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| - I recently had the opportunity to give the new prix fixe menu a try. My husband and I went on a Monday, and had the seven course menu with wine pairings. Both the food and the wine were truly sublime. It was so much better than past meals that I've had at L'Etoile, which I always found to be good but boring and safe. If this is what the kitchen can do with a more focused menu, then the change is definitely for the better.
If this review were just about the food, it would be five stars all the way. But I think it's important to also discuss the dining experience, which really fell short, hence my three star review. First of all, the space feels like a hotel lobby. I guess it's a reflection of L'Etoile's old menu - boring and safe. It's perfectly nice, but it's bland and lacks character.
Second were the other diners and the servers. I've always known that L'Etoile is a special occasion restaurant. At $500/meal for two, which is what our total bill was with tax and tip, the average Madison diner can't afford to eat at L'Etoile more than once or twice a year. So I shouldn't have been surprised that the other diners there the night we were were mostly special occasion diners. However, what did surprise me was the total lack of dining sophistication. These diners were clearly not true foodies, and it was clear that this night out was their one big fancy meal of the year. If that had been all, then good for them. But the problem was that the servers seemed to dumb down the food and wine descriptions for the entire restaurant to the lowest common denominator. It felt like amateur hour to me. I'm also not sure if L'Etoile will be able to sustain the new menu concept. As you would expect, we were there for about two hours because it takes time to get through seven courses. When we ordered the seven courses with pairings, our server seemed pleasantly surprised. That struck me as odd, but over the course of our meal it became clear that we were the only table that did go for the full tasting menu. Not only that, but two tables of diners came in, were seated, looked at the menu, and then left without ordering.
So again, I was disappointed in L'Etoile. I know that there are diners in Madison who can appreciate the concept because I eat with them at Forequarter and Papavero, and mingle with them at SloPig. But for some reason, L'Etoile isn't getting them in the door. Maybe they need to reexamine their brand. In the meantime, if I want a Tory Miller dining experience, I'll be at Graze where the food is also great, and the dining experience is better.
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