Aur-eo-le... Ass-a-ho-le (for all you Simpsons lovers out there). This may not be an appropriate way to begin a review for a nice restaurant, but then again Aureole is not a nice restaurant. The service was about as bad as possible. From the sneaky upsell to the "Swan Room" to the short and non-descriptive descriptions of each course by our waiter to the mind-numbing half hour wait between each of the seven courses, I really cannot decide what was the worst. Actually, I will tell you what was the worst, that the food was mediocre, for an old person's palate, and made up entirely of low-cost ingredients. As ridiculous as the entire experience was, I tried to bite my tongue so the birthday people could try to enjoy their night. But at the end of four hours (we were told the tasting menu would take 2 1/2 hours. Did I mention there were only seven other groups in the entire restaurant on a Friday night?) We gladly paid the 160-200 each person and got the hell out of there, all of us laughing hysterically that a Restaurant could be so hyped, so over-priced, and so horribly awful. Well, at least we had a sense of humor about it.