Restaurant review:
We’re locals, and we’re in need of an event at fine dining restaurant for my wife’s 40th birthday so we tried the restaurant beforehand by booking dinner.
We were welcomed with a glass of non-alcoholic sparking. The setting is beautiful, however we were the only ones there for the evening. The service was attentive and from a distance - which meant that we could enjoy each others company.
The music suited the setting, and the wine list was impressive - they even had a few household favourites. This is where delight ended, and regret began.
The hero of any restaurant experience is the food. Here, it was the villain.
If I’m paying R695 for 2 courses, or R895 for 3 courses, my expectation is that the food is prepared in a well trained kitchen.
I ordered my fillet medium rare, and it came well done. My wife ordered hers medium, and it was medium well - she settled and ate it. I sampled both and they both lacked seasoning. I sent mine back. The server and management were apologetic, heard me out, and acknowledged what I said. A replacement arrived and it was burnt on the outside, and raw (not blue) on the inside. I wasn’t prepared to waste my time any further and asked for the bill turning our 3 course meal into 2 courses.
A casual Italian restaurant less than 800m nearby charges R235 for their fillet and it is seasoned well, and cooked perfectly. If you look at their parking area on a weekend afternoon, and evening, and compare it to Le Manoir’s, you can deduce that the latter is either closed, or not a popular choice. If I pay R300 per course, I’m expecting my food to be prepared by a trained, and experienced chef. This is definitely not the case. It wasn’t just the main meal, my wasabi avocado did not have any hints of wasabi. The defence was that some people don’t like wasabi - well, then don’t order the wasabi avocado. It’s in the name after all. I’ve had wasabi parfait before which had strong wasabi flavours and without the burn. The difference was a trained, and experienced chef.
We returned for brunch a week later to see if it would be a better experience but it cemented our decision: Le Manoir needs new kitchen staff despite the new owner’s purchasing the venue from the Morrell family.
Why? 1 piece of ham in my ham, onion, and mushroom omelette. When I showed my server, she spoke with the kitchen and they overcompensated by bringing out a ramekin of ham - they could have added 1/5 of that ramekin to my order and I would not have said anything.
My wife ordered the Eggs Benedict and it tasted cheap, and lacked hollandaise sauce. Woolies makes a better English muffin, this tasted like it was bought from PnP.
The venue is beautiful, the service is wonderful. The cutlery, crockery, and plating is well suited to the setting. I tried to love this restaurant as Northcliff needs more non-franchise restaurants but I couldn’t.
Lucy is a wonderful host, I’d hire her to work in my business to interface with customers but she’s the assistant manager, and she’s not a chef so she can’t fix what’s really broken.
No photos of the steak as we didn’t expect to do a review. Also the steak was cooked during weekend where we had load shedding and this venue does not have backup power.
