La Duchesse Anne Restaurant

The best meal we’ve ever had! Starting with the French onion soup and escargot, then the short ribs and strip steak with a béarnaise butter. Finally we had a crème brule to finish! Everything was perfect. The traditional catskill atmosphere we were looking for, with amazing food and wonderful service. This is a place that will have us take the two hour drive up to the Catskills. Excellent quality. Certainly will be back again!

I had such high hopes for this restaurant… all dashed. It is kind of difficult to explain the numerous ways this restaurant ruined our celebratory evening. On arriving for our 8pm reservation, we found that there was «live music» for the evening, which consisted of an elderly woman on the piano and gentleman on the saxaphone. This could have been a welcomed surprise, but it was more like having nails scrape on a chalkboard. The woman’s voice was just awful and the set just went on and on. At first you could just sort of laugh it off, take it in as local experience, but then it wore you down and you felt like you might have to kill someone… not a relaxing evening.
We were seated at the table before it was ready for some reason, so we had to ask for everything, silverware, menus, napkins & we had to ask more than once. Once our order was taken, we had to wait about 25 minutes to receive our appetizers. Once we were done with our appetizers we waited about 10 minutes to have the plates cleared and another 10 minutes for our salads. Our dirty salad plates sat on our table for about 15 minutes. Then we waited & waited for our entrees. One of my friends went to ask when were getting our meals (at this point, it was 2 hours after we had been seated). The waitress responded rudely that everything was made to order and walked away from him. There was no apology nor an estimate of how much longer we would have to wait. 20 minutes after that our entrees came out. I would also be remiss to not mention the large cat allowed to wander through the restaurant.
Our food was overcooked even though the flavor was decent. No one ever came to check to see how our food was. We were all pretty irritated by this point which was particularly annoying since we had chosen this restaurant to celebrate my friend’s birthday… so it put a huge damper on the whole evening.
Even still, we remained hopeful that the evening could be saved by desert. We had brought a cake for our friend. When the reservation was made, I spoke directly to chef who told me not to bother to have it decorated because he would do that for us if I just brought the cake to him earlier in the day, which I did. The decoration amounted to writing «Happy Birthday» on the cake & that was it, which frankly, I didn’t have too much of a problem with until later. Because when the check came, there was a $ 25 cake fee!!! Keep in mind, it cost $ 22 to have the cake made to order by the local bakery (who would have decorated the cake for free had the chef not told me he could do it). I asked about the charge & was told that the chef had informed me that there would be a charge of 5 $ per person for the cake, which was not true. I asked to speak to the chef and he looked me in the face and told me he had told me. To which I responded he had not. Then he said «but it is normal to charge, we have to wash the dishes, we had to decorate the cake» I can agree that there might be some charge for these services, but 5 $ is also about the price he charges for his own deserts for which he has to make and provide the ingredients. More importantly, if you do intend on charging for these services, you should be upfront and disclose that.
I also raised the issue of how long everything had taken. To which he responded, that they had not kept us there and they had given us the table in the middle of the room… it just made no sense and there certainly was no apology.
We were also charged a service fee. While this is fairly normal for parties of 6 or more, we were only 5. Again there was no mention that the service fee would be added to the bill.
3 hours after we had been seated, we all left the restaurant irritated, annoyed and feeling like we had had an awful evening, which is particularly frustrating because we were trying to give our friend a special evening for her 40^th birthday — not to mention that our bill for 5 people was over $ 400. When you are spending that kind of money, you do expect a certain level of service and quality. Not to mention that no matter how much money you are spending, you do expect to be treated fairly and above board.
My history on Unilocal has generally been as a lurker, I admit, I have taken other people’s opinion and rarely given my own. But this restaurant was so beyond the pale on what is acceptable that I felt I had to write a review immediately in hopes that I could prevent someone else from wasting their hard earned money.

Yum, rustic old-​world French food– cooked to perfection. Not fatty, not drowned in cream sauces, and not pretentious. Dinner was delicious but I have to say that the dessert was disspointing– why go through the trouble of making a beautiful buttery flakey crust, only to fill the pie with canned cherry filling?

The previous 4-​star review was posted a year ago, so I feel somewhat duty-​bound to report on the dismal evening I spent at La Duchesse Anne with my girlfriend on 8÷28÷09.
I must preface my remarks by saying that our waitress was charming, even if she was the only redeeming feature of the evening. The food was bland and occasionally bizarre: what might once have been delicious chanterelle mushrooms were chopped so small and doused in so much balsamic reduction that it was impossible to taste them, and the mixed vegetables that accompanied the entrées had clearly been defrosted and then kept warm for too long (how else to explain their wizened, lackluster appearance, let alone their synthetic taste [at this point in our meal, just thinking about the bountiful farm stands that line Rte 28 was enough to make me weep).
However, the most baffling thing about this restaurant is its utterly inflexible serving régime. We were the first people to arrive on a Friday evening, and were followed by six or seven other couples and families over the course of the next hour or so. It soon became clear to us that we would only be served our appetizer after ALL orders for appetizers had been taken – i.e., after it was clear that no more diners were expected. This incomprehensible schedule was adhered to for the entirety of the meal: we were served our salad after our appetizer, and then had to wait for ALL OF THE OTHER salads to be served before we were finally served our entrées (the caesar salad, incidentally, consists of a few shreds of lettuce: it and the 40-​minute wait either side were more than enough to extinguish our appetites). We were held captive for 2 hrs 20 minutes in all.
After finally paying the check we ran to the car like excited children and drove straight to the nearest garage for candy. I don’t think either of us could quite believe that we’d had such an appalling dining experience in a place where the local produce is so delicious. Please don’t make our mistake!

I took my now life-​long partner there for our «Pre-​New Year’s Eve/​Xmas» night out, because she loves everything to do with Paris (France, not the celebrity gaga-​doodle).
It is a quaint little bed and breakfast, but we went for their great dinner, owned by a passionate couple who have run the name since 1978, because their previous property burned down in the 90s and they re-​established at another place.
The food was well displayed, and the atmosphere was that of an old French Colonial Inn with a large fireplace (which gave me the confidence and the motivation to fall in love with my sweetheart!) and small intimate atmosphere.
I took away one star for the Musty smell, because it distracts from the whole evening. However, I recommend making this trip even if it is just for the beautiful drive and a chance to spend some one-​on-​one time with your soon to be, or your forever love.