Everyone has a favorite "best" restaurant in France: 3-star Michelin fine dining to that special little food cart that no one knows about but you.
But what I -really- want to know is what is the absolute worst place you've eaten in France?
I have something of a writing project in mind...
-- Mike Beebe
It even LOOKS like a dive!
the food court outside the underground entrance to the Louvre - it ties with the cafeteria at the Vatican for worst combination of food, atmosphere and value in all of Europe.
The cafeteria at Chenonceau ( in 2013) Our family still talks about how bad the food was! It was so surprising, every other meal had been so delicious
We have had consistently good food in France. In other countries, we occasionally will get a less than awesome meal. We have eaten at a few Michelin stared restaurants, but typically we stick to midrange restaurants.
But, I didn't even have to think for a second. The absolute worst meal we have ever had in France was a restaurant on the road that goes to Mont Saint Michel. Horrific. And, you can't escape the terrible food. All the restaurants are managed by the same company.
In the zillion times we hve been to the Louvre we have never tried that food court -- now I am not feeling i missed anything.
The Louvre restaurant that open under the pyramid is adequate re food but had comically slow service. -- a dozen people in black and white bustling about but not taking orders or delivering food. It was laughable -- we had nowhere we had to be, but several people near us walked out after ordering. (French people not American tourists)
Our worst meal in Europe was the airport Hilton at CDG. We expected expensive (which it was) but also expected edible - which it barely was. It was long ago -- but an indelible memory.
There's this "pizza" place in Nantes.
My wife calls it "ketchup on a cracker."
I'll play, sounds fun. I'll say my most disappointing meal was at a Best Western Hotel in Rungis, close to Orly airport where we were to fly out the next day. It was the closest to an American truck stop diner that I have ever seen outside of America, except they served wine!
Fortunately, I can mostly recall wonderful meals, but as for the worst, it is a toss up between two restaurants: the first, a little place below our Airbnb in Bayeux where, after a chilly morning touring the D-Day Beaches, we were so looking forward to our first "real" French onion soup only to find it couldn't hold a candle to the one I make at home (not bragging, as I was certainly expecting mine to pale in comparison!); and the second, an awful place on a lovely square in the incredible old centre of Le Mans. That time, we had "hangry" kids and teens with us who needed to eat NOW, so we had to grab whatever was closest. It was pretty terrible. I am realizing that any bad restaurant experiences we have had in France have generally come at lunchtime - my preference is to grab a baguette sandwich on the go, which rarely disappoints, or eat cheese, sausage and bread (washed down with great, inexpensive wine, of course) back at our lodging, which never disappoints, but sometimes, when travelling "en famille", you've got to please the kids to keep the peace! I am over the top about researching my dinner restaurants ahead of time, which almost always works out well. Some people think I am crazy, but with the internet, there is no excuse to have a bad meal (which often costs the same as a good one!). Several years ago, on a month long trip to France and Italy, out of 30 dinners, only 1 (in Italy) was bad, so that certainly motivated me to stay the course on subsequent trips.
What a long answer to a simple question.....sorry for hijacking!
Thanks for the fun thread!
Early in Trip Advisor's existence, before it was highly commercialized, I fell for a fake review at what turned out to be the first of our two worst meals in France over a 50 year period: frozen fish with a tomato paste for a sauce, dry grated carrots, and the rest has been blocked from my memory. I could see by the shocked faces as food was served that others in the dining room had fallen for the same review. I assumed the owners had let their untrained teens alone in the kitchen to improvise at this northern Provence hotel/restaurant.
The other was Fawlty Towers, where a young couple with help from their friends and dogs had just taken over a hotel-restaurant near Limoges from a talented, experienced retiring couple. Reviews were based on the previous owners' reputation, unfortunately. My gazpacho was whatever vegies they could put in a blender, broken glass in the dessert, inedible main course and breakfast was just as bad. The dogs helped by eating, sometimes right off our plates when we turned our heads, anything we couldn't stomach to eat.
Broken glass in the dessert !! Dogs eating off the table !!
