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| - I was here today - a brunch birthday party for 14. We were placed at a large table in the front room, which was great. I know a group of 14 is tough to wrangle, so I won't dwell on the waiter service we received. I'll simply note it: the service was somewhat weird.
I thought the name, decor and menu at Celestin indicated that it was a true French-style cafe. However, when I ordered chocolat to drink (a bowl of hot chocolate that is typically served for breakfast in France), the waiter was very perplexed indeed. Eventually, I was presented with an espresso cup of hot chocolate. Not French style at all!
The bread slices, softened butter and jams were lovely to snack on while we perused the menu. Most of the guests in the group ordered a quiche with side salad. I didn't get a try, but I'm told the quiches were tasty even though they looked kind of tough and cold on the plate. The croque-monsieur looked good to me: lots of cheese.
I had the dungeness crab soup, which was crabby and mildly spicy - pretty enjoyable. I also had a side of frites and aioli. Perhaps I happened to be given the dregs of a fry-basket batch, but my entire bowl of frites consisted of broken-up end bits, no full-size fries. And, these scraps of frites were served with less than half a tablespoon of aioli. Yeah, you wouldn't want to waste any mayo on someone who actually ordered it, would you? That's $5 for broken fry fragments and a thimble of posh mayonnaise.
I guess the thing to point out here is that among the 14 of us dining today, nobody really mentioned the food during the meal. It just wasn't memorable.
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