Restaurant Brasserie L'Ecluse in Biel/Bienne

Very tasty lunch menu with a sensational price/performance ratio. Very friendly service and a very nice restaurant.

The restaurant is beautifully located next to a river and also has a garden seating area. Inside it is comfortably furnished and there was a nice atmosphere. The dishes and furnishings also had style. The food was very unusual, creative, varied and beautifully prepared. I also think the operating concept is very great, as attention is paid to sustainability and the dishes are adjusted seasonally. The service was very friendly and attentive. All in all, I can highly recommend the restaurant.

Delicious and great philosophy! Great service! High prices.

We were able to enjoy the incredible New Year's Eve menu on December 31, 2023. Sensational compositions awaited us - everything handmade and lovingly prepared and served. We sincerely wish the young, friendly team continued success. You made us happy. 😊

The New Year's Eve menu at Ecluse completely impressed us. All 6 courses plus greetings from the kitchen with creative, sometimes very surprising combinations. Pure sensory pleasure, always visually wonderful and presented with attention to detail. Laura and Sandro do a great job and have an extremely friendly crew. The restaurant is known for its selection of raw, natural and orange wines - it takes a lot of getting used to. But the wine-food pairings were all very skillful!

A wonderful New Year's Eve with very good food. A visit to the Rest. Ecluse with the very friendly staff is highly recommended.

Everything was great, surprising dishes and their individual elements, authentic circular economy concept with competent, warm service 🙏🏻

The Ecluse restaurant in Biel is a unique opportunity for lovers of local cuisine. The concept is simple, to offer local products with little transport of goods. No middlemen. The atmosphere is very good. The staff is bilingual and very friendly. We laughed a lot that evening. Our recommendation is the Charolais beef knuckle, cooked for 72 hours and grilled.

First time trying this restaurant, and I am not disappointed. The two of us spent 150.-, for starters + main courses + drinks. It's correct. Appetizers & dishes were delicious, very well seasoned, it was perfect. I will definitely come back 👍🔥🔥

Fish with lentils not too famous.

Food was good. However, the portion is smaller than a child's portion. Went out for pizza afterwards. Price performance is absolutely not right.

Fantastic! The conscious cuisine and menu particularly moved us… all accompanied by excellent service, attention to detail and a team driven by passion, in short, a place from another world!

Too expensive and you'll still be hungry at the end.

Great restaurant in the heart of Biel. Very good Swiss food.

I've never eaten ice cream made from hazelnut shells Top service, exceptional, you have to go there

A true traditional Swiss restaurant in Biel. The food is excellent.

A dégustation experience of exceptional quality where the wine pairings were as considered as the sustainable and creative menu. Highly recommend.

Loveless and overpriced. The service staff seems annoyed and has a lack of language skills. The Tavolata concept on the weekend is not convincing in terms of taste and the history and experience behind the dishes is difficult to understand because the service does not take the time to sell the concept well. The rooms with the open kitchen look inviting and you feel a bit at home.

Wedding party with 13 people The food was amazing, Sandro and his friendly team fulfilled all of our wishes. Allergies and intolerances were taken into account individually. We would always have our wedding dinner there again, thank you so much. Just a great job.

Nice restaurant, recommended. Sometimes a lot of wasps.

Very cozy restaurant, local (50km radius) food, eat in complete peace, rest in the associated park, park your bike right in front of the entrance - as mentioned at the beginning, a very popular place where you should make a reservation in midsummer, but the waiters do don't behave in a reserved manner. ;-)

What an incredible discovery! We absolutely loved it, the dishes were delicious. Fresh, local products less than 50km away, with great taste, refinement and passion. The plates were very well presented. Good cocktails and a nice selection of wines too, with very good advice. The service was great, very warm, pleasant and professional staff. The setting is magical, with the river and the park right next to it, the little lights on the terrace which gave a very soothing and relaxed atmosphere (with the visit of a little kitten as a bonus!). We will come back for sure! 😁

Excellent chicken liver terrine, truly a gem. The wine (pinot noir from Lake Bienne) was also delicious (it could be, at 12.- a glass). Tagliatelle with fresh chanterelles: the dose of mushrooms was homeopathic, we did not find a single whole one (chanterelle) on the plate, lukewarm, which still cost 44.-. Arriving shortly before 7 p.m., we left at 10 p.m., which means the wait...In summary: too bad, the establishment seemed promising after entering, but we probably won't come back.

