We have dined at L'Etoile many times over a 20 year period and have always had a wonderful time with excellent, often inspired, food, and very good service. The ambience was refined and added to the quality of the experience. We dined at the new L'Etoile last week and had a thoroughly disappointing experience.
We were seated at a round booth table without a tablecloth in a location cut off from diners in the front and upstairs dining areas. The booth table was reminiscent of corner booth tables at Perkins! The server had to ask a couple of diners to hand plates to her because she could not reach over the expanse to get the plate. To make matters worse, when asked why the table had no cloth, she responded that management was considering removing tablecloths from all tables for ecological reasons and because laundry often returned cloths without stains thoroughly removed.
With the exception of a couple of mid-courses and a cheesecake dessert, all diners felt the food was not up to previous standards. The third courses were remarkable for lack of memorable flavor and the pasta with seafood was bland and flavorless. The market cut ribeye came out as a very large slab of meat sprinkled with a few frites. There was little that was subtle about the dish. The amuse, a liquified cottage cheese concoction, was the flavor highlight of the meal.
The food was memorable for lack of flavor, the service was adequate and somewhat perfunctory and the ambience was terrible due to the table. We will probably give L'Etoile another try because of our history of excellent dining experiences there. But it will not be for a very long time.