Thirteen months after our first lovely experience at Chez Olivier the Bistro, we came back again for dinner with a friend home from France. It was the day after Bastille Day, and the wintry weather outside made it a perfect choice for some good hearty winter food.

Unfortunately, whilst most of our food was perfectly lovely, the service was appalling. We had a new waitress who did not know her way around the menu. Fine: we all have to start somewhere. Six out of a table of seven chose starters, but only four arrived at once. Two were presented to the table under different names, one under a name nobody had ordered. People had started eating before the staff came back and started swapping plates around.

The wait between courses also appeared quite lengthy. Then the same thing happened: only five out of seven mains came out. We waited for quite some time before we could find someone to tell us that the waitress had fallen with two dishes and they had to be made again. Would have been good if they had volunteered this up front. We gave up on our side dish of broccoli, as nobody seemed to know anything about it. Halfway through our mains, the waiter who had taken our orders came and apologised as he had forgotten all about it and had not put the order through.

Combined with accordion music so loud one of us had to go downstairs and ask for it to be turned down just so we could hear our own conversation, it was a disappointing experience. For almost $100 a head including wine, Chez Olivier’s is not a cheap option, and I can think of half a dozen other places with better service I would rather frequent.

I fear this was our final visit to Chez Olivier.