Margaux Supper Parlor (Cambridge MA)

We had to give up an Oleana rez (because they doggedly wouldn’t add a 7th even though they do parties of 7 with a prix fixe menu).

Margaux seemed different and fun, and had the dubious distinction of having a table for 6 available online at the last minute — and they had no issue adding a 7th without forcing a set menu on us.

Their menu is both interesting and confusing. The concept is to have your own “tasting trio” based either on their groupings or by creating your own. (There are also reasonable wine pairings for each grouping, if that’s your thing.)

I LOVE the idea of half portions of mains, so you can get a couple of different things, because I am always torn between at least two different dishes.

However their “trios” are illogical – who wants 3 half portions of MEAT? Or 3 half portions of FISH? It would make much more sense to suggest a trio of a fish, meat, and vegetable, for example, for a balanced tasting.

Also, the idea that one needs to eat 1.5 entrees as the suggested portion is bizarre.

Anyway. Most of us went with 2 half portions from different sections (per logic). We should also have gotten a salad or app or soup to start, but the confusion of trios took over and that didn’t happen.

The food was surprisingly good despite all this.

Where they really stumbled (failed?) was the service. It took 45 mins for our server to take our food order – yes, I looked at the time. When I finally got her attention to come back, she told me she would take the food order when she came back with our drinks – NO, the whole table almost shouted in unison. Because it had been 30 mins since our drink order went in, and those facing the bar could see that the drinks were not coming anytime soon. The drinks finally showed up just before the food, so the bar was either horribly understaffed or completely incompetent.

The bread service we ordered did not show up even after the mains. Then she came back to ask if we still wanted the bread, since it had not come out and she didn’t know why. ??? One person had ordered tea at the beginning, with the drinks. The tea finally came out halfway through dinner.

The server then decided we didn’t want dessert. We ordered it anyway. Chocolate pie was excellent, as was the banana bread pudding. The cherries jubilee were… misnamed.

When we were well and truly done, and ready to leave, she decided that instead of giving us the checks, she wanted to guess who was whom from our names and return our cards one by one. ??? Also – it wasn’t not stereotyping. We put on forced smiles to get through it (with explanations such as “you have the only Asian last name!” and “you don’t look like a < insert Jewish name >”) to have it end with her soliciting us for positive reviews via a QR code because “the servers have a competition going”.

I’m going to guess we just had really bad luck with the server assigned, because other tables seemed generally satisfied. And the food was pretty good overall.

Would I recommend it? Yes, as long as you don’t get our server, don’t order drinks, and construct your own “tasting trio”. I am still a fan of the ability to order multiple mains in half portions (despite their doing their best to convince me otherwise).

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That doesn’t sound like a recommendation

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:woman_shrugging:t2:

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Did you use the QR code to leave some constructive feedback for the server? Did you tip her?

Once, in Switzerland, I refused to tip a server whose service was truly appalling. My sister (who has spent a lot of time living in the US and would automatically tip 20% even if the server punched her in the nose) and I nearly got into a fistfight over it.

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Really appreciate that you found a way to post an honest review that takes the both the negative and positive aspects into account. I get the impression that a lot of the issues you experienced were related to the server that you happened to get.

I do hope you have much better dining experiences than this one in your time here!

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Wow, that name-guessing thing to me is way over the top and really stereotyping. I would have refused to participate. I can’t believe that is something that management would approve of.

I had heard of this restaurant a while back and although I found the half portion option appealing because I both love to try more dishes and I can’t eat much at one sitting, the menu was really confusing to me.

Thanks for the report!

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The smaller portions are very appealing.

Don’t be confused by the menu – it’s actually quite simple once you dispense with their notion of trios and just treat it all like half plates.

Very liberating to construct your own mini tasting.

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The food was surprisingly good for how much variety they had to accomplish at the same time per table. We discussed that it could not have been easy for the kitchen to put out halibut, steak tips, risotto, french onion soup, etc. at the same time for the same table and served warm and (mostly) correctly cooked.

