After my first two trips to Paris, I was under the impression that you just couldn't get a bad meal in Paris. Everything we ate was just great.

Then, we took the kids (ages 13, 11 and 8 at the time). In our search for "famly friendly" places to eat, we found lots of bad food. The worst was at a chain called Hippopotamus, which is written up in all the guide books. The decor was cute. The food was below the quality of a Denny's or IHOP, at about triple the price.

Out of all Rick Steves recommendations, the Cafe du Marche on Rue Cler in the 7th is the one that needs to go from being recommended to recommending you stay away from it.

The food is not terribly expensive, but it's very lackluster and sometimes just plain bad, and it's one of the few restaurants I've ever felt rushed at in Paris.

Jules

Maybe those Rick Steves' restaurant recommendations quit trying to make an effort to serve quality food because they are getting alot of business due to RS and don't seem to care anymore.

I have to second the sentiments about the Café du Marché. I think most people eat outside and never go into the back of the restaurant. There's a back room that is just godawful - dank, dirty, and dingy, with tables all crammed together,and big clouds of odiferous steam wafting through the kitchen doors each time a waiter comes out with an order. We ate back there once and our waiter's apron looked as though he has just slaughtered a cow.

Helene Darroze. The food -- delicious... the service -- disappointing. Also disappointing was the stained velvet chair they offered me and our table right by the bus-table/area. Overall, we felt like spent too much money on a so-so experience.

The worst meals I had in Paris were those in the cafeteria of the dorm I was staying in while attending l'Institut Catholique de Paris. People thing because it was a French school, that the cafeteria food would be great, but they tried to serve as little protein and fresh salads as possible. I remember we looked foward to Sunday because it was the best meal because they were trying to impress out-of-town family guests. Many nights it was light nursery school food, and the night we were served mashed potatoes and hard-boiled eggs for dinner was when we kind of had a riot. We looked foward to the packaged yogurt and piece of Camembert for dessert because it was the best part of the meal.

In a restaurant, probably the worst was some Greek place on rue de la Huchette where the meat had virtually no meat on it, but was mostly fat and gristle. Runner up was some cheap pizza place down in the 14th near Cite Universitaire -- just a very bad pizza with little on it except a wipe of tomato sauce. McDonalds is a million times better.

I don't eat from street vendors, so have never had problems there. For a more standard-class restaurant that is recommended places, the worst was probably Les Fontaines on rue Soufllot near the Pantheon where I had a very tough steak. It's a restaurant often cited as good for steak, also.

jody, its funny that you mentioned that restaurant (Le Trumilou), because I do believe it was the one that two young American girls asked us directions for when we were in Paris last week! We were walking across from the Hotel de Ville and they were lost and I guess they thought we were either French (which is flattering but I highly doubt!) or that we knew where we were going, neither of which were true. Unfortunately we couldn't help them, but I hope they had better luck with it!

Tracy

I don't know if this place is around anymore, but in the 90s we received a recommendation for La Taverne du Sergeant Recruiter on Ile Saint-Louis.

Had Tracy and I followed our instincts, we would have gone AWOL as soon as we walked in, but, alas we did not. The place was a dump and the food pathetic. But at least the service was bad, so it was consistent.

To be perfectly Franc, it not only was it the worst meal I've ever had in all my trips to Paris, it was the worst meal I've have ever had in Europe.

This is a restaurant that hopefully has been court-martialed and is no longer on duty.

L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon. I know that this is a destination for food snobs and my negative comments will cause controversy but the dinner we had there last November was the worst meal for value we ever had in our multiple trips to Paris. In absolute terms the food was not good either.
Looking back at my notes from 11/04 I can report the restaurant was stiff and formal, a terrible place for any conversation since everyone sits at counters, the service poor and the staff at best condescending. Almost all the courses except for desert were over salted and that was the major taste that came through in the starters and main courses. I did not know that you could find iceberg lettuce in Paris until this meal. The taste was like wet cardboard. The rognons d'agneau were loaded with salt as was the ravioli de Langoustine. The only reasonnable features were the bread, a verrienne and the three different glasses of wine. However they were terribly over priced. The desert was a medley of 5 small bite size tartes. You could go into almost any corner patisserie in Paris and get better ones at probably half the price.
Stay away. It is a tourist trap for food snobs. It was very hard for us to imagine anyone that would love this place. Some might tolerate it but love it. We don't think so.

Bistro de Breteuil in the 7th, which many Fodorites love. I wanted to like this place -- reasonable prix-fixe, etc., but blah!