One-sided food concept with a lot of (fatty) meat. The spaetzle was just pulled out of the water, without any taste. Large, very expensive wine selection; for 1 dl of slightly sour Pinot Noir, barrique, 12 francs!?? A nice ambience is not enough to be a good restaurant.

I was their guest, as soon as I sat at the second table I was directed to another seat in the middle of the restaurant. The assigned spot was also directly in the sun. I told the waitress that I was going to lounge in the corner by the grill . I actually wanted to eat something, but later. First I ordered a cola. I don't know that it's supposed to be a smoke-free garden. The signs should be visible. I was decent, and so was their staff. But that's not how you treat disabled people.

Very good product from the region but it was really not well processed and had no taste... the pork was not cooked yet rare. The menu is minimalist like the cook and there was not everything on the menu. The waitress was clearly not her basic job, frankly 3x too expensive for the price of the food. The only thing that is positive is the terrace, it's pretty, that's all.

A great place to enjoy a fine meal on the terrace, especially in summer.

The lunch (business lunch and vegetarian) was phenomenal, beautifully presented - absolutely top! If only the service were a little more attentive and the umbrellas were positioned where they would provide shade at lunchtime, then it would be top marks! Dinner: Phenomenal. The ingredients are artfully brought together to create a symphony that the palate has never seen before. The service: top, ambience: Ecluse, the former RECTA factory. The whole concept definitely seems to be working! Cheers!

Beautiful location with great food and perfect service

Very good menu, good flavors, well presented and great wine pairing. The only downside about the meal was that we had a stop with the fish and a cherry stone with the dessert. Regarding the service, it was good until we received dessert. Then we were ignored, the tables were cleared and cleaned, but no one offered us a coffee, we waited a long time. 30 minutes. Same when paying, despite having mentioned that we had a train to take, it took another 30 minutes. To summarize, food with top service, good at the beginning, catastrophic at the end.

The food was good. Unfortunately, it's a very loud place that doesn't invite you to linger. Meat is offered on the menu in CHF/100g, which is rather unusual and, above all, super expensive. Service does not correspond to what you pay for the food

Very nicely located restaurant with a very great philosophy! The atmosphere is very pleasant, right next to Elfenaupark. The dishes are very unusual and special. People who want to eat pizza or schnitzel are in the wrong place here. This restaurant experiments with the food to create a taste explosion for the senses and only uses regional ingredients within a 50 kilometer radius. I can recommend the restaurant for special occasions or simply for an aperitif. As I said, the main courses are not what you would expect from a “normal” restaurant. I recommend this restaurant to people who want to try something new or are already familiar with special flavors. For those who prefer to stick with schnitzel or spaghetti, I advise against visiting. I was excited!

Definitely worth the detour. Excellent products, very warm welcome and very beautiful terrace.

Not many words need to be said about the place itself or the ambience - the terrace under the canopy of leaves is and remains unique. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the food. The tagliatelle with cherry tomatoes and basil were stuck together in several layers and some were still hard, and the sauce was mainly watery and boring. The service staff was extremely friendly, but didn't seem to have much of an idea about gastronomic processes.

Birthday event in the garden The birthday party in the garden of the Ecluse restaurant in Biel was unforgettable. In preparing it, the landlady Laura was extremely flexible, responded to the needs of the “birthday child” without hesitation (wines, etc.) and complemented our ideas significantly. The festival itself is unforgettable. Drinks and food of excellent quality as well as extraordinary creativity (among other things: aperitif bargains with crispy fish skin as the basis for a fine poultry mousse. The service: unobtrusive in the background, but extremely attentive. An eye contact, a small hand signal was enough to express wishes. And these were fulfilled in a very short time. The location of the restaurant is excellent. The garden flows into the quiet Elfenau Park. From time to time the calls of peacocks that inhabit the neighboring pond could be heard. And the location of the Ecluse is central, reachable on foot from Biel train station in 5 to 10 minutes.