I’m sure it being a Saturday night had something to do with our service experience, though I must say that looking around the very large and completely full room, people seemed generally pleased.

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We were a large group and a 20% tip was included, but we usually “over” tip generously when we go out like this, and we did not do that. There were other hands that touched our food, that set and cleared the table, that refilled our water, and so on.

I try not to leave bad feedback that might jeopardize a person’s job unless I have a safety concern.

But it was obvious to her that no one took her suggestion of scanning the QR code to leave her positive feedback for her competition.

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The duck confit/buckwheat crepe got my attention!

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Ha! So I went to the Doris Huang/Peking Duck Lunar New Year special pop up that was hosted here last night. I’ll offer a few pictures and write up of that later this evening, but the one thing we - and I can tell many diners as well - were confused by was the service. I didn’t overhear anything as blatantly cringey as the name thing, but service definitely felt dis-organized or not well prepared. We couldn’t tell if this was because of the high volume of guests (we were full), the way the event was organized, a mishap in the kitchen that impacted the cooking of the food, or if the service was new/not well trained. Maybe a combination of those! Disappointing to know that it wasn’t a one time thing. Our food was good though, and my server was kind and empathetic, even if she was hard to find at times. It appears to only be two servers covering the whole room, but there were an additional 2-3 runners who definitely were not well trained or prepared to do much except clear a table.

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Well, I’m sorry your service experience wasn’t great either.

I guess I was there the previous night (Sat), also with a full room (and back room), but there seemed to be enough servers, not only 2. I think I saw 2-3 just in the section from the end of the bar to the back room, and there must have been another 1-2 behind me, in the front half of the restaurant.

I hope your food was good – look forward to seeing the write-up.

I tried this place a few weeks back and actually got the meat trio. All three dishes were plated with veg and other sides so it was pretty balanced in that regard, as far as I’m concerned. I also liked that the trios had built-in wine tastings, which was a nice touch that I took advantage of.

Unfortunately I think we had a similar server to the one you did; not good on that front. I also found the room to be incredibly loud. There were three bigger groups that night (6-8 people), ours included, maybe one two-top, and that’s it - but we had to yell to hear each other. (One of the other groups in particular was especially boisterous.) It felt like a really echo-y space, perhaps due to lack of bodies. I can’t recall that level of noise from prior visits, when it was Colette, but I don’t believe much has changed in terms of furniture or layout.

As for food, it took an exceptionally long time to come out and personally I wasn’t impressed with any of the dishes I sampled. The duck was the best of the three meats, for me. A couple of people in our group had the onion soup, and a couple of others the fried chicken, and both of those dishes seemed to receive much better reviews on average than other stuff our table tried. We also tried one of the banana bread puddings at the end and yours looks a lot better than the one we received. Everyone took exactly one bite and there was a large chunk remaining as we left.

The cocktail menu is really interesting. I think I’m the only person in our group who tried one - it was a tiki style drink with matcha. Very much recommended. And I should add that the bar is really nice looking. This would certainly be a good place to grab drinks, perhaps without any food trios.

The half portion thing is pretty interesting but something else especially annoying to me is that the boards they plated everything on didn’t fit when they brought them to the table; they’re too long. They had to take all of the dishes off of the boards and put them in front of us, which seemed really awkward.

All in all, I don’t feel that they planned this whole scheme especially well, and I left feeling pretty underwhelmed. But I might give it another shot in six months, if it survives. I like the idea if not the execution, and I’m definitely a fan of the location.

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Given that our drinks took 45 mins and our food showed up promptly, I’d reverse this rec :joy:

My old fashioned was aggressively mediocre.

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As Orwell observed of Dickens, that’s well worth stealing.

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[quote=“a_m, post:13, topic:42330, full:true”]

Your point about the boards made me chuckle. If you look at the thread I posted about the duck dinner, you’ll see they are reusing those boards again. I was curious why. It made sense for the trio of appetizers that you got at the start, but it was odd with the soup and the noodles. While the noodles was a good serving and fit well, the soup bowl did not.

I guess the emphasis on their menu with options of trios now makes sense why they were using them.