Mine was some restaurant we went to in town after Lascaux II. I don't remember anything about the meal. But I do remember going to the restroom and when I washed my hands, being rather disgusted by the rather wet (communal) towel I needed to use to "dry" my hands.
A couple of days later, I started feeling sick. Then sicker and sicker until finally I ended up in the hospital for a few days. The doctors and nurses were never able to figure out what maladie I had contracted. They thought some type of hepatitis, but all the tests came back negative. Same for anything else they tested for. My favorite was when they asked me if I had traveled recently. I said yes, and their faces lit up as if they were thinking, aha, now we're getting somewhere.
Only for them to be very disappointed when I told them it was the Périgord.
Damn that was nqsty.
A small observation: So far, I've noticed that many of the "restaurants" mentioned above, while they are places where you can eat, aren't really restaurants in the traditional sense.
Quite a few are technically closer to the fast-food chain category, like those in the Louvre Museum that serve pre-cooked, industrially produced food delivered to various locations such as airports and museums. One of the basic rules: always avoid "restaurants" in museums or other tourist attractions.
They fall into the same category as highway rest stop restaurants. Similarly, pizzerias are not considered French restaurants either.
The one mentioned by davebarnes is a hotel-bar-PMU-tabac, one of those places frequented mainly by locals who stay for hours, come to have a drink, buy cigarettes, and bet on horse races, 99 times out of 100, it's a red flag.
B wary of restaurants that offer onion soup. The French haven't cooked onion soup at home for a long time (it was a dish for poor people made with inexpensive ingredients ). It can be good and well-prepared in more modern versions, but it's primarily a dish for foreign tourists.
That being said, even when following a few basic rules, it's very common to end up in a terrible place. I know loads of them.
Student cafeterias called “restaurant universitaire” or “resto-U” for short, where I frequently dined as a student in Paris in 1983. You got a full meal in exchange for a little blue ticket that cost 5 francs, less than a dollar, which was great value. Some restos-U were better than others, fortunately the one near where I lived in Montparnasse was one of the better ones, and some dishes they did quite well (merguez-frites, yay!) but the bread was often stale, and if it was andouillettes night, look out (as there was only one plat du jour nightly). Those are a truly fetid sausage made from pork intestines that have a rank aroma of what intestines contain.
I'll never forget the day I tried andouillette. It was the plat du jour at an amazing restaurant and I was a poor English teaching assistant in the Perche région of France. I thought "oh good... andouille...". Boy was I wrong. No matter how many times you clean that stuff , it keeps the aroma of merde.
I'll also never forget the first and only time I let someone else plan New Years Eve dinner in Paris back when I was just out of college. He was cheap and this turned out to be boeuf bourguignon that was seemingly made of used leather shoes. And for dessert...fruit cocktail. Unbelievable. It was hilarious and terrible. It was near the Eiffel Tower of course.
Note that andouille and andouillette are two different dishes. They are both made partially from pig intestines, but andouille is eaten cold, while andouillette is grilled. Don't go to Brittany without trying "Andouille de Guémené," which is completely different from andouillette.
As for andouillette, the most adventurous will only try those with the AAAAA label - Association Amicale des Amateurs d*Andouillette Authentique (Friendly Association of Authentic Andouillette Lovers). Any consumption of other types of andouillette is entirely at your own risk. :)
The worst place I've eaten in France was a restaurant in Montmartre - L'Anvers du Décor. It is the one time I had asked the Hotel concierge for a dinner recommendation. Never again. The menus are on iPads with pictures, loads of choices, food was disgusting (I had a boeuf bourguignon that was so tough and fatty and tasteless. Husband's duck was awful. Neither of us were able to eat our meals), and prices were expensive. Then they asked for a 20% tip at the end! We should've left right when we saw the menus but it had/has decent ratings on Trip Advisor so I thought it couldn't be that bad. Well, it was. And I'm not a super picky eater. Now I stick to using The Fork app for finding restaurants (or trusted friends' recommendations.)
