Chez Daniel Bistro

My high school French teacher implored all of us to try this place at least once. Well, ten years later, armed with a Groupon on the last night their doors were open, my best friend I arrived!
It’s a bit confusing as to where the restaurant was inside of the Embassy Suites, but to be fair, they could have already taken the signs down.
I will agree with everyone else that the waitstaff does move at a leisurely pace. I want to say we arrived just a bit after 7 and didn’t leave until 8:30.
The menu was very parsed down (though I’m still recovering from the shock that mozzarella sticks were on there, this isn’t exactly a kid friendly venue).
I had the Steak Medallions, and my best friend ordered the shrimp salad. Proportionately and price wise, our entrees were completely different. For her $ 17.99 salad, it was huge. My $ 23.99 medallions, sides included, was tiny in comparison.
The drinks were tasty, and I had a good time, even if I walked away hungry still.

The food was fantastic and reasonably priced for the amount you received. I shared the special with my girlfriend which included the prime rib, a vegetable, and potato. They gave us both a huge plate. The food on one of our plates was enough let alone each getting the same amount. The prime rib was cooked perfectly and had a fantastic sauce that added fantastic flavor.
Our waiter was very pleasant and made us feel as if we were at a much fancier restaurant. He was very quick to refill drinks and very knowledgeable.
That being said the atmosphere seemed very out dated and dark. The bamboo ceiling and the fact that the restaurant had no windows really deterred from the great food. If it were not for the Groupon we used I don’t think I would go again. The food is fantastic but the atmosphere really does not entice me to go again.

Another home run! The Living Social menu at Chez Daniel was a 3 course chef’s tasting menu with wine. Each course offered several enticing options. Besides the delicious food, Chez Daniel has marvelous, quiet, romantic ambience with multiple intimate dining areas. Very elegant extras such as the palate cleansing raspberry sorbet and the chocolate dipped strawberries add to a beautiful dining experience. We’ve dined here four times within the past year, ordering different entrees each time. Chez Daniel has hit it out of the ballpark every time!

Sis and I enjoyed our fixed price tasting menu dinner.
We started with Crane Lake wine. She enjoyed the Chardonnay while I liked the Cabernet Sauvignon. For starters, we both chose the French Onion Soup which was excellent. Sometimes I find FOS to be really salty or extremely hot. This was neither. It was really tasty! Other options were mushroom soup or salad.
Next course, I chose Beef Wellington which was again, very tasty, while my sister tried the escargot which she really liked. It arrived sans shells in a special little dish with 6 – 7 wells in it.
Lastly, I got chicken, risotto, asparagus and roasted cherry tomatoes. It was nice. My sister got the beef medallions which came perfect to her order of medium rare. It was accompanied by asparagus and garlic mashed potatoes with crab on top of the beef. She thought it Amazing.
We ordered a dessert, which was additional. Yummy profiteroles… Pastry filled with ice cream drizzled with hot fife and raspberry. I could have had all fudge but it was good!
Drawbacks: tables are really REALLY close. Service is French leisurely (slow), parking Is a little sparse, and as the place empties out, you can hear frolicking from the pool.
Overall, I would come back!

Overrated and about as French as a hamburger. Lunch menu has two dishes you would expect on a real French menu. Risotto was under badly and I’m still picking hard rice out of my teeth. Avoid… unless you want a burger or Reuben. Oh my!

I feel like I want to give them three stars, but I can’t in good conscience say it was «A-​OK.» I have wanted to try this place for quite some time, and their Living Social deal seemed like the perfect opportunity. Upon being sat, our server came up to greet us and go over the tasting menu options. He was very nice and offered his personal suggestions. Typically when restaurants offer tasting menus through a «deals» site, they appear to be very stripped down, though this one had a wide range of great sounding options.
Our issues started after our first course, when the server made his first and long awaited return visit to our table. He seemed surprised that we did not have our pallet cleansing sorbet yet, and went to go check. We also ordered two additional glasses of wine at this point. Well, we received the sorbet just as our main course came out. I figured I’d wait a minute to receive my glass of wine, so I could enjoy it with dinner. Unfortunately it took me finishing dinner and a request to a manager to get our wine delivered. During this time, our server was running around the dining room, glancing over at our empty wine glasses, but never checking. After our initial interaction with the server, we only saw him that one additional time prior to having a check delivered. To be fair, it appeared he was the only server responsible for 5 – 6 tables, which is not his fault, but did contribute to our service woes.
Overall we enjoyed the food, with the exception of a impossible to cut tendon through one of the beef medallions.
Our intention was to order after-​dinner cocktails and desert, however; with us now starting on our second glass of wine, we elected to call it a night.
They were nice enough to comp the two glasses of wine, though we would trade for good service any day of the week.

