Lavandou Let-down!
Oh, if I had only heeded the warning on a recent Chow post that this place had taken a nose-dive. But I only found one bad review, so we took a chance. What a waste; a waste of a Friday dinner out for us; a waste of a golden uptown DC location.
I could write a very long manifesto about what's wrong with this place, but suffice to say, everything is done on the cheap. The most glaring example of this was their refusal to turn on the air conditioning on one of the first muggy nights of the long summer season in DC. The place was a sweat box.
Portions were small beyond "nouvelle" - they were just stingy. Most of the food was mediocre and nobody in the kitchen seems to care about cold food being cold (our salads were warm) and hot food hot (my wife's dinner was colder than the salad). A big pot of moules in a creamy saffron broth was the only bright spot. The meager and poorly-presented frites that accompanied the mussels were a downer.
Lastly, one thing on the unexciting dessert menu caught my eye; Mousse au Chocolat made with honey and Lavender. Wow! Couldn't resist - should have known better. It was a teeny and almost flavorless portion of mousse with a blob of whipped cream. Honey and lavender? Absent.
Anyone having pangs of nostalgia for the good old days in DC (the 80's and 90's) when many French restaurants were taking a turn for the worse, will love this place. Everybody else, you've been warned!
HSBSteveM
May 31, 2008 06:38PM
Lavandou was once a spot-on interpretation of eating in Provence. No longer, especially when ownership changed. My last meal there was gruesome.
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Agree. The warmth of Provence seems to have been replaced by the fires of hell.
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And the owner can't understand why people don't come, and when some of these points are brought up, or new solutions, there's a fierce argument on how any suggestion would not work. The rent isn't cheap, unless they own, the competition's near (and good) and places in that block do go out of business. They'll sadly learn the hard way. Too bad, it was cute.
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