Cafe d’Alsace

I'll admit that our experience is an outlier and could have been influenced by the fact that we dined on Labor Day. This could have been the "B Team." The food was fine. It was the service that was disappointing. We were greeted by one waiter, then service somehow switched to another waiter. Shift change? Cocktails ordered and arrived, dinner ordered and we waited. When we realize we hadn't ordered wine I called the waiter over and asked for the wine list. It came, slowly. It's massive by the way. Then food came. All was well prepared and presented. About 3/4 through eating our mains, I mentioned to our party that we hadn't gotten our wine. A minute later, it arrived and we almost said, "too late, we're almost finished" but opted not to cause friction. Since this was a celebration, we went the whole 9 yards for dessert. I asked whether they had Calvados. The waiter was puzzled and wasn't sure. They said they had, Amaretto. I asked if they could give us a list of digestifs to choose from. When few minutes later they arrived with a glass of Amaretto, I explained that no, we'd asked for a list of digestif's. They disagreed with me and said I'd ordered an Amaretto. So again, not to cause friction, we accepted the Amaretto. Sitting there, waiting for dessert, looking at the bar, I couldn't make myself believe that a French/German bar only had Amaretto. I went to the bar and asked for a list. The bartender handed me the wine list that had probably 8 or 10 listed. I brought that over to the table and we chose the Calvados that I'd originally asked for. The manager came to the table (maybe tipped-off by the bartender) and asked if they could help. After explaining the situation, they kindly brought us 2 glasses of Calvados, compliments of the house.

The waiter wasn't well trained. Blame management for that. The only thing I'd fault them for was the attitude when I suggested they made a mistake and we had asked for a list not a glass of Amaretto. In a situation like that, it should be second nature to admit the error (whether you believe it or not) and bring the list. That's not training, that's common sense an courtesy.

We'll give it another go -- but the celebration was dampened by the server.