Relais & Chateaux Il Falconiere

The place itself is a five star with no doubt. Either the hotel staff and the place have everything to please. Therfore, we do relate on comments about sounds isolation in the room. We get lucky to have a neighbour one night over three we had there.

Our review is all about the restaurant. To put it short, the disappointment was as high as the expectations were.

It's not and never was an issue of price but all about the experience you have. Our was painful.

It's started with the menu written in a mix of Italian and English and with specific words related to cooking in each language you can't properly translate to French and the maître d'hôtel was unable to explain them properly.

We didn't get access to the menu before our evening. Previous we saw online were OK. This one was divided in 4. 3 menus, meat, veggie and seafood, 1 "à la carte".Although there were a catch I've never seen in a starred restaurant before : If we were two and one of us pick up the meat menu, it was mandatory for both to take the same menu. It's something I can't get over as for now. The fact was the meat menu was heavily about offal. 3 of the five dishes had either tongue, tail or beef kidney in it. Those parts aren't for everyone and, in a starred restaurant you should have an alternative for your guests but a veggie menu... so we had no choice but to take the menu "à la carte". We felt trapped and uncomfortable.

The maître d'hôtel felt like under a lot of pressure, sweating and more eager to understand our order quick than well, he interpreted more than he tried to understand and my English, without being perfect, is not that bad. It ended with several misunderstanding over the order, the wine and a bit of bad faith on his behalf.

When you put "œuf parfait" on the menu in a starred restaurant, you expect a prefect egg, not a soft boiled. When we ask the maître d'hôtel he told us it was how the egg was supposed to look like. Ok so be it...

The cheffe spent almost all the evening talking with the guests. When she eventually come to our table it last less than 30s. We'd rather preferred she spent them in the kitchen for what it worth.

Things were good of course, but the overall experience was underwhelming enough for me to take the time to write it down here.

When the most confortable part a starred meal for the customer is the cheese it raises some questions... we also decided to avoid the dessert.

There were too little of human warmth. As for the love, we went to the restaurant to celebrate our honeymoon and trust me when I say there were few but no love at all in the plate.

Is the bar saved the day ? Nope, the waiter didn't know his alcohol at all. We asked for a peated whisky and he had to bring us no less than four bottles before we eventually have the chance to have 6cl of Laphroaig served in a cognac glass... The bar was supposed to close at midnight, nevertheless, the music stopped at 11:15. We could have asked them to put it back but we shouldn't have to in the first place, not in a Relais & Châteaux.

I hope the management will take actions and not waste time justify itself by answering this comment. What's done is done. We may come back to Il Falconiere, but not to the restaurant.

As I said, it's not a matter of price but of experience. Here, if the experience had a price tag, I would have ask for a refund.