La Fin du Monde* (#244, 1/24/13) – 21
My first (and likely only) stop at La Fin du Monde was doomed from the start. I had to do some errands in the lower-Magazine area and then thought, “Hey! I haven’t been to Cafe Rani in ages and they have that great pasta dish for lunch!” So I was pretty upbeat about lunch. I have to admit, I was a little confused by the weird words on the door. What does this “La Fin du Monde” mean? Well, apparently it means that Cafe Rani is no longer there. Which stinks. In some research, I found out Cafe Rani simply closed the door one day and never re-opened, then this place jumped in.
I can’t find a website for them and I can’t really remember the menu. Put it this way, after reading the menu, if I wasn’t trying to eat everywhere, I think I would have left. I still can’t figure out what they are trying to do. I guess it’s sort of breakfast. I had no idea what most of the things were and made the mistake of saying, “Frittata? Hmm, that might be good.” Then, to avoid admitting to the waitress (very over-friendly, maybe because I was one of the only people in the place, not like Rani, another bad sign?) that I had no idea what a frittata is, I simply said, “Soo…what’s in the frittata?” And she checked and list and said it had chicken with seasonal vegetables. That seemed reasonable so I went for it.
It arrived shortly after, and it turns out a frittata is some sort of egg dish, essentially an omelet. And it’s very small. I’m okay with eggs, but I knew I was going to starve the rest of the day. And then…well…don’t you think it’s worth mentioning that, along with the chicken and seasonal vegetables, this frittata is full of mushrooms?! Good lord. It was awful. And I was starving. Essentially, I ate far more mushrooms than I’ve ever had, maybe combined, in my life. And yet I still starved. I should have just left and gone to Wendy’s.
Anyway, as far as a rating, food? I’ll go with 15 out of 50 – didn’t know what half of it was, menu wasn’t impressive and they forced mushrooms on me. Actually, due to the mushrooms, I’m dropping it to a 5. Atmosphere? That stunk too, I was the only person inside in a pretty bare place. I’ll go with 10 out of 30. For service, the waitress was ridiculously friendly, but don’t want to hold that against her too much – the main issue is that if someone asks what’s in a dish, get it right, many people don’t go for mushrooms. I’ll give a 6 out of 20. Grand total = 21. Not too impressive. Skip this place.
Oh, and one more thing. What about the name? Apparently it means “end of the world” in French. Really? That’s what you want to call your restaurant? As it was pointed out to me, they opened in late-November, so maybe they were trying to play along with the whole Mayan thing. So yeah, you have a name that is cute for about a month, then it’s just bizarre. I also thought maybe the owners really believed the world would end, so they said, “Man, I’ve always wanted to open a restaurant. Quick, let’s do it now before the world ends.” And followed up with, “Eh, don’t worry about the menu and making anything good, we don’t need to make a profit, we’re all going to be dead anyway.”
I’ve been to la fin du monde several times and have always had a great experience and enjoyed quality food and drink that is all made on premise. If you don’t know what half of the items are on a very straight forward menu perhaps you should learn more about food before trying to advise people on what to eat and where to go
Good points, Mike. I was probably too harsh in this recap – it’s always tough to recap a place that you only go to once. The main issues here were that it replaced a restaurant that I really liked, and that the waitress ignored the fact there were mushrooms (and a lot of them) in the dish I ordered. Plus it barely counted as a meal. If somebody is going here, I am thinking they need to be going for brunch and planning on drinking a lot.