Had an excellent meal here tonight. I was a bit concerned with some of the reviews, but we thoroughly enjoyed the excellent service and tasty food.
Again– service was timely and attentive. Ben, our server, was very friendly.
The chicken en croute was very good. Pastry could have been a tad less tough, but was nicely flavored.
Overall I’d definitely come back.

We had a Living Social voucher so it was a great deal! Everything we order was really good with the exception of the over cooked beef medallions. They were still tasty but not medium rare. We spent extra for the desert and the crème brulee was just average. The service was not great, the server was always apologizing but never sped up.
I would only go here again if I had a similar deal. I doubt if I would pay full price.

I went here for restaurant week. The menu was very hard to discern and when I ordered something that was seemingly going to be a light meal (which the server mentioned was a light meal, by the way) I was given a rich, sauce-​ladden chicken atop a massive pile of mashed potatoes with very little amount of vegetable. VERY rich and not what I was looking for at the time. Don’t get me wrong, the flavors were good, but I was looking more for a lighter fare of a meal and this was more winter-​oriented. The server was nice, but there was another lady server who would not leave my mother and I alone. She made us very uncomfortable and was pestering us to take pictures of all of our dishes. I have to say that I will probably not return.
The strawberry salad was good (a tad on the sweet side and overdressed a bit), the goat cheese salad was… interesting. I would have liked more of a salad rather than a portaballa topped with microgreens (but the basil oil and aged balsamic complimented well). My mother’s new york strip was delicious, but nothing too interesting. For dessert we had the sea salt caramel chocolate mouse. It came in a cute cup made out of chocolate and tasted delicious, but again, nothing I would crave. The vanilla panna cotta with fresh berries was refreshing and creamy. They were good, but it did not leave us wanting to get the very last bites in, either.
Overall, a sad disappointment of a meal that I had high hopes for. It could have just been me being picky, too, I would not put that past me :) I get like that sometimes with restaurants.
Tip: Fix your menus!

This is actually a review from when I went during Restaurant week back in October.
I give it a 4 because my steak wasnt the greatest but my husband got the lamb and it was FANTASTIC!
The waiter was very nice. I wish I could remember his name. I would go back just for him. He was funny, sweet, and did a wonderful job handling one stupidly loud annoying couple in the room (I hope they were staying in the hotel because they went through a bottle of wine faster than their appetizer.)

hmm, saw a lot of not so hot reviews here???, but we went today and had great service & good and great food.
We ordered French Onion soup, Lobster Sandwich & the Prime rib french dip.
The French Onion soup $ 5.50 a cup was amazing. the lobster sandwich $ 13 just ok. does not look like the club lobster version we see in all the photos, including the photo on the coupon we used.
The prime rib french dip $ 13 was so super delicious! get that!
The ice tea was ok, but nothing special. $ 2.50 each.
Make sure you grab a BOGO lunch coupon as they run them all the time. saves you $ 13. otherwise they’d be far to expensive.

There are few things in the world lazier and more fattening than brunch. Think about it. Brunch was a Sunday meal created for those who were out so late a hootin’ and a hollerin’ that they couldn’t get up in time for breakfast. So rather than start off the day with lunch they decided to combine to meals together. At some point in history some drunkard said «I really want an omelet, fried chicken, and cake», his buddy said «let’s do it!», and brunch was born. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but if you look at the origins of brunch I’m not too far off.
So a couple weekends back, when Sara and I hit Chez Daniel for brunch, I decided to embrace the brunch philosophy. We didn’t show up until noon, and I ate plate after plate of breakfast, lunch, and dinner items.
Open since 1992, Chez Daniel is a French restaurant located in the Embassy Suites in Bloomington. They serve lunch and dinner throughout the week, but we went for the Sunday Brunch. I had bid on, and won, a gift certificate for brunch at the Tubman Wing Ding last summer, and it was about time we use it. I will admit that the location made me a bit leery. You never know what you’ll get from hotel restaurants, but by the end of our experience any misgivings I may had were unfounded.
As we were seated we got a peak of the spread, and I knew we would both find something we liked. The brunch covers all the bases. Traditional breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, eggs Benedict, and a made to order omelet bar. Lunch options including tons of choices of cheese, an antipasti meat tray, house and Caesar salad, marinated vegetables, a selection of chef created salads, and all rolls galore. Dinner items like braised beef, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, bouillabaisse, seafood linguine, chicken with mushrooms, and a roast beef carving station. Finally, there was the dessert table with a chocolate fountain, cakes, pies, canolli, cheese cakes, tarts, chocolate covered strawberries and crème brûlée. Just typing all that out makes me hungry!
Of course, Sara and I upgraded our brunch with champagne. We tried to pace ourselves, but here were so many options. After my first couple delicious I wanted to try everything. My wife really enjoyed the braised beef with mashed potatoes, and the crème brûlée. I had a hard time picking a favorite, but the bouillabaisse was excellent, as well as the potato salad.
We will definitely return to Chez Daniel. Next time maybe for dinner, because if we do brunch again I’m wearing sweatpants and making it an all day event!

