, the fish wrapped with prosciutto wasn’t delicious at all. None of the flavors really worked with the others. I ended up pulling the prosciutto off and only eating the fish as to not leave just as hungry as when I arrived. The fish was edible but not something I enjoyed. The desserts were fine, not bad at all but very unremarkable. Actually it’s a few days later that I’m writing this and for the life of me, I can’t even remember what either dessert was.

Bill came to $280 for two people, that included a wine flight for one person and a Coca-Cola for the other. The wine flight was remarkable which is the reason for the second star.

It was nice change of routine to head over to Livingston for a Saturday evening but we won’t be back to...

I had been to the Bistro 3 and a half years prior to 9/9/22. It was a wonderful experience all the way around. I was visiting friends who are local Livingston, MT And business owners in the community. I came to visit again and I suggested we go back to the Bistro. They had not eaten at the Bistro since Covid. We all went back and we sure wished we had not. The food was very good, but Lauren the server treated us like trash. The complete attitude and cold disregard was palatable with a superficial kind of smile to completely dropping into disgust as she would walk off. You have to login online to make reservations, so we did for 7:30- they set us for 8:00 PM. We Don't know why Lauren had such a foul attitude and treated us with complete disdain. Set menu at $85, we ordered wine, mixed drinks, and we dressed pretty casually. One of us had just run the in town 4.06 mile Night Owl Run. $435 bill. Only Tipped $85, which we usually would tip more, but our second thought was that we should have tipped much less and explain to the manager, which my friends know. - after a few drinks, we thought they would not have an open ear to our...