L'assommoir offers a rare combination of a dance club with food, but no dancing. It is almost like it couldn't settle on being just a bar with good drinks, they had to throw in the food, too. \nThe music was so loud, our table of 6 all lost our voices or just stopped trying to communicate because we couldn't hear the person next to us or across the table from us. We had been warned, but as the night went on and on and on, the music seemed to get louder and the room got progressively darker. We are a bunch of 25-35 year olds, so it wasn't just our age that made us want to ask for a lower volume of music.  \nThat was part of what ruined the night for me. The second part was that as half of the couple 'hosting' all the out of town guests, I felt somewhat responsible for making things go smoothly. Usually that is the job of the wait staff, no? On at least 4 occasions I had to either get up or assertively hail the waiter over to say things like, \"Can the 3 of us who have been sitting down for more than 10 minutes, but arrived later get menus?\" Or later on, \"We ordered bottled water, can you bring that now?\"  or when the 7 item ceviche and tartar platter arrived, \"Can you explain which is which?\", followed by, \"Can the other half of the table also get a basket of bread?\" \nWe didn't get asked if we wanted dessert, though there is a menu, because ~4 hours after our dinner started, I had to walk up to ask for the bill. (Our European guests were so jetlagged, we ended the night early.)  \nPerhaps we are old and don't like that new-fangled DJ music. \nPerhaps our waiter was on his first day of work. \nPerhaps the bar was over capacity and raw food takes longer to prepare than cooked stuff (though the 1/6 who ordered steak and didn't split the raw platter had to eat after we were all done!!!) \nPerhaps the cleaning lady quit that day and the lack of toilet paper in the women's restroom was her responsibility. \nPerhaps a million things conspired to make this one of the most uncomfortable evenings ever. I can't recommend this place unless you just want to sit at the bar, have drinks and maybe attempt to order the crab tartare, which was amazing, and you have 3 hours to kill waiting for it.\nBill for 6 people, including 2 bottles of wine, was $50-60 per person.