La Gare French Restaurant — Restaurant in Santa Rosa

6:00 O'Clock Reservation before the Theater and we had to hustle to make it out on time for 8:00 curtain. Wait staff over taxed, loud, food uninspired and medium quality - SO MANY HIGH QUALITY ALTERNATIVES within the area!

Atmosphere - Not sure why it's often referred to as romantic. Styling more is Alpine Suisse than Parisian or Provencial with cowbells and timbers. Seating is downright uncomfortable - Swiss chairs with straight backs and hard seats. The restaurant noise level was pretty high. Waiter twice had difficulty hearing my order and I am told I have a booming voice. Somewhat crowded Bistro style seating, but with larger than necessary tables, intimate conversations are not possible.

Service - Waitstaff was scrambling, but in the end not really that attentive. We had really long gaps of time with no service. A really nice hostess seated us, but we waited more than 15 minutes to order a first beverage - a great 2003 vintage Burgundy which was a high point of the dinner. Chef/ GM came out and asked how were were doing, but we had only just ordered wine and were waiting on our apps, salad, entrees.

Food - In general, very uninspired, tired and just OK execution. Crab cakes were good as was the Pate appetizer. Tableside Ceasar salad was a bit dramatic, but was entirely inedible. Sharp with so much garlic and vinegar that it spoiled much of the rest of the meal. Steak sat under the heat lamp too long and was smothered in a gooey, heavy sauce that did not hide the mediocre meat. Sweetbreads were OK, but had to wait for a redo because waiter did not hear my request for no cream. When fresh batch came out it had some good flavor and the sweetbreads were not overcooked. Sliced mushrooms, sliced olives Madeira and Sweetbreads. Would have been way better if the mushrooms and olives did not come from a can.

Value - quite expensive for quality of flavors, ambiance.

I'm really surprised that this restaurant has survived. There were not a lot of young diners and maybe they focus on an older crowd. It really seems like an anachronism and does not come close to the quality of food that can be had all around the county.

Would not recommend and...

Perhaps my expectations are too high when I see something claims to be a "French restaurant". The only tasty food we had there was a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and truffle fries. Minestrone soup - tasted like canned soup, we didn't finish. Salad: the only thing which made a salad palatable was a vinaegrette. The green salad leaves were wilted, and a slice of tomatoe had no taste, the type of tomatoe you will get in a regular supermarket, which are crunchy and tasteless, but have a perfect round shape. I had a lamb of rack, and my wife has a sweet bread. The lamb was edible but overcooked. In retrospect I realized the waiter didn't ask me how I like it cooked, so perhaps the joke is on me. But the asparagus on my plate was overcooked as well (mushy) and the whole plate arrangement resembled a school cafeteria, both the garnish and the lamb floating in some kind of gravy. My wifes plate didn't look any better. Alas, still hopeful we decided we might have a better luck with dessert. Per waiter's advance ordered a chocolate some, as the most popular choice. And that was a disappointment as well, it was too sweet for our taste, with the level of sweetness I expect from American supermarket bought cake, but not from French dessert. And to be clear: I'm not comparing this restaurant to Michelin star, haute cuisine restaurants (which I didn't expect it to be). I'm comparing it to a regular, no name, not touristy restaurants in Paris and to some large French companies cafeterias where I had lunches on a number of occasions. And to top it off: the free dessert which we were promised since it was my wife's birthday, wasn't free after all. But we didn't even bother to argue about it. I do need to mention that the service was good: welcoming, attentive, but not...

A memorable dinner to wrap up the last night of our friend’s bachelorette weekend ended up ruined because of the service we received at this establishment.

First of all, the food took an abnormal amount of time to get to us. We were seated at around 8:30pm, and did not get our main course until close to 10pm. We saw a number of other tables seated after us get their food faster and leave before us.

The worst part of it all was the way the staff (namely our waitress Linda) handled an ordering mixup. Their menu offers these “Steaks for 2” entrees that have 2 steaks in one order, which caused some miscommunication and confusion around our order. Mistakenly, the waitress thought we ordered 2 of the “Steaks for 2” when in reality we meant 1. After we waited the 1 and half hour wait for our food to come, we realized it was too much food and there must’ve been a mistake. We let our waitress know and she insisted that we ordered 2, so we explained it was a mistake and we intended to order 1 (each entree cost about $100 so this wasn’t something we could easily gloss over). She went back to the owner to check what to do and returned to us saying that the owner just shrugged and said it was too late. She spoke to us with an aggressive and defensive tone and even said “Don’t even start with me” when we mentioned something else that had gone amok during our dining experience.

Finally, we asked to speak to the manager and even the manager REFUSED to even come out and talk to us.

We ended up having to pay for the unwanted extra $100 steaks, which were not even tasty to make up for it. Needless to say I am never coming back here again, and I recommend you find a different restaurant to spend your evening...