No complaints here. Great service right from the start. I had the prime rib and it was very good. Not to fatty, just wright. And my wife had some chicken encrusted wrap thing. Sorry we forgot what it was called. But she it’s pretty picky and not one complaint from her.
Will be going back soon for the lamb, someone next to us had it and it looked yum!

4 Stars for food 1 star for Service.
My wife and I had a $ 50 Groupon for Chez Daniel, which resides in the lower level of an Embassy Suites in Bloomington.
We waited in the bar area for about 10 minutes before we had to ask the hostess if someone was serving the bar. She replied, «Yes» Another 10 minutes and a bartender showed up. Our bartender would seriously leave for 10 minutes at a time!
We ordered a Nordeast and we got a Philly Cheese steak, a Lobster Club, and a house salad with some bread.
After about 10 more minutes, the food came out and I got another Grain Belt. The Lobster Club was not too mayo filled and was extremely filling. The lobster was plentiful and the bread was triple stacked. A very nice club! It was like a deviled ham spread, but with lobster.
The Cheese steak was amazing! I had a few bites and the bread was scrumptious. Almost a full loaf of sourdough or baguette mixture that was just perfect! The cheese was melted perfectly and the steak was sliced just enough to make it one of the best sandwiches I have had in a long time. The nice chunks of peppers and mushrooms really made it a hit! I always have to wonder after being in Philly a month ago, why not just chop the crud out of the steak to make it like they do? Not hard. It was super awesome though here.
The coleslaw was spiced just enough to add a tang, and again, not too juicy full of mayo. The pickle spears were great as well!
My wife liked her side salad with ranch on the side. She asked for no walnuts. It came with them, but I chomped on them, no problem. Dippy, dippy into the ranch.
I’ll never be back here because of the slow service and for $ 50, we got 2 sandwiches, a salad, and 3 beers. Not horrible, but it was definitely just a hotel restaurant.
They did have the Gopher football game on TV, so I was pretty happy. The service was just insane though. We didn’t get my wife’s bread until we were both done eating though! She loved the bread though! Again they hit the food part out of the park!
Again, the food was fantastic, the service was HORRIBLE!

When seeking a nice «dining» experience, it’s the little things that mean a lot in addition to excellent food and/​or wine.
The name alone raises expectations for a fine dining experience; unfortunately they did not deliver. While their food was very good, their service, in general, was not.
First, the food: the warm baguette was light in texture with a crispy exterior and tender interior. The prosciutto-​wrapped asparagus salad was served with some out-​of-​the-​bag spring greens, a poached egg and a few walnuts with a balsamic vinaigrette and it was very good. After the salad, small dollop of strawberry sorbet was presented as a palate cleanser. It was intensely flavored and a bit sweet for my taste.
Since it was a Friday night, their special offering was Bouillabaisse. This was my first time with it and I really liked it. A light broth with all sorts of fish and shellfish, along with some chunks of potato and a slice of toasted baguette with a smear of (was it aioli?). Having had this dish once or twice while in France, my companion said that it’s usually served with fresh ground black pepper. We were not offered any and just used the shaker on the table. Later, however, we saw our server offer fresh ground black pepper to the adjacent table.
As I said at the beginning, it’s the little things…
Being shown by the hostess to our table, I found all chair seats sprinkled with crumbs and I gave mine a swipe or two to remove them before I sat down. Our server’s assistant poured our waters abruptly and briskly, which seemed somewhat intrusive. He also tried clearing away our plates on more than one occasion before we were finished with them.
Our server brought our selected white wine to us in an ice-​filled bucket. Once she uncorked the bottle, our glasses were repeatedly waaay over-​poured. We found the wine stunted in its beauty because it was just too cold. We pulled the bottle out of the ice bucket to give the wine a chance to warm up a bit and express its varietal beauty on our palates. And it did. Offering $ 50 (and up) bottles of french wine, I think that they should be served at some temperature recommended for that type of wine (and certainly not a fully-​chilled pouilly-​fuisse).
Given the higher prices, I would hesitate before returning.

