Well, I recently visited Lucien and I must say I was immensely unimpressed. The server forgot to mention that the portions at Lucien are "supermodel sized", even after we talked about sharing appetizers. Really! A dish with 3-4 cherry sized tomatoes does not constitute a salad, I mean what was on the plate was good, but the portion was ridiculous! After leaving Lucien, I felt abused and worst of all HUNGRY!! I would think that after spending over $100 per person, and having had an app, main and desert there would be no need to eat a bowl of cereal once I got home.

The following is taken from a column I wrote on retro trends especially with reference to the TV show Mad Men. I didn't name the restaurant but it's fair to name it here. It was Lucien. Bad as the food was, the service was appallingly unfriendly. Retro is one thing, rude and bad is another.

"In this awful restaurant, where my girlfriend and I dined, the pork belly tasted like the eight ounces of flavourless slippery white fat it was.

The Arctic char sat in a plate-filling circle of mint gel — a failed Martha Stewart colour wash — a puzzlingly wet aspic that anchored other things, an egg yolk surrounded by albumen, a potato that turned out to be another white foam creation, its bubbles vanishing into the fish, five tiny orange egglets forming a glutinous curve the size of a cocktail ring.

Nothing on the plate was just there; it all gave the impression of having been secreted.

And so pastel, all of it. It is possible to produce slimy food in clear strong colours: You should taste my peaches microwaved with brown sugar. I call it my Pêche à l'Erreur; small children clamour for it.

But you really have to work to produce mucilaginous food the colour of Eastern Airlines upholstery circa 1962. And the restaurant did. But why?

I have never sent back a meal in my life; it's still food even if it's bad. But the single green glass noodle clinging to the char was the end. So we didn't eat and waited to be asked why.

Why, the waitress asked.

She got adjectives. "There's an emulsion theme here throughout the entree," my girlfriend said. She is very sophisticated. Earlier, she had been more brusque. "Heather, we've ordered the pro-life platter," she said.

"It's … viscous," I offered.

"Jellied," my friend said.

"Lubricious."

"Shiny."

And then I broke down. "Mucus. It was like mucus. I'm sorry."


The service was brisk and hostile from then on. The entrees were taken off the bill and the meal still cost $150.