My boyfriend and I booked a trip to New York and being a big Anthony Bourdain fan, I looked up your restaurant and reserved a table for 11th December with the fear that it would be booked out so close to Chistmas. On arrival there was a fantastic buzz, the place was packed and I was so excited after coming all the way from Ireland and looking forward to my meal for so long. After waiting what felt like an eternity, my boyfriend received his starter, five minutes later there was no sign of mine so I called the waitress to let her know, next of all we received our main course, (still no starter for me). Our main courses arrived, my boyfriend had steak and I ordered the Moules and again, to my horror, only about half of the mussels had any meat in them, I was disgusted, I had pre booked this restaurant a month or so in advance and talked about it non stop until the night we arrived, and I was so excited, I am sorry to say, it was not a great experience. My boyfriend thoroughly enjoyed his (typical!) I was really disappointed! Funny enough my boyfriend had just bought me an Anthony Bourdain cookbook and was afraid to give it to me after my bad experience. Sorry about the bad write up, but I had to mention it after travelling so far and after watching countless episodes of A Cooks Tour I was really looking forward to it and was let down badly!

Cheryl

Les Halles is a GOOD French Bistro, not the BEST. I've eaten there three times (incuding the downtown location). There are plenty and MANY good to great French Bistros in NY. To be honest and in no disrespect for Les Halles and Tony Bourdain, there's nothing extraordinary about Les Halles. It is very good food, but not exquisite. Don't expect to be blown away by the food.

For the mussels, did you mention this to the waiter? Waiters will not ignore your request if you are unsatisfied with your meal.

The Cookbook is great. I've personally made about half of the items in the cookbook. The cookbook is solid.

Don't let your experience at Les Halles change your opinion. Even if Tony was in the kitchen, I doubt your experience would've been much different.

Les Halles, WOW !!!! what a disapointment!!

Last Sunday we decided to try Les Halles in Miami even though it not highly rated in Zagats, we ventured out for a taste. The food was pretty good, the fries were great. half way through our tart tatin I noticed a small roach crawling on the backside of the bench close to my wife's shoulder ... She freaked out and told our waiter, we got 4 sorry's out of the incident. Anthony!! you forgot to write about this in your book.

Must you post twice about your roach experience? I'll post twice too then. I had lunch with coworkers and one of them found a roach on their plate. He shrugged it off, got a ton of apologies, and they took the meal off the bill. No whoop. Get over yourself.

I've eaten at Les Halles twice and both times rocked. That's all I can really say about.
Sometimes it's bad. But as we say in these parts, "What can you do?".

Expensive restaurants aren't worth the money. You get a small portion of food that's been handled and picked on and this is why you get more food poisoning at fancy restaurants.