jsmith

I ran across this site while looking for info on a specific restaurant. The original site is in French but this is a computer translation so it may be a little garbled.

I expect there will be many criticisms of the reviews by the knowing (or is it the know-it-all) Fodorites.

ira

Well, js,

I hope that you don't take this as being unduly critical, but would you mind posting the URL?

jsmith

Dumb, dumb, dumb. Here is the address:

http://216.239.39.104/translate_c?hl...004-33,RNWE:en

StCirq

Oh, I love it - the actual names of the restaurants are "translated" - how weird is that? I mean, the Table of the Gourmets, With the Fine Gourmets, At Lucie, Of On Their Premises, The Friend Jean, and my personal favorite -the Firm Simon Saint.

What's the website for the original French? It hurts my head to read the "English."

jsmith

Well, ira, now that you've had the address for 90 plus minutes. do you have any comments?

Michel_Paris

http://mmmm.free.fr/ for the "real" names and addresses. I agree, it hurts my head to try and figure out the name and address to find a place, hoping that the English translation is a "true" translation and not machine generated.

Lots of restaurants I've never heard of (which is good) and some honest opinions...

jsmith

Michael has given the French address:

http://mmmm.free.fr

Michel_Paris

I'm reconsidering my plan of going to Les Bookinistes, based on the following:

It is an appendix of Savoy thus the prices are consequently.

I know the French enjoy different foods, but...

Yes, I'm afraid that the translations are literal/machine generated...

Patrick

I was somewhat surprised that even the names are translated so it takes a while to figure out even some of the most familiar ones. I'll spend more time later looking at this site. But the translations do make it fun. I clicked on Polidor and found that I missed their special "optomitrist's soup" when I dined there, described as this:

"I recommend the soup of lenses in entry."

jsmith

I agree that the computer translations are less than ideal (understatement) . However, I think you can get a pretty good idea of the restaurant from the following excerpt of one of them. The captions in parenthesis are mine. The restaurant, incidentally, is one we ate in 3 of our 7 nights in Paris on our latest visit and, selfishly, I have no intention of sharing.

Between 20 and 50 places (SIZE)
Quiet environment
From 20 with 30€ (COST)
No the image,
you can us in
to send one
with the format jpg
(with [email protected] )

What do you think about it?
It is new is it is in my district. Finely of three entries, three dishes and three desserts which changes tous.les.jours (DAILY). The menu to....... 20 euro, entered flat or flat dessert to 15 euro. In two weeks, I ate there 4 times and never the same thing. I regaled myself at every moment. It is the restaurant which will become "large". It has a site: (DELETED)the head (and owner) made large houses! That is seen! For information will eat there you the best rod of bets (which has its store not very far).
11/10/2004

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I went there this evening and it is indeed very well. Although a little noisy (there was a table of people not very discrete) but the merit establishment can be a small installation to soundproof the unit... This says perfect reception, I regaled myself of an aubergine caviar soft-boiled egg and of an excellent steaklet and crystallized sleeve!! Very wise prices, including for the wine. Cheer!! A table TTB!!
18/10/2004

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Me I think that it is a super restaurant of one qualitée produces irreproachable. The price and the selection of the wines are completely remarkable... et due.... It is a restaurant to be followed and I would say even more than you will intend to speak again of the owner in a few years....
19/11/2004

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Small very pleasant restaurant: one eats there very well (vegetables, not heavy sauces, good products), one very is received there (to smile spontaneous), the whole for excellent a quality-price ratio. It's a pity that the restaurant is smoker, one would like to be able to taste all these good things without pollution with nicotine...
20/11/2004

Eloise

A "crystallized sleeve" for dessert?!? Nope, I don't think the automatic translation does the job...

FainaAgain

For me, personally, a "flat dessert" would be a turn-off, LOL

ira

Dear J,

>Well, ira, now that you've had the address for 90 plus minutes. do you have any comments?<

There being so many very pleasant restaurants, in Paris my Lady Wife and I never bother with reviews.

I have compiled a list of about 150 recommended restaurants, and I don't think that we have ever consulted it.

Is Restaurant Vagenende 142 Boulevard St. Germain on your list?

Eloise

But, Jsmith, I can and did use the French Web site to discover the name of the restaurant, which I shall not reveal. (My mistake: the "crystallized sleeve" was not dessert.)

However, I find it somewhat remarkable that you should harshly attack Elaine, who has made many suggestions on this forum in one post and refuse to name a restaurant of which you have a high opinion in another...

jsmith

ira, nice to know your wife is a lady. If you are asking if your restaurant is on my list, the answer is no. We have a half dozen or so that we frequent when in London or Paris and they are constantly changing. We decided after our November trip to eliminate one in London we've been eating at for 15 years. The price has escalated more than the weakening dollar and inflation would justify. We also heard many more US voices in the last two years and wonder if there is a correlation. We added one in Paris.

Eloise, thank you for not revealing the name of the restaurant. Yes, a literal translation is very iffy when it comes to food. Fortunately I've never had to eat a translation though that hasn't always been true of my words. One of the translations for a dessert included "brains of silkworms". I did order something else but I really don't know whether they were sprinkled on along with the sugar.

I fail to see any correlation between not revealing the name of a restaurant in one post and my comments about Elaine in another. I've been posting on this board for about two years and I have seldom, if ever, recommended a hotel or restaurant and I'm not about to start. On another board I recommended a small hotel in Paris that we loved and since then I've never been able to make a reservation. Another time we recommended a newly renovated hotel in London to our dearest friends. When they used it the following year they felt it was terrible.

