1818 Bistro — Restaurant in Saint Charles

My sister, daughter, niece and I were having a fun day of shopping along Main Street and as a special treat decided to try 1818 Bistro which looked charming from the outside with the terraced enclosed patio area.

It was around 1:45 PM on a Tuesday when we approached the outside seating hostess, who seemed annoyed with our inquiry to be seated. She did not hide her displeasure with encountering another customer and basically said we could wait if we wanted to.

At this point, I had a bad feeling and thought about walking away, but we were hungry and so decided to wait it out. Once seated, we placed our drink orders which came in a timely way and then gave our food orders. This is were the normalcy ended. From this point, we waited until 2:40 PM until one of the four meals was delivered to our table. Then, about 10 minutes later two more meals arrived, followed by the last around 5 minutes later. So basically we had waited 45-60 minutes for all of us to have our food. There were absolutely no apologies, in fact our waitress seemed to be avoiding us. Meanwhile, our drinks were not refreshed and my sister and daughter had to use the restroom inside, which had no soap and trash all over the floor. We noticed by this time that my niece's food, chicken stripes, was burnt, and asked for it to be replaced, the only complaint we had made at all. They did replace it about 20 minutes later with a satisfactory meal. My sister's BLT had bacon that was fatty and limp. She had to spit three mouthfuls of uncooked bacon out on our shared napkins because the waitress was nowhere to be seen and we could not request more. After all this, I thought I might need to grab a different waiter just to get our bill paid, but our waitress did finally appear to collect our money. Lol We thought that maybe the inside of the restaurant was super busy and that may be the reason for the harried wait staff, but the building was strangely empty and outside there were only about five tables with small parties being occupied, so we were not able to account for what was happening. I still left a 20% tip, but will Never go back! Truely a big downer to our day and left feeling angry and taken advantage of instead of it being the treat it should have been. To top off the experience, later that evening, several of us had...

A very disappointing experience. I was excited to go somewhere we hadn’t tried yet. It was sunny & a little hot but they had fans and on the patio so we sat outside. I ordered the “8oz sirloin, served on French bread.” You get a side with that. I was too hot to eat fries with a hot sandwich, so I ordered a side salad. I didn’t mind paying the $2 up charge, when I saw that the salad included “Mixed greens, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, egg, shredded cheese and croutons” What I got was super disappointing. It was on some sort of toasted (like toaster toasted not toasted on the griddle) white, thin sliced bread (maybe Italian bread?). I was expecting the salad to come in a bowl on the side. I was expecting and looking forward to cucumbers. It was such a warm day and crisp cucumbers would have been perfect. There were no “mixed greens” it was all iceberg, with a pink tomato wedge, shredded cheese, and a bunch of red onion chunks. There were no cucumber or croutons which I had been looking forward to. It was also served on the same plate as my sandwich and was eaten in a few bites. This was absolutely not worth a $2 up charge. The steak hadn’t been seasoned and the bread was so dry, I had to keep gulping down my iced tea, which was never refilled. I ordered the steak medium and expected there to be at least some pink inside and there was none. That’s fine. It was a thin cut of steak. I gulped down my iced tea because everything was so dry (the steak was juicy just more done than I expected) and the waiter didn’t come back until we had finished eating. I was practically choking trying to finish the dry, unbuttered toast the steak was on, when it was supposed to be served on French bread. I thought they’d have those cute little loaves of French bread, like Magpies does, down the street. My husband got a Ruben and the same disappointing mini, not even side salad. This was not worth the $50 we paid for 2 sandwiches, 2 iced teas, and iceberg lettuce tiny salads without most of what comes on a side salad. We never got checked on, after the food came out. We were not the only people eating on the patio and it wasn’t crowded. There were only two other tables that had people sitting at them, so six people total on the patio....

My experience at 1818 Bistrot was so unbelievably bad that I feel obligated to warn others … especially if you’re unlucky enough to be sat in Sean M.’s section.

My boyfriend and I came in for lunch at 1:55 (only know the time because I was looking up when others opened) and were greeted with what I can only describe as complete indifference. We asked about the specials and Sean told us they were out of all of them. Not a great start, but okay. I asked for a moment to look over the menu and he literally huffed and walked away. Already feeling unwelcome.

He disappeared for ten minutes before finally returning to take our order. We tried ordering two different beers, both of which were apparently out. Each time he left and didn’t come back for over five minutes to tell us that, leaving us to stare at the wall and wonder what we did to deserve this level of service.

Then came the kicker: we waited nearly an hour for our food. And by 2:48, Sean had returned to tell us — for the third time — that something else we ordered was out. You read that right. We were sitting there, waiting for food that was never even being made. At no point did he check in, apologize, or offer any solutions. Just excuse after excuse, delivered with the enthusiasm of a DMV employee on their last day.

I’ve never encountered a server with such an apathetic, dismissive, and downright careless attitude. Sean M. made what should have been a nice lunch into a frustrating waste of time. If you value your time, patience, or mood do not sit in his section. Honestly, just go somewhere...