Cafe du Marche
Mar 14th, 2003, 05:04 PM
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I've been reading accolades about this *restaurant* for a couple of years on this site, and I have to finally weigh in with my own opinion. In the summer of 2001 we arrived in Paris on a Saturday evening by train from the Dordogne too late to get a place at le Florimond or La Fontaine de Mars or l'Auberge Bressane or any of the other restaurants in the area that we like so much, so we set off on foot and found ourselves at the Café du Marché.<BR>To this day, I think that was the worst meal I have ever had in all of France. Not only was the food incredibly substandard, greasy, and mass-produced, the service was brusque, and we were packed elbow-to-elbow with other diners in a back room where it must have been hovering at a temperature about 90 degrees fahrenheit. The clientele was about 50 percent American and 50 percent tourists from other countries. I didn't see or hear a single French person, which you may interpret as you will. It was cheap, I'll give you that. It was also simply horrid. I fail to see why this place has become popular, in a city, and an arrondissement, where there are a gazillion options for finding good food. If it's closed indefinitely, I think I know why, and I can only hope it's replaced with something that offers edible food and decent service.
Mar 14th, 2003, 05:24 PM
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St Cirq: You must have hit a bad night altho' I agree that the service is brusque; however, I found that true in many Paris restaurants. I never had a bad meal; in fact, quite good and it was very reasonably priced compared to almost all the other restaurants recommended on this site. Certainly you can get squeezed into a back area but if you arrive by 7:00-7:30 you can probably get a sidewalk table. During a May visit I would say that 75% of the patrons were French.
Mar 14th, 2003, 05:34 PM
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Well, I guess everyone's experience is different, which is in part why I didn't post anything for so long, but ours was just gruesome. The American family sitting next to us (about a half-inch away, in fact) got their orders all mixed up and never got half of what they did order. It was absolutely steaming in the room, and service was not only slow but brusque, but the food was APALLINGLY bad. It just wasn't acceptable. It was the type of food that French restaurants try to pass off onto American customers as being French - and believe me, after more than 60 trips to France I can recognize this syndrome. The food was awful, awful, awful. We tasted each other's entrées and gagged on all of them. A bad night? I'm willing to say maybe, but I can't imagine that kitchen producing something edible.
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BTilke
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Oct 21st, 2003 12:26 PM
