Le Bourguignon - Bèze

We’ve often visited this restaurant for lunch to celebrate our wedding anniversary. In previous years prior to 2019 and Covid , we’ve enjoyed excellent cooking, fine wines, and attentive service. In contrast, this year’s visit was a great disappointment. The cooking was sub standard and the service erratic. The wine, I’m pleased to say, was excellent. The lunch started well with apéros of St Véran, followed by a dozen snails each. Good so far, but then things went downhill. The waitress forgot to come back for our wine order. Eventually, I managed to attract someone’s attention and order a Madranges La Fussière 2019 . This was excellent beautifully balanced and velvety. For our main course, my wife chose magret de canard au cassis, which was juicy and pink, but with a over sweet, jammy sauce. I opted for filet de boeuf à point with a meurette sauce. The sauce was good but the beef was poorly and unevenly cooked. One edge not side was just about à point, but the other edge was distinctly bien cuit. I suspected the dish had been prepared too far in advance, and then kept under a hot lamp prior to serving. We shared a varied cheesboard epoisses, chèvre and bresse bleu . For desserts, we chose crème brûlée and tarte du jour. The crème brûlée was good and creamy, with a crisp sugary topping. However, the tarte pèche was a disgrace. It was solid, dried up and practically inedible. I left almost all of it. A better name would have been tarte du mois dernier! By this time, we were getting more than a little frustrated. We’d hoped to order coffee but waiting staff were nowhere to be seen. In the end, we decided to call it a day. Still no waiting staff, so I had to go into the restaurant to persuade someone to prepare the bill. There’s an inherent problem when served indifferent dishes. Do you complain and ask for a replacement? If you do, you risk wrecking a special occasion. Or do you hope that the next dish is up to the mark? The problem here was that my wife’s dishes were reasonable whereas mine main and dessert were poor. Besides, it’s difficult to register a complaint when there are no staff around! It appears that the restaurant and hotel? changed hands three or so years ago. Perhaps we should have been alerted by the menu design. The crisp white pages of earlier years had been replaced by faux medieval parchment sheets. Make of that what you will. This turned out to be a thoroughly disappointing revisit to what used to be one of our favourite restaurants. We’re very unlikely to be back.

The food was of good quality, however the service is not as we are used to in France, I would recommend that the staff is serving the clients in clean clothes, the person who served us had worked probably very hard before dinner time and we could smell that.

Nothing to say, from the entrance to the dessert it was perfect, lunch on the outside terrace shade, medium but very good reception afterwards. the menus are reasonable, the wines are varied, finally brief, bravo.

One without fault for this Sunday meal in shaded terrace; refined, hearty and yet very digested dishes! superb address where we had already come in the past; We'll go back! We've been delighted all three. The welcome is simple and warm; prices are not prohibitive; affordable wines.Very good value for money.

Refined French cuisine in a romantic setting, very pleasant welcome and high-priced wine, a perfect recipe for a head-to-head in love!