The Gruesome Inhospitality of Le Mazet, West Hartford

It takes nearly thirty minutes to drive three miles in the traffic snarling interstate 84 through Hartford, so when we finally pull onto the busy, shop-lined street housing Le Mazet, it feels like kismet to find a parking spot with ease. I navigate the chunky Bronco I’m renting between the lines and the three of us – myself, my mother, my son – climb out, dressed neatly but not extravagantly, mom in a red tunic that reminds me how good that colour looks on our pale Polish skin, my son in slender sage green chinos we snagged at TJ Maxx that I hope he wears again, and myself in my favourite black dress with white polka dots and frilly little cap sleeves paired with a high, demure neckline.

I’ve booked us the chef’s table at Le Mazet, self-described as an ‘intimate new restaurant offering French Comfort food’ served family style, in celebration of wrapping up my first semester at the Culinary Institute of America. Mom doesn’t tend to treat herself, and my son has shown an interest in cooking that I want to encourage, so I researched carefully to find the right restaurant – somewhere blending my training with simple, accessible ingredients cooked well, in partnership with local producers, yet with enough surprises on the menu to feel a little mysterious and inspirational. I thought I’d done well enough to justify the hour-long drive, but from the moment we enter Le Mazet, I know I’ve made the wrong choice.

It’s a chic little restaurant. The chequered floor, the tiled ceiling, the long, elegant bar along one wall, the music – they all create an environment I want to settle into. But the host greets us with a grim, straight face, and when he gestures for us to sit at one of the tables against the nearby wall, he doesn’t bother offering us a choice between tap, still, or sparkling water; he just says, “Tap,” and pours. I have to remind him I booked the chef’s table, and ask if this is the correct seating; he admits it isn’t, and, shortly thereafter, someone else escorts us to the right place. We find ourselves seated at a bar in front of an empty prep counter and gazing at an empty rotisserie oven. These chairs are tall, cool metal, frigid enough that my son grumbles about it and my thighs clench against the chill of them. We’re given menus (but not the tiny one displaying daily specials), and our server here is at least polite enough to proffer a selection of water.

And then begins the grind.

The bread service is a fist-sized loaf of fine but unremarkable sourdough with similarly unremarkable butter served alongside, although I’m thrilled with the saw they give us to slice through it. The grilled octopus is divine, but the way it’s presented is a little puzzling – I’m reminded of my Chef pointing out how elegant a space between the food and the curved upward edge of the plate it rests on looks. This salad of potato, arugula, octopus, and aioli fills less than half of the plate, sloping up the side and leaving one of the smoked tomatoes dangling off the edge. Between the two dishes, a sinister miserliness entirely at odds with the concept of ‘comfort food’ and ‘family-style’ lurks. I study the wine and cocktail menu with my mom, eyes drawn again and again to the salt and vinegar martini, but we seem to have gone invisible to the half-dozen servers milling about the mostly-empty restaurant; no one bothers asking if we have a drink order.

A chef’s table exists for a specific reason: for customers to feel a closer connection to the kitchen and the staff working it. I called Le Mazet to establish my expectations for being seated there, and was assured of a few things that simply didn’t prove to be true: some food would be prepped on the counter before me, I would have an opportunity to interact with a cook or the chef, and it would be a perfect seat at which to feel appreciated while celebrating a special occasion. The best we get is that at some point someone skewers a mismatched trio of chickens to spin on the rotisserie, so we at least have something to look at while waiting to be acknowledged.

When our server appears again, I order the pommes frites and a plate of harissa-dressed carrots on yogurt. They walk away without bothering to ask if I’d like a drink off the menu I’ve very obviously and openly been browsing and discussing with my mom. The cocktail I’m interested in is twenty-three dollars, includes a dollop of caviar, and it feels surreal to be having trouble ordering it.

We each have a single appetizer plate off which to eat. It is never replaced, nor is our cutlery; every dish is kissed by the taste of a previous one. In the context of other fine dining restaurants I’ve visited, this is, politely, unique. As time crawls by between les petits bouts, I give my son permission to look at his phone and entertain himself – he’s uncomfortable, cold, hungry, and no one here is interested in extending hospitality to us, so why should we bother being present?

When we order our third round of small plates, I’m finally able to request my cocktail. It takes longer to arrive than any drink ought to in a restaurant this quiet; I understand we’re being purposefully ignored, and I hate it. It feels terrible. I haven’t been able to spend time with both my mother and my son for years, and I don’t want to poison their moods by letting my exasperation show; I find things to chat about, including the three chickens growing golden brown and delicious in the oven. I smile. I laugh easily. I try not to shift around in my chair, which is somehow still cold, nor stare at the wait staff congregating behind the bar register a mere four feet to my right.

