La Gare French - Santa Rosa

We were super excited to finally eat at La Gare Restaurant after talking about it for over 20 years. Unfortunately, we were super disappointed in the food. It is NOT a French restaurant in our opinion. It's just another expensive restaurant pretending to be French serving mediocre food. In fact the zucchini tasted like it had some bitter poison on it and even the chefs were appalled when we asked them to taste it. We will NEVER go back and you should definitely not go either! Glad we took our own bottle of wine otherwise the check would have been even more absurd.

This was the worst dinning experience we had in 5 days in Sonoma. The table service was slow and indifferent. The bread was inedible and lacked any flavor. The mushroom soup was plain and bland. The salad was a terrible excuse and should never been served. Our Chateaubriand was cooked perfectly but the sides failed. The roasted potatoes were overcooked and the carrots undercooked while the tomato with breadcrumbs was a throwback to the 70's. Lastly the presentation overall lacked any sign of talent or creativity.

My prime rib wasn't medium rare it had brown around the edges and the underneath the bed wasn't pink the wine wasn't that great I got a glass of something from Alexander Valley which I was not impressed with my mother was complaining about the wooden benches she didn't know you guys had cushions she's 83. My son‘s prime rib and my mother's prime rib we're perfectly cooked just not mine I didn't like mushrooms, so I didn't have the mushroom soup, The twice baked potatoes could've been a little creamier as there were still chunks of potato in there. After all these years of you guys doing prime rib, I figured it would be perfectly cooked for mine The waiter did offer me a tomato bisque instead of the mushroom, it just didn't sound appealing at the time.

The mediocre food was a great combination with a sloppy service. Some examples: the food (soup that tasted like from the can)!was served before the wine. the salad was wilted, and the tomatoes slice was from the fridge. the lamb was overcooked (thinking of it, we were not even asked how we would like it). the sweetbread was mixed with onions and mushrooms and sauce to the point it did not taste like sweet bread. both entries were served with side (lamb with potatoes and sweetbread with rice) if we'd know that, we would not order the side separately. asparagus served on both sides was seriously overcooked. the dessert was overly sweet (and it was a birthday celebration so we were supposed to get it for free but we were charged not a big deal, $12, but we did not even finish it after trying).

Who does Caesar salad table side anymore?! La Gare does, and they do it well. Miles was our superb server for the evening took great care of us. My husband enjoyed the rack of lamb, and I had the wonderful Beef Wellington. We will be back to dine, for sure, next time we're in Santa Rosa! Thank you, people of La Gare!