Make this the 2^nd time that we have WALKED OUT of a restaurant…(the other time was at Chili’s in an airport).
We were so infuriated by the horrendous service and poor management that we decided this was not the place we would like to spend our evening. Please let me walk you through our experience…
When we first arrived, we were neglected at the front attending desk for over 10 minutes. If the restaurant were busy, I would understand. However, it is clearly understaffed on a Saturday evening. For a restaurant of this caliber and with «$$$» for cost, you expect a certain degree of immaculate service from the beginning. But based on the other reviews, it is apparent that this is a chronic issue.
We were finally seated at a table in a tight corner of a small room. It was slightly uncomfortable because a party of 4 was sitting so close to us that it really took away from a romantic setting. But we didn’t mind that so much.
After taking our seat, we waited a good 15 minutes before we finally decided to tell a busboy to get our waiter’s attention. We asked the waiter if he would recommend a drink on the cocktail menu. He asked what we liked, and we said anything that is a customer favorite and is strong, but not too sweet. He looked at us blankly and said to read the menu and see what we liked. We were immediately infuriated by his condescending tone, but we decided to play it out and hope the rest of the evening was not spoiled by this small detail. We ended up ordering the French Passion and the House Cabernet.
Guess what was in the French passion…4 fruit flies — pictures are added to the photos album. At this point, we just had it… poor service at front, poor service at table, drinks with incidental «garnish». For a place that you spend $ 50/​person, this is not where we wanted to waste our money. We immediately picked up our coats and left this restaurant… for good.

We were here on Monday night to celebrate a friend’s 60^th birthday party. The food here is always great, but this time around the service made me feel like we really were in Paris. I had to ask for my drink to be refilled, and the next time around the waiter refilled everyone’s drink except mine. I felt like I should be named Oliver and was being punished for asking for more.
The Ratatouille was exceptional, and was much better than the undercooked potatoes they served with my Chicken Marsala. My recommendation is to go to Chez Daniel Bistro for the Sunday brunch, where the food is fresh and you get to sample a lot more food.

My hubby and I went here on a Saturday night! Upon entering the resturant we waited for a hostess. Finally, after a few minutes of standing there she showed up. We had reservations which i informed her of, she then asked if we had a Groupon! We did but not sure why she asked us that right away! She brought us to a table way in the back… My hubby commented that «this is where they put all the groupon people»…have to admit it kinda felt tthat way. We then sat at our table for at least 10 min before our server showed up. Then he handed me a pen and paper and told me to write my groupon numbers down… WTF… At this point my expectations were not very high. I was just hoping the food was better then the service .
The fresh bread was Amazing, warm and crusty. Our appitizer was escargo. it was very garlicly! the salad with house dressing was very good. I did like the sorbet to «cleanse ou palet». I orderd the chicken rulade and my hubby had the aged pork chops. Our whole plate was wonderful the mashed potatoes did not need salt, pepper, or even a gravy they were so good. My chicken was so moist and tender i couldnt stop eating it. We also do a chocolate dessert that is not even worth mentioning…
Over all if we had another groupon we would go, but we would never pay full price for the food and subpar service.

Wow. very impressive!
We came here for early dinner last Sunday. It wasnt busy so we were seated right away. The service was great. The server and the assistant worked very well together. The server was attentive, and the assistant was very quick with refilling water and bringing out the amazing french bread.
We started with the mozz sticks. We couldnt tell if they were from frozen or home-​made, but they were pretty good. crispy on the outside with oozing hot cheesy mozz on the inside. I ordered Chicken en Croute for my main, and my bf ordered Chicken Roulade. After we were done with our app, soup and salad, the server brought out small cups of strawberry sorbet for us to cleanse our palate before our main dishes arrived.
Our main dishes very pretty good, and the portions were big. My chicken en croute was a chicken breast stuffed with sausage and then wrapped with the pastry shell. A little saltiness from sausage, juicy chicken and crispy pastry shell went so well together, and the creamy tarragon sauce made a great addition to the dish. Chicken roulade was a stuffed chicken with red peppers, onions, spinach, fresh mozzarella, wrapped in prosciutto. This dish was really flavorful though the chicken was a tad bit dry.
This is what I love so much about this place. After we were done with our meal, we didnt order any dessert because we were so full. The server then brought us two huge chocolate-​covered strawberries. It was such a perfect ending for our great meal.

Chez Daniel in 27 words: generous portions of French fare in a restaurant located in an Embassy Suites. Thoroughly enjoyed my lobster club with french fries. Friend’s eggs benedict looked great too.