At some point, our server passes by and tosses an apology over their shoulder about how long the martini is taking – something about caviar and kitchen staff, an absurd statement to which I bite back my response and toss out a gracious, “No worries!” Eventually it arrives and is, at best, fine. The garnish is a cold square of fried chickpea called a panisse, topped with crème fraiche and a dollop of caviar that tastes fishy, not rich and briny as it ought. In the glass, the salt overwhelms anything herbaceous or floral the gin is supposed to bring. I suspect it would have been lovely as a complement to previous dishes, but, alas; we wolfed down the octopus, the fries are cold, the bread isn’t worth revisiting, and all that’s left of the carrots is a smear of yogurt.

Our plate of mushrooms with swiss chard brings the umami and some tangy acidity from the ‘salsa verde’ (from someone who lives in Texas: no, it’s not), but this is the third dish we’ve had with potatoes and I’m bored of them. We ordered our fourth, the chateaubriand, at the same time, and a plate of shredded rotisserie chicken for my son, who complains that it tastes like butter and not much else. He’s correct. I stop the one gentleman who’s been kind and chatty with us to ask what he suggests we add to the chicken, and the resultant sauce au poivre is a highlight of the evening; we dip floppy fries and chunks of mushroom in it as well, biding our time until our entree arrives.

And what a length of time it is we bide. We order at 6:24pm; the actual dish is placed before us at 7:26pm. It took an entire hour to arrive at our table. We’re waiting for the chateaubriand for so long and our service is so entirely absent that I finally stop a waiter who has been hustling back and forth to her tables in the front of the restaurant to ask if she doesn’t mind checking in on where it might be for us. Did the kitchen slaughter the cow themselves? Did they carve the tenderloin from the creature’s back as we sat in the dining room? I can’t imagine any culinary reason for a dish to take so long to arrive; I suspect our server simply forgot to put our order in, or, perhaps, hoped we’d forget we had.

Here’s another insult: our menus are still on our table when the entree arrives. No one has bothered to clear them. I’ve stacked them up neatly within arm’s reach of the register the bar staff keeps congregating near, but no one seems to care to clear them away. We just leave them there as we finally begin eating – the beef is delicious, succulent and cooked to a beautiful medium rare, seasoned just right, with a char that crunches pleasantly between my teeth and brings a much needed bitter smokiness. The asparagus accompanying it is inconsistently cooked, the crispy truffle potatoes (sigh) are yummy but I have to force myself to finish one, and the two tempura maitake mushrooms adorning the platter are delightful. I’d hoped there would be enough jus on the plate to justify swiping the sourdough through, but just like so much else at Le Mazet, I end up disappointed and let down.

When the woman whose dress and demeanour leads me to believe she’s the manager on duty asks if we’d like to see a dessert menu, I say, “No, thank you – we’ve been here for a long time already.” It would have looked lovely piled atop the drink and dinner menus, I’m sure, but my son had been more patient than I could ever have asked him to be and my own patience had worn thin enough that the only thing I truly wanted to see was the bill.

I’m horrified, honestly, by this visit to Le Mazet. It’s shameful to be treated the way they treated us. I take it personally, as a customer, as a chef, as someone who thinks about hospitality and food constantly – this industry is based on warmth and welcome. And for a customer to browse through and drive past dozens of other options specifically to open the door to your restaurant is special; whatever unkind snap judgment you might make of my family when we walk in should be hidden behind the same sparkling hospitality you’d show your own. Extended wait times between dishes can be an unfortunate reality of food service, but because of that, everyone in the industry knows how to handle them. You don’t abandon the customer. You don’t give them the cold shoulder. At no point were we so insular in our behaviour or demeanours as to imply we were disinterested in being welcomed to the restaurant and treated with care; the fault for the gruesome inhospitality of our visit lies solely with Le Mazet’s staff.

I posted to my Instagram story about the meal, and whoever handles their social media reached out to me with the sort of promptness that suggests a completely different level of training than anyone else associated with the restaurant. They were “so sorry”. They “strive to take special care” of all guests. They hope I’ll give them another chance. But they blew it, and I told them as much; I’ll never go back, even if I were a local. This wasn’t a bad meal with rough service; this was a good enough meal with hostile, dismissive service.

I’ve recently read Ruth Reichl’s “Garlic and Sapphires”, in which the former New York Times food critic writes of wearing disguises to restaurants in an attempt to get an honest look at them, and how differently she’s treated depending on the appearance and personality she’s donned. It’s a great book, full of sharp witticism and sumptuous meals, and in an early chapter, she visits the storied Le Cirque in a timid, unremarkable looking persona. The service is atrocious, inattentive to the point of offensive, and Ruth writes of it:

“I did not come here simply to eat. I came here for glamour. I am willing to pay for the privilege of feeling rich and important for a few small hours. Is that too much to ask? I feel frumpy and powerless. I may be nobody, but I don’t like paying to be humiliated. It isn’t right.”

How apt.