Elaine may be clairvoyant and recognize a troll from a perfectly innocuous question but neither Patrick nor I could. Have we become so paranoid that we look askance at every new name? What would have been the result if the OP was a legitimate first time poster or, heaven forbid, did want an answer?

Grandmere1

jsmith, I think it is rather provocative to talk about the restaurant and then to refuse to name it. If everyone did that, this site would sure have a lot of helpful info, wouldn't it?

jsmith

There are 1398 reviews of French restaurants on the site I gave and there are many other web sources you can find with just a little effort. There are countless magazines and quidebooks. The newspapers (IHT, NYT, The Times and others) have excellent columnists. These reviewers have much more experience than I and probably better taste buds. There are many posts with names from other better qualified Fodorites. Patrick has a number of suggestions. I am, however, flattered that you think that not knowing a couple I personally enjoy is a loss for this board.

Eloise

Hello again, Jsmith,

I think Grandmere has summed it up very well: “If everyone [refused to name a restaurant he had talked about], this site would sure have a lot of helpful info, wouldn’t it?”

But to the individual points you have made:

How can you logically ask “What would have been the result if the OP was a legitimate first time poster or, heaven forbid, did want an answer?“ and at the same time state that “I have seldom, if ever, recommended a hotel or restaurant and I'm not about to start.”

If no one provided recommendations, the first time poster would not have received her answer, would she have? Or is everyone supposed to provide recommendations generously – with the exception of yourself?

I will freely admit that there are a few, very few small treasures that I have discovered that I will not reveal on this board, but I am happy to recommend restaurants that have been around for decades, are named in numerous tourist guides and are accustomed to dealing with a tourist clientele, but have nevertheless maintained their standards of quality and their reasonable prices. I think that doing so is of value to the users of the board, because there are also a great many restaurants widely known to tourists that have NOT maintained their quality or their prices. I will occasionally recommend smaller establishments (hotels, chiefly, but also a few restaurants), primarily because I have been pleased with what they have offered me but sometimes also because I feel that they deserve to be more widely known than they are.

My own experience with recommendations I have found on this board has not been a happy one. On my last trip to Rome, I went to two restaurants that had been recommended by posters whom I thought to be knowledgeable about Italy and things Italian: one was inexpensive and of extremely poor quality; the other was of high quality but considerably overpriced. Does this mean that I shall never follow another recommendation I find here? No, but it does mean that I shall research the recommendations with considerable care. Given that I own a half-dozen guidebooks to Rome and can read Italian Web sites both of Italian restaurant guides and those where Romans express their personal opinions of restaurants, this is not difficult to do, but it can be very time-consuming.

Finally, I make no claim to clairvoyance and I do not think that Elaine does, but you cannot deny that for the past month or two there has been a recurrent and highly intrusive presence on this board who has appeared under 10 or 20 different names. Elaine and I happened to have read one or two of her posts on an another thread that you and Patrick may not have looked at. I do not think it is fair to call our reaction paranoid...

In principle, I agree with a recent poster – I think it was Ucsun – who suggested that such obvious trolls be ignored. Unfortunately, I for one am not always able to refrain from expressing my displeasure at such abusive use of the forum. And interestingly, the Fodors editors whipped Ucsun’s message off the board very, very quickly; the longer thread by Patrick (I think it was Patrick...) on identifying trolls has been there for much longer (it may no longer be; I have not looked for it today).

Despite my disagreement with some of your positions, I wish you many happy travels in the future.

Patrick

For the record, I don't think I've ever written a post on identifying trolls. And I'm ready to admit, I'm not very good at discovering them. In fact, I have a bad habit of responding to posts without even looking at the name of the person asking.

Meanwhile, I'm very confused. Has part of this thread been deleted? I don't even understand some of the comments here about trolls and attacking people, since none of those things seem to have anything to do with this entire thread.

Eloise

Patrick:

My sincere apologies -- I obviously got it wrong. If it wasn't you, I think it might have been Rex; I tried to find it just now, but it seems it has been deleted.

I daresay the thread is confusing if you do not know the background. A few days ago, a MrsPNelson -- a.k.a. Nellyanne, Praline, and more names than I can remember -- posted a seemingly innocuous question about eating in Paris for $100 a day. Elaine recognized her from another, much less innocuous message in a thread the same day (about breakfast in Italy, as far as I can recall), in which MrsPNelson had attacked her in a very underhanded way.

The last post in the thread -- the last time I saw it -- was by Jsmith, in which he counted 8 messages from MrsPNelson, 12 messages from Elaine and 2 messages from StCirq in defence of Elaine. He accused Elaine rather harshly of having initiated a venomous exchange with someone who might have been a genuine poster who, amidst the back-and-forth, would not have received useful answers.

I was very tempted at the time to respond to Jsmith's post, pointing out that Elaine had had good reason to confront MrsPNelson and had not lashed out at her out of sheer paranoia and that, in fact, Elaine's messages were far less offensive in tone than those of MrsPNelson. But it was fairly late in the evening, and I didn't feel like taking the trouble to write what I would have wanted to be a calm and polite reply.

Then, when Jsmith started the present thread and then refused to reveal the name of the restaurant that he had discovered -- how can one logically argue for useful answers to a genuine poster and refuse to offer useful recommendations oneself? -- I latched onto his post to present the argument that I should have presented elsewhere.

Here is the $100 in Paris thread:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34568217

(There have been additions since Jsmith's post.)

And here is the breakfast thread:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34568044

As I've said above, I agree wholeheartedly with the principal that one should ignore trolls and not waste time on them.

In future, I shall try very hard to do so.

And again, my apologies for my mistake in ascribing to you a message that was not yours.