Me and all my Italian relatives just found it to be mediocre.

But on a positive note: LOVED Le Coupe Chou (5th arr.) and Georges (on the top of Georges Pompidou Centre) -- enjoyed the food AND LOVED the ambiance of both of these places.

Disagree with your assessment of Le Coupe-Chou. It wasn't bad; just ordinary. I suppose you could call it romantic.

Someone (firsttime visitor to Paris) posted recently on another forum that the La Taverne du Sargeant Recruiter (sp.?) was their favorite restaurant! Hopefully this means that the service and food have improved greatly since the 1990's.

We ate at La Taverne du Sergeant Recruiter back in 1998 (I think) and it was especially fun (but maybe that was because we were seated next to a German couple who were particularly friendly and funny). It was a pretty basic menu with choice of about 3 main dishes, and while not haute cuisine in the least, it was worth its price (which was about $20US pp at the time). I still recommend it to people as an inexpensive and enjoyable place if you don't want to fuss with menu choices. As I recall, "starters" and "desserts" were served "family style" (in our case for us and the table next to us) and the wine choice was perfectly palatable house red or house white and our glasses were never empty. It seemed a good place for first-timers at any rate.

That said, if I'd had an atrocious experience at any place, I probably would avoid it for many years after as well

Our worst experience was someplace in the 7th that looked like a good moderately priced bistro. It was moderately priced but the food was tasteless. I've forgotten it's name (and I don't think I even put it in my journal!) We just picked it while walking around and reading menus on the street. Normally we have better luck.

francophile03 -- I think you're right as far as the Cafe du Marche -- but they are so slammed with RS fans that they don't have a prayer of keeping up the standards of slow Parisian style dining -- and god forbid, decent food.

I would imagine that a recommendation from Rick could bring out what is already there in you -- either the best or the worst. I've eaten at a couple of his other more obscure restaurants that are harder to find, and discovered excellent service and the promised good food. Some people step up to the plate -- others coast when they get a recommendation...I just hope RS stops by there (or has a mole do it for him) and discovers what a nightmare it's become before he publishes his next Paris book.

Jules

I had two good dinners at La Terrasse in the 7th.

Anyways the worst meal I had in Paris was at Roland Garros. Just horrible food. Next day I brought some sandwiches in rather than eat their rubbish.

" posted recently on another forum that the La Taverne du Sargeant Recruiter (sp.?) was their favorite restaurant! ."

Well, our friends told us it was good back then, too. We hated it. That's why the only review that truly counts is your own review. But below is something I culled from the "master of gourmet" Rick Steves' website, so I think I'll stand by my previous statement.

".......La Taverne du Sergeant Recruteur.... famous for their rowdy, medieval cellar atmosphere. They serve all-you-can-eat buffets with straw baskets of raw veggies (cut whatever you like with your dagger), massive plates of pâté, a meat course, and all the wine you can stomach for €36-38. The food is just food; burping is encouraged. If you want to eat a lot, drink a lot of wine, and holler at your friends while receiving smart-aleck buccaneer service, these food fests can be fun.

"If you’d rather be surrounded by drunk tourists than locals, pick La Taverne du Sergeant Recruteur."

Somehow, I doubt the quality has improved after reading that stellar review. Bon Appetite!

Any place in the 5th or 6th that has Moussakka on the menu (no matter how they spell it.)

I've had opposite experiences at Chartier, BTW - good food and cheap bill, plus interesting people-watching. It's also fun to see if you can shake up the waiters. I be ruder than thee - what a fun contest.

Also had a meal long ago at Deux Magots that had me looking for the missing Gs and Ts. Go figure.

Our worst meal from our recent trip was at Thomieux in the 7th. Their cassoulet is meant to be a speciality, but it was horrible, fatty pork, small amount of duck, tastless chipolatas (not even decent sausages) and masses of beans, I mean masses. Very bland and overrated.

I think that one should not take any of these reveiews as gospel. Maybe Sergeant Recruiter IS great now.

You can have a bad meal or dish anywhere. I've had them at some of my favorite local restaurants, but since I know the place, I'll return knowing it it was just an off night.

On vacation, a restaurant usually only has one chance to sparkle, and if it comes up short, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad place. The question does make for an interesting thread, however.

Maybe the nice recent review I read about La Taverne du SR was because it was the reviewer's first trip to Paris and either he/she really did like the way the food tasted or didn't have much else to compare that dining experience with.