I would like to say that I ate at Ecluse and it was wonderful. Excellent! Thanks to the recommendation of the service, we were very satisfied! Many thanks to Mihajlo for the good service and performance 🙏 we will definitely come back :)

I had a very bad experience. The price, quality and service didn't suit me.

What came to the table was terrific! But when and how it finally came, unfortunately it was weak! It's great when people want to work, but smiling alone doesn't make it better...

Always so nice to come back. Warm atmosphere, responsible and quality cuisine, always impeccable service. I only have positive things to say about Ecluse.

The setting is pleasant, as are the staff. We ate very well, it was really good..

Exceptional service and very enjoyable outdoor terrace!

Very good lunch on the sunny terrace. Thanks for the experience.

Once again everything was just perfect!!! Service, food, ambience and above all great wines!!!

Excellent, delicious menu in addition to being local and attentive staff. We will return without hesitation.

Once again, simply incredible...

Alright. The concept is nice: only cook products grown within 50 km. The cuisine is adapted to the seasons. When you arrive passing through 1 small park you will pass in front of the spaces where the aromatic herbs used for cooking are grown. The dishes are very tasty. The cappuccino is creamy as can be. The staff is very nice. Very good address: don't hesitate.

5* restaurant Space, food, people I have nothing to say Amazing

Nice surprise in this corner of the Jardin d’Elfenau in Bienne. Impeccable service, trilingual (!), welcoming and very pretty presentation of the dishes.

Excellent cuisine and good service! Exemplary. Nice big garden.

A really special and great restaurant. Excellent food (all organic) and a great wine list!

If you want to challenge yourself and discover new seasonal tastes Écluse is the place to be. Local, seasonal, surprising.

Incredible discovery. Excellent dishes with very good value for money. Very very nice find for us, and surely the best restaurant in Bienne

It was so wonderful🤗 I was there on my birthday & chose the multi-course surprise menu, which was super fantastic & exciting and totally delicious😋😋😋 The ambience is really nice, inside and out... It's simply worth a visit🤩👍🎉👏😃😁 The concept is simply fantastic and wonderful, BRAVO👏🦋

What an impressive lunch ! The place : both exceptional inside and outside, modern but simple with a lot of “home made” decor that are in fact the home made pickles! We loved it !! Then the service : perfect ; with a true love for the ingredients that are presented and a very good taste in wine :))) only new domains for us, good surprises ! And finally : the food : it’s beautiful as mush as it is good —> local products with a play of textures and temperatures, colors … (finally the small attentions for guests with children were so thoughtful! Loved it!)

It was excellent! The food was delicious, the location was very picturesque and the concept was terrific - and yet what particularly stood out was the excellent, courteous and friendly service.

Wonderful evening with wine accompaniment. Was a pleasure!

Thoughtful concept and original cuisine. Fantastic wine list and friendly service. I'm already looking forward to my next visit.

Very good location, nicely decorated and friendly staff was my first impression. The concept, which relies (almost) exclusively on local products, is extremely interesting and the food tasted very good. But if you consistently avoid lemons, I don't understand why French wine is on the menu. I miss the consistency. And finally: If you go here, you should bring your time.

After a difficult day, I came across this real pearl in the heart of Bienne. From the terrace to the table, including the entrance, I was totally under the spell of this restaurant. Small tempting menu, attentive services, I enjoyed myself

It was excellent and very charming, the waitress very friendly I will come back !!!

Much better before, food not good, the meat smelled like crap, fish average and above all too expensive for what it is. The service at the end of the meal when it was necessary to cash in was deplorable, nonchalant and rude. really disappointed with my evening in this restaurant, last visit for me. Real nonsense, the lock was better before.

Great meat selection. Best Wagyu in the world. Super friendly staff. (Especially the very young gentleman)

Actually, it was our favorite place for a long time when we met between Neuchâtel and Aarau - fine food and generally friendly staff. Last time, unfortunately, after 2 hours we were "kindly" and firmly asked to pay - the bill was immediately placed on the table - and to vacate the table as the next guests were waiting. Whether we wanted to have a coffee or a dessert wasn't the question... I imagine hospitality differently.

