(Photo by Frank Lindecke)

Looking for a new place to eat at The Wharf? Tom Sietsema does not recommend La Vie, the newly-opened French-meets-Mediterranean restaurant. Like, really doesn’t recommend it—the longtime Washington Post food critic’s review published online Wednesday bears the headline “La Vie on the Wharf is so bad I’m only writing about it as a warning.”

In only the third zero-star review Sietsema has ever written, he sneers, “Combine Las Vegas with a Carnival cruise, and you have an idea of what to expect.”

Indeed, Sietsema found not a single thing to his liking in his three visits to La Vie: not the service (“A server asked, in all seriousness, ‘You’d like the appetizers first? And then the entrees? How about the sides?’ I know the T-shirts say ‘Life is short; eat dessert first,’ but does anyone want their steak ahead of their salad, or their sides anywhere but … on the side {of the main course}?”); nor the dishes (“Think all Caesar salads and broiled oysters taste alike? Then you haven’t tried the overdressed romaine, garnished with industrial grated cheese and powdery ‘rustic” croutons, or the bivalves smothered by creamed spinach, artichoke and salty feta cheese at La Vie. Poor lettuce. Poor oysters. They never had a chance.”); nor the cocktails (“simply because drinks are made ‘with lots of ingredients,’ as one bartender informed us, doesn’t make them better”); nor the decor (“someone’s idea of a classy-with-a-k interior”).

Even the plastic straws did not escape his wrath: “A woke restaurant offers paper or reusable metal ones,” he sniffed.

La Vie owner Mike Bramson addressed the takedown in an interview with Washingtonian, saying that the restaurant’s team is meeting, “to see what’s personal bias and what’s constructive criticism.” It’s not clear what potential bias he was referring to.

“I know it’s kind of a punch in the gut when you first read it, but if he was a friend, I would ask for that constructive criticism,” Bramson told the magazine. “I tried to talk to as many people as I can and try to find something we can improve on. That’s the only way we can get better.”

This absolute dunk on La Vie follows only two other zero-star reviews Sietsema has awarded since the rating system was introduced in 2006: one to Founding Farmers in 2016, of which he said, “The temptation to finish an order is zero.” (Founding Farmers later diplomatically responded “everyone is entitled to their opinion.”)

Another goose egg went in 2006 to Le Pigalle, a Dupont Circle French restaurant from part of the team behind Bistrot du Coin that has since closed. “Too much of the food here just makes me sad,” the weary critic wrote. “Sad that the chef isn’t trying harder and sad that so many shortcuts are taken.”

The Post has rounded up some of Sietsema’s other notable takedowns, including six half-star reviews, which really prove that he really must have hated La Vie. Lauriol Plaza, for example, was awarded half a star more than La Vie, and at that Mexican restaurant, he wrote, a dish “comes with a garnish of … someone else’s hair in the toss, which wasn’t as off-putting as discovering a wad of chewing gum on the pepper shaker.”

But non, La Vie was apparently worse. In closing, Sietsema almost gleefully taunts, “You’d better have something in the fridge at home, because the likelihood of your joining the Clean Plate Club here is as good as Omarosa Manigault Newman getting invited to a Christmas party at the White House.” Buuuuuuurn.

This post has been updated with comment from La Vie owner Mike Bramson.