I had been looking forward to trying Melisse for months. I mean, they have 2 Michelin stars AND a vegetarian tasting menu. That’s my kind of place! Sadly, Melisse really didn’t meet my expectations. Reading the reviews and seeing people complain about the price at first made me somewhat annoyed. You can look up the menu and see how much it will be. Plus, it’s a Michelin-starred French restaurant, so we aren’t talking Applebees prices, here. However, I can now say that they are spot on – the food just isn’t worth what they are charging for it.
First, we were seated in a small room in the back with about 4 other tables rather than the main dining room. The atmosphere was stark and sort of lonely. I felt like I was waiting in a doctor’s office rather than a restaurant. We ordered a cocktail and a glass of champagne to start. Okay, but not great. The cocktails at Cut and Providence are much, much better. We got the tasting menus, of course. I like the idea of sort of choosing your own tasting menu. You can pick one starter, one appetizer, one main course, and one desert. You can also supplement cheese before dessert for an extra charge. The vegetarian menu, unfortunately, had only one choice for each, but you can substitute any other dish from the rest of the menu. The vegetarian menu is also $10 cheaper and comes with a cheese course without the supplement. Since it was black truffle season and I noticed they had a vegetarian pasta dish listed under their truffle specials, I decided to substitute that for my regular pasta. The rest of my menu was artichoke soup and gnocci. Well, they brought the truffle pasta first. Then they tried to give me the regular pasta dish as well… Um, I don’t want 2 pastas and a gnocci. It’s nice that they are trying, but there’s more to vegetarian cuisine than that. They did eventually bring the soup as my second course, though.
The truffle dish was the best of the night. My boyfriend had the fois gras two ways, and liked one but not the other. His lobster was way too salty, as was my gnocci. We got wine pairings, which were just okay. The sommelier was really not that good, nor that plesant. The cheese course was great. Our server gave us about 10 choices. But it was a $30 supplement, I think, for my boyfriend to get the cheese course.
Then the bill came. We don’t mind paying for good food, or paying for wine pairings, obviously. But we realized that, in addition to the $50 supplement for a truffle dish, they charged me the regular price for the tasting menu. Our server explained that when you substitute a dish, it reverts to a regular tasting menu. Even though I substituted a vegetarian dish with another vegetarian dish – and paid $50 extra to boot? Okay. I can kind of see that, but it wasn’t mentioned to us before the bill came. I know it’s $10 out of a $500+ meal, but it just seemed really petty.
Basically, I’ve been to better restaurants. We didn't have anything horrible happen to us, but our time and money is worth more than this.Try Providence, with great service, a great sommelier, and great cocktails. I won’t make a point to go back to Melisse.
Pros: cheese cart, black truffles
Cons: salty food, mediocre preparation
more