Famille — Restaurant in Sisters

This is the first review I have ever posted for anything but I live in Sisters and I so badly want this place to succeed, so here goes: My wife and I went to Famille for the first time a few weeks back. We had a 7:30 reservation and were seated promptly. The staff was friendly. We ordered a drink and were immediately asked about appetizers and main course literally before we could even look at the menu. We told the server to give us a minute. She eventually brought the drinks and pushed for our orders again, so we ordered an appetizer, a salad to share, entrees, a side and a bottle of wine to have with dinner, assuming that she and the kitchen understood about timing the courses, etc. We enjoyed our drinks and appetizer and when the server brought our salad, she informed us that "the kitchen is really turning things out fast tonight and your entrees are ready", to which I replied "well either keep them under a heat lamp or make new in a bit when we are ready for them". She looked at me as if I had two heads. I courteously explained how fine dining works to her and she went away looking a bit peeved. After we had finished our salad, she cleared those plates away and brought our entrees, which didn't seem to have suffered from sitting in the kitchen. Not world class but good enough for sure. We enjoyed our dinners and the wine, and just chalked it up to an obviously inexperienced server. We decided we would do a better job of controlling the situation next time.

Which brings us to last night. 7:30 reservation again, different server. All is well as we do the usual: order drinks, and guess what? she wants our entire order right now, without us even having time to read the menu. To appease her, we order an appetizer. It comes back quickly and we are ready to order our salad, but nothing else yet because we know how this goes. It is now 8:10, and she informs us that we are their last reservation and the kitchen will be closing very soon and we must get our order in now. We agree to do that if she promises to pace it for us, which she did. I had a ribeye steak, which I ordered "rare" and my wife had a filet, ordered "medium rare". The ribeye had a little pink in the middle, between medium and medium well, and the filet was a full medium well. The ribeye was so good that being overdone did not matter, but the filet was not good enough to compensate for being overdone. From a rather small wine by the bottle list, they did not have the first two wine selections we wanted, leaving only $100 and up bottles, so we just had two glasses of table wine. We were finished and gone before the stated closing time of 9:00 and the place was dark and they were waiting to lock the door as we left.

A side note to this: On our first visit, the server asked the table next to us if they were ready to order dessert maybe two minutes after their entree had arrived. The lady loudly exclaimed "not yet!!" in a very surprised tone, and it seems as though their training hasn't improved in that area.

To be clear, the prices here are fine dining, not mid grade family restaurant. The food quality is good, as I said before, but fine dining is about food, beverage, AND the experience. A 200 dollar meal should last more than 30 minutes. We will try this place one more time and then we will be done for good if our experience is the same. If you want high quality, expensive, FAST FOOD, then this is your place, otherwise pass and go...

We tried Famille on their 4th night open and it was nothing short of incredible. The food was unreal. We are frequents places in Bend like RBC and Zydeco, but those restaurants didn’t even touch close to the flavor that our dishes had. The portion size, flavor and pricing on all of the dishes was amazing. We started with their espresso martini and their dill blue cheese martini and both were well priced and very enjoyable. We ordered the frog legs, meat balls, mascarpone bruschetta, and caesar salad for appetizers. The meat balls are my favorite dish I have ever had at a restaurant and a must order for every future visit. I am not a mushroom person at all but the flavor in this dish was so well done. Definitely highly recommend ordering! My husband loved the frog legs and we both enjoyed the mascarpone bruschetta. The caesar was the only dish I was not fond of. It was not bad but personally I am not a fan of grilled romaine. The scent and flavor is not something I personally enjoy, but that doesn’t mean someone else won’t. The caesar dressing was good just not super caesar-y but still enjoyable. Now for dinner! We had the ribeye & filet and both were cooked perfectly and the portion size for the price was nothing short of a steal. The filet is my favorite filet I have ever had. The flavor was so buttery and it was juicy and tender.. all around an amazing steak. The ribeye was also incredible. The blue cheese & peppercorn sauce were both great and the peppercorn sauce was so well balanced. We ordered a side of truffle fries & glacé carrots and both were perfect. The carrots were soft but had a little bite & weren’t mushy at all. The flavor was not too sweet which I loved. You really tasted the carrot flavor and the sauce instead of the usual overpowering sauce flavor I usually get from glazed carrots. My husband loved the truffle fries. They were an amazing portion size, crispy but soft in the middle. You could really taste the truffle flavor without it being super overpowering. We ordered 2 cocktails, 1 beer, 3 appetizers, 1 salad, 2 entrees, and 2 sides and came up under $200. This amount of food and drinks anywhere else we usually frequent would have run us almost $300 if not more. Their food, portions, pricing and everything else was nothing short of incredible. For a brand new restaurant we were expecting a long wait time and okay service but they went above and beyond!! Our waiter was lovely as well as the other staff. Just overall such an enjoyable experience. Highly recommend giving this restaurant a try because it was well worth our 45 minute commute for us to try it. Definitely will be our new...

We read all the positive reviews and decided when our family was coming for a visit from Hawaii and it being their 29th anniversary we would treat them to the new restaurant in Sisters. We made reservations for Wednesday. The server was very friendly and dinner consisted of a main choice and all extras were the side orders so we had quite a few side orders to go with our dinner. When the entrees and extras came we had several servers bringing our food which was very nice. We all had different entrees, filet, ribeye, halibut, along with beet salad , mushrooms, brussel sprouts, shrimp cocktail ( the shrimp cocktail was good lots of shrimp )scallop potatoes etc. The cocktails were very good. The only thing I would suggest is the food needed a tad more flavoring, we all felt it lacked that touch. Also when I made the reservation I let them know this was a special anniversary occasion and the person who took the reservation made a note on our reservation. I reminded the server that evening we were celebrating our sons anniversary with his wife. Unfortunately there wasn't any special little offerings at the end of the meal, that we usually get when going to restaurants in other establishments that know it's a special occasion. I realize this is a new start up adventure for the owners and I hope they are very successful and any negative feedback will only help them improve to be one of the very best...