Problem with reservation

[naf]

After hearing many good reviews on the restaurant - le Transversal, we decided to give a try and booked for a dinner. As many knows, the restaurant opens only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday for dinner.

Early October, we called to reserve on 13 Oct, which is a Saturday. Everything was fine, and we looked forward for the day. Just a day before, the restaurant called us,the reservation was not possible, we decided to move the date to 18 Oct, which was unfortunely the famous day of strike in France. So we got another call from them, saying the restaurant would be closed with the problem with public transport, which we totally understood. We still wanted to try restaurant and our date was quite flexible, and we moved our reservation to 26 Oct, which is tomorrow. Yet again, we got another call from them this morning, saying it will be not possible. This time the reason is, the restaurant will be closed because of "privatisation de salle" - somebody has booked the whole restaurant for a private function. But I told them, you have accepted my reservation some 2 weeks ago, and you could have informed me earlier, not just the day before. The answer is, the person who took our reservation doesn't know that dinner is only open to public on Thursday night, while Friday and Saturday night is only nights of "privatisation". At this point actually, I don't know if I should believe in him or not. I'm quite disappointed as I have not forsee that this would have happened again. He tried a bit to fit me on a Thursday night which I declined because of the busy working schedule of weekday and the mere disappointment and the uncertainty if they will honour their words.

I have the feeling that the restaurant will be open to "public" if there are nobody booking the whole place for private functions, so the "public" is always on the waiting list. Anybody recently has dinner there? Do you have reservation problem or just me? Or they have just change their policy for dinner? It's the first time this has happened to me, all the restaurants or bistrots I have booked had honoured the reservation.

[John Talbott]

I've not heard of this trend, but if it's any consolation, I'm not one of those who's rushing back to eat there. Once (with the tricky little dishes) was enough for me. Onward!