Michele’s — Restaurant in Washington

I had an extremely disappointing experience at Michelle's during Restaurant Week in August. Right from the start, things went downhill. We were seated by a waiter instead of a hostess, which was quite unusual. During our meal, I received a phone call from the restaurant, which I couldn't answer because we were dining. Later, I found out they thought we hadn't show up because the waiter didn't mark us as present.

I immediately called the restaurant to rectify the situation and avoid a no-show fee. They assured me that I wouldn't be charged. However, to my shock, I was charged a $50 no-show fee at midnight that night. The following day, I contacted them again, providing my reservation confirmation and no-show fee receipt, and was promised a resolution.

But after a week, I heard nothing back and didn't see a refund. Over the next two months, I called five times and sent multiple emails to the manager, Angela Bray, who never responded to my emails. Each time I called, she assured me the issue would be fixed. In my last attempt to get this resolved, she stated that she would email the chef about the problem, which made no sense to me as a no-show fee should not be a duty of the chef. When I asked to be cc'd on the email, she refused, claiming she didn't want to share the chef's email. Even offering to be bcc'd was declined, though she assured me the problem would be resolved by the end of the week, which never happened.

I reached out to the company Resy, the third party booking services to see if they could assist, but they were not able to help because the charge comes directly from the restaurant. I am trying to dispute the charge with my credit card company. This experience has been nothing but frustrating and unprofessional, and I strongly advise against dining at Michelle's based on their poor customer service.

It is unfortunate that their service is so unprofessional because the ambiance of the restaurant is nice. Although the server was not very skilled in describing the dishes and I personally did not like the trout that I got. My friend enjoyed her pasta and the craft cocktail we're on point. But these small things were not enough to redeem the restaurant for the very low quality of service...

My experience at Michele's was unmatched. Three of us went not knowing the recommendation was for shared plates, but I love dining that way and was glad we did as it gave us the opportunity to try more things. I started with the blue drink (it's not called that but they'll know what you're talking about). I didn't expect it to be quite so blue (or blue at all) but it was Electric when it arrived and I didn't have high hopes considering what a drink that looks like that usually tastes like! Really the only way I could describe it was: It doesn't taste blue! And that's what my friends said too. The mezcal really came through and it was tasty. We switched to a bottle of wine with dinner though there are several other cocktails I'll try in the future. For food we had oysters, the deconstructed lobster salad, the truffle flatbread (added ham per the servers recommendation), "chips and dip," crispy white sweet potatoes, scallops and pork crepinette. All was good - my favorites were the flatbread, chips and dip, sweet potato and lobster salad. I went intending to get the crawfish linguine when I thought we were each ordering our own entree and would still like to try that. The pork I could do without; certainly not bad, but it was more like a meatloaf and not what I was expecting. The one surprising thing was how strong of a reaction we received when we asked if we'd ordered enough food - a very forceful and quick (seemingly without thought) NO which especially in retrospect felt like something of an upsell. It was fine and our waiter was pleasant and knowledgeable, in fact I quite liked her overall...just very definite in her conversation (equally so when recommending a red wine when we wanted a white since we had more seafood dishes than meat.)

I could definitely see coking for some cocktails and chips and dip at the bar. (Don't know if they do a Happy Hour but that would certainly be a cherry on top!) My only disappointment was that we had to rush off to a show after dinner so no time for the...

Almost everything we had at Michele's was disappointing, except for the shrimp cocktail which was decent.

To start, they were out of five of the eight cocktails on their menu. One of the cocktails we ordered didn't come until after our appetizers arrived and the other one didn't come until our main course was served. The service was not great, we had to flag down our server multiple times throughout the evening to take our order and get the check. The drinks we had were nothing impressive. The espresso martini had strong alcohol fumes and weak flavor, and the Paloma was nothing special.

We ordered mussels and they clearly had not been cleaned properly because they had so much grit that we were crunching on every other bite. We had to send them back to avoid chipping a tooth. The beef bourguignon was bland and had a layer of oil that had separated and settled on top of the mashed potatoes. The mushroom cavatappi was okay but the sauce was very watery and parts were extremely salty (and my partner personally prefers food on the saltier side but this was excessive). We ordered crab cakes and they were cold in the center! So those were sent back as well and we received new one, which were mushy. Only twice had my partner sent anything back, but twice in an evening is unheard of.

This is a smaller aspect, but we were seated right by the kitchen in sort of an awkward spot. We were just watching servers roll silverware from behind and seeing busboys run food out and dirty plates in. Not the best ambiance, I wouldn't recommend sitting near the back area of the restaurant.

Overall this was an extremely disappointing and underwhelming experience, for the prices you would hope that the food would at least be fully cooked and safe to consume. We will not...