Fraiche
Culver City, CA 90232
Phone: (310) 839-6800
05/17/2008 Posted by firelight215
I made a reservation for my husband's birthday dinner through the restaurant's website, and received a confirmation phone call. When we arrived for the reservation, we were told (shouted at, actually) that our reservation had been 30 minutes earlier, we were no-shows, and they'd given away the table. Despite showing the owner/manager/maitre d' our confirmation and explaining that we'd gotten a phone call from the restaurant confirming the time, we were screamed at and told that he "never lies," that we must have misunderstood the phone call, and that he was not responsible for the online service. The hostess, who was slightly more sympathetic, gave us the phone number for the online reservation service, which we called. And whose rep told us that the restaurant had changed our reservation earlier that day (and not told us). We handed the phone directly to the owner, who proceeded to scream at the customer service rep for the reservation service... Finally, after about 20 minutes, he came back and shouted at us that he was going to give us a table (as if we should be grateful), but he wasn't happy about it. I could have cared less at that point, but it was my husband's birthday, and he wanted to try the restaurant. So we took the table, which should have been ours in the first place. After all that--the food was fine, fresh and pleasant, if a little boring, although admittedly a nice change from all the other French restaurants that tend to over-salt their food. The dessert was lovely (the only dish I had that seemed truly worth the hassle). The waitress we had was similarly lovely. But I can't say I'd go back. There are a lot of restaurants in this town where you can get great food and great service in an environment that's classy enough to not employ an abusive maitre d'.
Pros: friendly wait staff, great desserts
Cons: an appallingly poorly behaved owner; need to fight to keep a reservation
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