"Nice Place - But a disappointment"
A review of Le Gros Franck by Graham - Friday 24th of August 2007
After reading many online reviews saying how good this restaurant was, my partner and I went to try it out.
First problem was that it was impossible to book by phone. They never answered the phone, then it diverted to a mobile which asked you to leave a message. We did this, but they did not call us back.
So underterred, we just turned up. We were lucky, they had a table for us and room which was downstairs was nicely decorated and felt kinda French, the menus too were in french. The road outside was noisy with lots of Busses going past and they left the doors open (Summer) which made it worse.
The american waitress was friendly and polite, but made a big mistake by giving us the set menus which said £17 for 2 courses and £20 for 3 courses and then the blackboard with the daily specials which she saidf we could "Mix and Match". Well what does mix and match mean? - we took it that we could take a main course from the blackboard to replace one of the ones on the set menu.... this is what we did and we ended up being charged £17 for the main and £7 for the pudding, thats £24 (£7 too much due to her communication problem)
Anyway, apart from the money, the wine was god, the food was quite good. We both had steaks, different menus though, and mine was supposed to be medium to well (I expected some blood in the middle) but it was fryed to a piece of shoe leather, my partners was a much thicker steak and that was a nice quality and well cooked.
The steaks came with no chips, just 3 small sliced saute potatoes (not 3 potatoes, 3 slices of a small potatoe!) half a carrot and about 8 green beans! - My sauce was just butter garlic and parsley. French perhaps, but hardly special.
The house wine was quite good, at £11 per bottle it had a good noce, if not a little bitter.
We would recommend if you go to the Gros Franck that you just turn up at lunchtime and have a snack, but make sure you get the waitress to explain the prices properly and if your food arrives burt to a cinder, get them to take it back and re-cook it!
We will not be returning, we will stick to the places we like (Chesterton Road and the Golden Boar at Freckenham)
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