Le Citron Bistro (#241, 12/29/12) – (-60)
A little “bistro” theme for this weekend. And this is a place that I have been very excited to review. I’ll just cut right to the chase – based on my new rating system, this place receives a negative-60. It’s the worst restaurant experience I have had in New Orleans. So that’s pretty exciting and probably makes it worth visiting.
Le Citron Bistro is located on Tchoupitoulas (actually Religious), on the way to Walmart downtown, so a bit of a shady neighborhood. But it’s in New Orleans’ oldest building above Canal Street, so that’s pretty cool. You walk inside into the bar area (oh, by the way, didn’t have trouble getting late reservations on a Saturday night) and then you turn around the corner and there are a variety of rooms. We had a group of about seven, so they put us at a semi-private table – everything looks very old, not in a bad way, just vintage furniture and such, almost like an old farmhouse, again, pretty cool.
Our waitress, who appeared to be the only one working, shuffled to us and took our drink order. Which led to another cool thing – it took about 20 minutes to get those drinks. As far as we could tell, there were only two other tables of people in the entire place. I ordered an appetizer and one of us ordered soup and then she disappeared for quite a while. Maybe 20 minutes later, she re-appeared with those items. So we finally had the chance to order after being there about 40 minutes or so. Then the food made it to the table after about another 45 minutes. While the wait was brutal, the worst of it was, she just ignored us. Now and then, she would wander through to the other tables, but nothing for us. No “is there anything I can get you?” or “Sorry about the wait, we kill all of the food ourselves and huntin’ ain’t too good right now.”
Some good entertainment came when a decent-sized group came in and the woman said, “Do you have a reservation?” They said no and she said, “Sorry, but we’re really backed up right now.” One guy looked around in confusion as it was only our table and one table of two at that point. We were waving our arms and telling them to leave.
I really have no idea why this place was so messed up, but the terrible service is making me give it a negative 100 in that category. Then the food is a 25 (out of 50) – everyone agreed it wasn’t bad, although some parts were cold. This is probably high on the food, but I think we were trying to come up something to give the benefit of the doubt. The atmosphere was good – the old building and all with music playing, though being put in a semi-private area didn’t do anything for me, so I’m giving a 15 out of 30 in atmosphere for the final score of minus-60.
Please, go there and let me know if it’s not that bad.
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