Local sourced ingredients is the key concept for this restaurant. The surprise menu is a very good option if you want a full experience of what they can bring on the plate. 4 courses really gives you at the end about 10 small courses. Flavours are very pure and on top. Great discovery on my business trip. Restaurant was full so booking upfront is probably recommended.

Our two dishes were served cold. Three servers for around forty clients. No apology from the owner. Cashed in full. First and last visit.

Maybe the best place to eat & drink natural wine in Biel

What an experience! Highly to recommend!!

The Ecluse is always worth a visit. We spent a wonderful evening with friendly service, great wine and of course excellent food. It is particularly worth mentioning that practically all of the ingredients come from within a radius of max. 50 km. Great!

Lovely milieu and food made from ingredients produced nearby. The service is exceptional.

Cozy restaurant, good service and tasty food and wine

We ate here on the occasion of our company outing (around 40 people). Everything worked perfectly from the first contact to dinner. Super nice staff, helpful, flexible and professional. Excellent food!

Excellent meal, terrible service. Proposal to finish our wine in plastic cups so we can go out at 11:02 p.m. when it closes at 11:00 p.m. Too bad, very good quality of wine and food.

Many years ago I had visited the Écluse and was thrilled by this island of tranquillity. I finally found it again and it has simply become even better. The concept of sustainability and regionality is convincing and does not imply any restriction; on the contrary, the creativity required brings wondrous combinations and flavourful surprises to light. Also perfectly prepared. The wonderful evening was accompanied by selected wine (trust their recommendations, you will not be disappointed!) and lovely (staff) people.

Staff very attentive, food excellent, cozy atmosphere, a bit noisy until everyone has been fed. All in all highly recommended

Was there for a wedding. Very friendly and pleasant service and a really beautiful garden. Even though I wasn't registered as vegan, the kitchen spontaneously conjured up a great menu for me. Just great, thank you!

Very nice garden economy with very friendly service. Sympathetic philosophy: No ingredients from more than 50km away & prefer small portions (with seconds) rather than large ones & therefore food waste. Highly recommended. No 5 stars because of inedible short ribs.

Map on the big slate only in German. Burger with sweet pulled pork and homemade ketchup, too sweet for our taste. For 2 glasses of Pinot Noir from the lake, we were charged Fr 19.80!

Food was ok. There is a lot of emphasis on regional products. Friendly service, nice restaurant and garden.

Great discovery, with products coming exclusively from 50km around the restaurant, we took the surprise menu which was also very good. The terrace is very pretty and pleasant for eating outside. (Only downside, the wait is a little long between the second starter and the main course, after that it can happen, we'll see next time).

Wonderful atmosphere in the garden, great staff, delicious food at not very cheap prices. All in all highly recommended!

Very good food and nice garden terrace.

The food and concept are great but unfortunately the service was an absolute disaster. After asking several times, the wrong drinks were delivered and waiting times were extremely long - just for drinks! In addition, the person who was responsible for our table didn't listen, regularly ran away during the ordering process and then only half was delivered and we were blamed for it. The bad rating certainly doesn't apply to the entire staff, but we would still have expected an apology.

The concept and the ambience are simply wonderful. We enjoyed a wonderful evening with delicious food. The terrace is a real eye-catcher and the service was very attentive! We'd love to come back!

Only the outdoor terrace is nice, the interior doesn't make you want to stay there. Food quality is average, nothing special. The service passable.

Amazing food, staff is always friendly and helpful. Everything is local and the plates are unique. Great wine too. Also the atmosphere is not bad, next to a beautiful garden. The card is a bit confusing and not really user friendly. Portions are too small for the high price.

Fine restaurant with a cozy front garden and friendly staff. The food was really good and beautifully prepared.

