Sfcarole and I have already indicated our overall dissatisfaction with Datil in another thread, but I thought that for the moment I would post in a separate thread dedicated to Datil. This is the commentary I gave when the restaurant asked for feedback (I may or may not eventually get to a course-by-course dissection of the meal on my blog, but that would be some time in the future as I’m behind in posts for the moment).
This meal was the worst I can remember for a very long time and to add insult to injury, at 188€ for one person, it was also one of the most expensive.
On the whole, the dishes were not really original and lacked and clarity and purity of flavors, in part because they often tried to combine too many ingredients. Some dishes worked better than others and those were at least pleasurable; others were just simply bleh!
And then there were the wines. I took the wine selections, in part because I was dining solo, in part because I was not sure what to expect from the cuisine. I am a wine professional and I know when a wine is commercially acceptable and when it is spoiled. I had thought the era of serving spoiled natural wines was gone. After all even the most dogged defender of natural wines, Alice Feiring, finally admitted that many of them were not good. But no, whoever made the selections managed to go out and find several truly awful wines that were cloudy in color and unpleasantly stinky in the nose and putrid in the mouth. It was interesting to look around the room to see people grimacing as they tasted the wines and often to see the next wine come to the table while the previous wine remained virtually untouched. (To be fair, there were a few wines that were decent.)
Then there was the almost condescending attitude of the staff, as though the diners were privileged to be there. No. The way it is supposed to work is that the restaurant staff is to act like it is privileged to have the diners.
Finally, it’s great to have restaurants that source locally and organically, that promote equality among the staff, that try to eliminate waste, and so on. But that’s only in consideration after the above three elements – food, wine, and staff attitude – meet certain minimum standards, and here Datil failed in all three.
Well, that frees up one meal for me in May. Actually, I had decided not to go there unless you or one of the other trusted posters went & loved it. After all, their website is about as pretentious as can be. Thanks to the 2 of you for taking the risk. Sorry it was that bad.
Ouch! Definitely not a place for me but really appreciate this feedback prior to what would have been a real disappointment. Now back to about a dozen more places to try to fit into that one canceled reservation.
Wow!! What an interesting and totally unexpected review!..and for an establishment with an equal or higher Google review rating than some of current favorites on this board…Le Clarence, Alliance, Granite, Pianovin…etc!!
Thanks for the heads-up!
Beginning with the popularity of natural wines, I developed a mantra that has served me well. I simply smile at the somm and firmly say, “No funk, no cloud, no fizz.” I realize I may have thrown the baby out with the bath water, but I have also avoided some wines I would have found undrinkable.
To a certain extend, the owner / marketing company can manipulate Google reviews, everyone can post positive reviews and the owner can eliminate certain bad reviews, need to also see the number of reviews posted.
Also note that newer restaurants hire marketing company for the first few months to boost positive reviews, so beware of this too. Chefs can cook specially for certain food writers/celebrities, and we never eat the same food as them.
I’m not saying everybody does that, some are more honest than the others, and let the bad reviews stay.
Well, as others have said, many thanks for this heads-up! It doesn’t happen that often, in my experience, but truly bad restaurant experiences are just awful in so many ways. This one sounds like a real stinker!
Interesting! I never knew owner/marketing company can get access into Google review and manipulate the postings and eliminate some of them??
Anyways, if that is the case. Then, for example ’ Geosmine ', I am surprised to see the owner would allow negative 2.0/5.0 rating like the following be left on?
"Dine in | Dinner | €100+ Total disappointment. No reliefs, surprises, acidity in the dishes which are soulless. Little favorite on the pre dessert with olives in a dessert. We had to wait the whole meal to finally arrive at an explosion in the mouth. The service is attentive, very friendly! It saves an evening at more than €300 for two. The setting is well thought out and pleasant, unlike the boss who makes you uncomfortable with his icy way of speaking to his team. In short, a bad experience that we had been waiting for for months… the restaurant has a great press agency
" Dine in | Lunch | €100+
The cliché of a bohemian restaurant in the 11th arrondissement. It’s very good but for the price, especially the dishes in terms of the quantity, it’s not there. Everything had started well with the appetizers and aperitifs, however this was the most copious thing. Slow service and unprofessional staff. Pretentious as possible
Thank you for confirming, naf, what sfcarole and I were conjecturing about yesterday: that restaurants hire marketing companies (in the US we call them public relations firms, but it’s the same thing) and that when recognized, certain influencers get special cooking.
As naf said, an owner can eliminate bad reviews, but that doesn’t mean they will. It is a credit to Géosmine that this review, one of the very few negative review out of hundreds, was not deleted. The review is also a very poor Google translation of a review written in French.
I have talked to someone that works in SEO (search engine optimization), he explained that a few bad reviews actually helped in making the overall reviews more believable and hence yielded better results in search ranking than perfect reviews.
I haven’t tried Datil and it seems clear that I never will. Before you wrote it up, I was pretty disgusted by Paris by Mouth’s shill on Substack. It seemed to praise all the wrong things.
I often get PR emails about new restaurants, but I’ve made a rule of never responding to those. Whichever way you look at it, there’s nothing good to get out of it.
