Three recent incidents revealing the bizarre inconsistency of Paris restaurants have come to my attention lately and prompted me to write this post.
I realize food and restaurants are very subjective and everybody has a different experience. When I lived in New York, restaurants would open and everything was hunky dory for the first six months or year and then the food and/or service would sometimes slip. In Paris, it seems it could change drastically in one week.
Last Saturday I took a tour client to Mini-Palais in the Grand Palais. Mini-Palais has had a lot of good buzz in the last year since they hired a new chef. It has a lovely, spacious terrace overlooking the Petit Palais, covered in beautiful mosaic. It was a perfect restaurant experience with my clients: the food was excellent- everyone loved their dishes, the service was professional and courteous, and it was a crisp, summer night and the temperature was in the mid-60s.
Some other clients last week who were on their honeymoon, asked for a restaurant recommendation for their last night here. Based on my experience at Mini-Palais the week before, I gushed about how great it was and thought being on the terrace would be extra romantic for the newlyweds. They wrote to me the next day telling me that it was a near disaster experience. Here is the email they sent:
We ended up going to Mini-Palais last night & due to the rain we weren't able to get a seat on the terrace. Based on our experience I would not recommend this place again. It took nearly 2 hours for our appetizers to make it to our table. They brought out my entree 5-10 minutes before my wife's and when they did bring hers out they forgot half the recipe. We tried to simply send it back and ask to have it removed given the entire experience but this was not an option the waiter was willing to accept. We finally received her full entree 15 minutes later and it was by far the worst dish we've had in Paris. While my steak was ok, her pasta would not have made the cut at Olive Garden. I apologize for the rant and we appreciate your recommendation but we both felt you should be aware of our experience.
Of course, I was surprised and felt really bad for their negative experience. I was especially shocked that that the service and food had changed so dramatically in less than a week.
This week, the opposite happened to another client of mine who asked me about Cafe Marly. I told her the food was good and it had a stunning setting facing the courtyard of the Louvre, but usually the service sucks and they had been downright rude to me on one occasion. She went anyway, even with my warning, and reported back to me that the service was very friendly and they couldn't have been treated better.
I will still recommend restaurants that I like but from now on I will add a disclaimer saying it could be a crap shoot even from week to week.
When I went with Thirza Vallois and Lynn to Villa Lys in June, Lynn wrote a favorable review. Read what Thirza has to say about Villa Lys when her friends went there after us.
Dining At Villalys, by Thirza Vallois
Two weeks ago, Richard Lynn and myself had lunch at Villa Lys, at the Palais Royal. The Palais Royal is one of those hidden nooks of Paris with a huge history, the social and intellectual centre of upper-class Paris in the 18th century, famed also in those glorious days for its gambling houses and brothels. Until recently, it was exquisitely undiscovered, all one's own in the mornings and after dark. Even today, when it's better known, most tourists never wander here, although it is situated literally opposite the Louvre (Thank goodness for that, and please don't spread the word!). I am always astonished how unadventurous most tourists can be, how so many of them miss out on the best of Paris.
I had introduced Lynn to Villa Lys a week or two earlier, I can't recall. We had such a good time that she suggested going back with Richard. Which we did the following week. The two of us arrived early, ahead of Richard, and made it to one of the outdoor tables on the still empty terrace. A not too bright and helpful waitress came up to us and insisted on seating us at a table for two, the price to pay for a place under the sun at Villa Lys. When the restaurant filled up, I realised this was the regular seating policy of the restaurant, tolerated by a good number of the guests. To each his or her own, I suppose. Lynn and I were not willing to be unpleasantly squeezed at a table, let alone have our belongings lying on the dusty ground. Our press cards had an immediate effect. When Richard appeared on the scene, our waitress had been swapped for members of staff who couldn't have been more amenable and who bent over during the entire meal to please us. To add to our pleasure, the sun had just broken through the morning veil of clouds, and the rest of our lunch was as described by Richard, lovely, peaceful, complete with the commendable cooking of the Moroccan chef.
So why do I take the trouble to report again? Because a few days later, two Australian tourist friends of mine went to Villa Lys following my recommendation, but never even got a taste their food! It took half an hour before they managed to lay their hands on a menu. After being further ignored for the next twenty minutes or so, whilst other clients who arrive much later were being served, they decided to walk away. I am sure my friends were truthful, because this is a common pattern in many Parisian restaurants, certainly when walking in incognito, sometimes even when one is a regular. You need to be prepared. It doesn't matter if you don't speak any French. You can express your anger in your own language. Trust me, they'll understand! I sometimes kick a real fuss when necessary, and I certainly don't leave any tip! My friends were too shy and walked away, back to where we had eaten together the day before — at A Priori Thé, at the Galerie Vivienne, a jewel of an arcade, just north of the Palais Royal. Here they were recognised immediately by the staff who had served them the day before, so pleased to see them come back! They told me they had been given a royal treatment. The sad thing is that when you visit a place for three days, you want to try different restaurants and have a variety of experiences. That being said, my friends are the easy going types and were happy enough to land again in the same establishment. Note that A Priori Thé is a very well-known salon de thé, one of the city's favourite old-timers. The food is excellent, the pastry is delicious. Like all salons de thé in Paris it is open for lunch and tea, not for dinner.
Thirza Vallois is the author of the internationally acclaimed Around and About Paris series, Romantic Paris and Aveyron, A Bridge to French Arcadia. Around and About Paris, volume 1, covering the centre of the city, is now available as an ebook, making it the ideal companion for the reader on the move.
www.aroundandaboutparis.com
www.thirzavallois.com
In addition to my Eye Prefer Paris Tours, we now offer Eye Prefer New York Tours, 3-hour walking tours of New Yorkís best neighborhoods including Soho, Meatpacking/West Village & Tribeca. Tours cost $195 for up to 3 people and $65 for each additional person.Come take a bit of the Big Apple on an Eye Prefer New York Tour!
Come experience my blog ìliveî with my Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I lead. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris. www.eyepreferparistours.com
New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotteís professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.
Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.
Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.
I SO agree with you Richard. We have had and still have plenty of guests visiting us in France and funnily we still speak (and laugh - now....) about the one and only very, very unfriendly and shockingly rude treatment we got with regular visitors - also not too far from the Louvre (that's where we came from....). We wanted our friends to eat in a typical French bistro and boy, did we get the wrong end of the stick.... Our friends' faith in the French eating culture was only restored when we had a totally different encounter in a local eaterie in our town, where the buzz and the warmth of the tone, the speed with which everybody was served (it was at lunchtime and the place was filled choc-a-block within 20 minutes after our arrival, the general quality of the food, and the pleasant surprise when receiving the bill...
Thanks for informing your readers about this. An article (sadly) needed to put in your blog.
Bon appétit!
Posted by: Kiki | August 09, 2011 at 12:30 PM