A great concept that is being pursued here. We are happy to support such regional product uses. It is also clear that the price is high. However, we also expect great quality. Unfortunately, this was only partially offered to us. Magda's entrecôte (we think it's great that the cow is introduced to you) 👍🏻 was unfortunately quite tough and riddled with tendons. At a price of 162.-/400g that shouldn't be the case. The pork belly was great, soft and tender. We then got two desserts for free and the chef apologized. The waiting time was very long, but the staff was always very friendly and nice. Thank you for the hospitality.

In this magnificent shaded garden, it is an oasis in the heart of the city. The concept of local provenance of ingredients should be the basis for everyone and their cuisine is simple and refined. A great discovery. Thanks also to the courteous and friendly waiters

We started our Biel trip with a lunch break at Ecluse. We loved the concept of the place (only local produce). The meal was delicious and beyond expectations. We had a full menu (salad/suppe, chicken/vegi meal and dessert). It is a local gem! The staff was very friendly and the nature ambience was a bliss in a hot day!

Incredible food and atmosphere, shared with wonderful company. Food locally sourced within a 50km radium and inventive menu. Do the four or five course tasting menu and you won’t be disappointed!

A summer favorite! Consistently creative, locally sourced, cuisine. Local and creative beers, wines, and nonalcoholic drinks. Good service. But the courtyard/setting when the weather is warm can’t be beat. It’s a haven to hang out in.

Ate lunch outside under the shady trees in summer. The quality of the food is beyond question - very good. There is also a vegetarian option hidden in the menu (we use it as a layered lasagna, which could be added in the future). Normally you should probably plan an hour over lunch - unfortunately it took 1.5 hours for 6 of us and something got mixed up, coffee as an excuse was also good.

Today I had the craziest tuning of a parmigiana, I've never eaten anything like this in my life, still a touch of the classic parmigiana flavor - but BUT BUT much more!! Santa Maria and Padre Pio! No Italian would dare to touch the holy grail of Italian nonna cuisine, or how dare to even change or tune it. But the ECLUSE does it with such ease that you wouldn't think you had eaten parmigiana afterwards. Really great, thank you! I can rate parmigiana, after all I had it in the shop :) AMEN!

Top service, very nice wine list, delicious food in a wonderful atmosphere. Gladly again.

Very nice garden. The staff is very friendly and helpful. There is a relaxed atmosphere, you just feel at home. The food is very good and a lot of it is homemade. Will definitely go there again….

Just magnificent setting, a haven of peace in the heart of the spa town

This is my first ever review. There were 4 of us eating and we are anything but 'complicated' guests. The price-performance ratio here is really catastrophic. - The service was brisk, hectic, overwhelmed with many small errors (even though the rest was not fully occupied) - A total of 20 francs were charged for about 1 liter of tap water (!) for 4 people!! That's very, very bold! (When asked whether this was true, the reason given was 'the effort involved in washing up', 'you could have used more water') - the side vegetables were still practically raw - the rest of the food was ok, but nothing more price example; - 10.- per dl for a mediocre Pinot Noir. - 30.- for a small plate of tagliatelle (with hard vegetables) But it's your own fault, you're too friendly on site, you accept things (vegetables, service errors). But given the prices, I can't recommend eating here. Drink ok; beautiful garden area.

Local and seasonal products. Fine and inventive cuisine Served by a friendly team. Thank you, it was perfect

A fantastic kitchen. However, the service is catastrophic. This was our second time there. The first time we were forgotten, even though we had made a reservation. When, after an eternity of waiting, the wine was warm and almost finished, we were told that the dishes could no longer be served as ordered because there were no more ingredients in stock. We contacted the responsible people by email. They apologized very kindly and were given an aperitif voucher. A few minutes later, our daughter was still brave enough and ordered her wedding meal there. Same again, good food, wait, wait, wait. Not all guests had enough aperitifs and waited, waited, waited. Disastrous service, certainly nice staff, but simply poorly trained. We like it loose but not like that! A company came after us and were served quickly. We're probably just too nice people. For us Eclus, better not anymore!!

Great ambience and nice service. We were disappointed with the food. They serve elegant small but expensive courses. Unfortunately, the quality doesn't justify the price. Tasteless, meat far from perfectly cooked.