I've since learned that Boeuf Bourguignon is something you should eat at grandma's and not at a restaurant.
oh how could I forget. Just this fall, a local friend took us to Le Petit Bouillon Pharamond in Les Halls. It was a very cute room but the maitre d was surly and that should have been a warning. I was told later that the 'fake bouillon' phenomenon is burgeoning in Paris where mass market chain investors buy quaint old restaurants and then rename them 'bouillons' to trade on the reputation of the old low price working man's pub vibe and then serve hideous industrial food. This place is beautiful but not a place I'd ever want to try eating again.
I am not very picky but this food was inedible. My husband and French friend ordered parmentier -- which is a French version of shepherd's pie and kind of fool proof. It had been doused with oil and was barely edible. I had a fish dish which was so awful I literally could not eat it. Worst meal we have had in France outside of CDG.
There are lots of mediocre places in Paris; one does better generally in the boondocks with small hotel restaurants - where we have literally never had a bad meal. In Paris you need to do a little research -- many great, lots of fine places -- but also lots of mediocre spots and a fair number of really bad places.
Au Bougninoin au bougninoin in the Marais. They seat all the Americans together so if feels like your dining out in Schaumburg or San Francisco.
Chez Paul on the rue de Charonne in the 11th. Couldn't have found a more apathetic staff, food was just terrible. Oh, and some café near the Eiffel Tower a million years ago, before I knew not to eat near any monument. Croque Monsieur was burned beyond recognition.
JoLui, I am pretty certain that Resto-U Andouillettes did not have the AAAAA label! I think for Americans the confusion between andouillette and andouille in France is because many of us know andouille as a spicy, very tasty sausage used in the Louisiana Cajun cuisine, often in gumbo, that is nothing like its French namesakes.
Slate,
I looked at how Cajun andouille is made, it's very similar to Guénemé andouille, a recipe probably imported by French colonizers.
You're lucky they didn't bring over the Resto U concept. :)
Too funny as I have always found one of the drawbacks of traveling to Spain how boring the food gets after a while !
I am obviously missing out !
One of the basic rules: always avoid "restaurants" in museums or other tourist attractions.
Except the Café Campana ("the clock room") in the Musée d'Orsay. The clock, the light, the ambiance ... and the food actually ain't bad.
Except for Café Campana ("the clock room") in the Musée d'Orsay.
Café Campana is owned by WSH International Investments Limited, a UK company that also manages the Louvre restaurant and the Air France business lounges at CDG (and many other similar establishments throughout Europe).
Not exactly the "authentic little neighborhood restaurant" type.
Restaurant Michel in Marseille for their famed bouillabaisse. It was dreadful. The room was cold in temperature and hospitality. The lighting was surgically bright. The meal was meh. At best. It was also the most expensive meal of our 7 night spring stay in the South of France. More here if you’re interested.
second Au Bourguignon in the Marais. It was 'okay' but the signature dish is just lackluster beef stew -- none of the richness and complexity and yumminess of better places including Chez Dumonet which has the best Boeuf Bourguignon we have had.
Café Campana is ... Not exactly the "authentic little neighborhood restaurant" type.
True, but I don't demand that the owners of every restaurant I visit have a back story out of Les Misérables. Bottom line: Café Campana is an iconic place. It's one of the many great experiences available in the Orsay.
Interesting about Cafe Campana. It's certainly an improvement in that space over the self-service with food in cellophane wrappers that used to be there. The key is in the original statement: "food actually ain't bad" and no, it's pretty good if it's the same one that handles some of the catering at Orly. You expect bad and then are pleased that it's actually pretty good.
The Jacquemart-André has that lovely former ballroom, now restaurant, also served by a large, slightly overpriced restaurant corporation. There used to be a fairly decent real restaurant inside the Louvre called Benoît, but it didn't last long.
At a now-closed restaurant in Arles, they had the genius idea to make a "vegan" vegetable stew using carrots that came straight out of a beef stew, complete with teeny bits of meat. That probably takes the cake for me.
And I am still scarred by the meals at the "L'Arche" motorway service plazas back in the 1990s...
But thankfully, I haven't had a "call-the-waiter-bad" meal in a while!
This was entirely self-inflicted and even expected going in, but I would say Indiana Cafe in Montparnasse. My kids begged to eat lunch there after we finished at the catacombs because they said they needed a break from French food. It is a Tex-Mex restaurant (its named Indiana because it had the word Indian in it and the rest of the decor is just as on the nose as the name). But then there were odd items like Pastrami. The food was airport lounge quality but my kids were happy. The waiter was kind and my cocktail was not bad.
Some truly wonderfully awful entries here. And haven’t we all fallen for Indiana? There’s always that point where you tire of all the fine food and a burger sounds like a great idea, but gosh the French just always miss the mark with it.
My worst was more of a bad situation. In my least favorite town, Avignon, on a Sunday night after a day tour that left me starving. Nothing, like nothing was open or was booked solid. My hotel recommended a place I had walked by and avoided, and was now populated by every hotel guest in similarly desperate straits. Fine dining airs and prices with mediocre food. Foie gras was ok cause it’s out of a jar, but the rare veal chop resulted in a sleepless night and a delicate morning. A gas station hot dog would have been preferable and probably safer.
My worst experience was at a restaurant at National Harbor in Maryland. No surprise, it didn’t last a year before closing. In Europe, there have been some fairly bad meals over the years, where we were served grocery store type pre-prepared meals.
There’s always that point where you tire of all the fine food and a burger sounds like a great idea, but gosh the French just always miss the mark with it.
Interesting. I've found many good burgers in France.
I agree jphbucks. In recent years, once they started making their own burgers, and stopped teasing English-speakers about McDonald's and Whimpy's, the French leaned to make very good burgers. In a country with so many trained chefs, the quality of the ingredients is the first consideration; for example, the restaurants where I eat burgers all use bakery-made buns without added sugar. Next, they're careful to layer the ingredients correctly to enhance the flavor. A couple times a year, I'll want a good burger; otherwise I don't miss any foods from the US...except maybe a plate of enchiladas with rice and beans.
I’m glad that France has upped its burger game, but I’m still hankering for a “long burger” from Quick …
lots of cafes make burgers and we have had many good ones. Two places we have had good burgers are Melicasse in the Butte aux Caille and Augustin in Batignolles -- both the kind of place you can just walk in for a cocktail apero and then decide to stay and get dinner with always several good options including good burgers. On the other hand, the Mc Donald's burgers in Paris are worse than those served in the US. There used to be a local burger joint at the corner by the Tolbiac metro but it has been replaced by a KFC which to our chagrin we discovered does not serve fried chicken but just chicken strips and wings neither of which are IMHO worth eating. We discovered that they don't do fried chicken when returning late with most places closed and no food in the apartment and deciding to just grab some KFC. FWIW the KFCs in China do serve excellent friend chicken.
enchiladas with rice and beans
Elizabeth, we don't eat much Mexican food anymore because of some dietary restrictions, but the Mexican restaurants I've seen in France weren't very enticing. And Louisiana style Cajun? Uh-uh. Cracka won't do that in France.
haven’t we all fallen for Indiana?
I suppose I did; I went to college there. Prefer to return as seldom as possible.
Oh, upon further review I guess you're talking about a restaurant. Never been.
My husband and I have been to France a number of times, and we always had great meals...until last December.
We were wandering around the back streets near Église Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It was the week between Christmas and New Year, and a number of the neighborhood restaurants were closed. It was lunchtime, and we were hungry. We spotted a quaint place with a small menu, which is typically a good sign. This one was a complete bust. I ordered boeuf bourguignon, and my husband had lamb shank. We could hear the microwave beeps emanating from the kitchen. My beef was chewy and tasted like Dinty Moore. The lamb was rubbery and cold in the center. Plus, the owner was quite surly. We couldn't get out of there fast enough!
Mike, the paella guy at Quimper's weekly market sold my wife and I what was for us, the worst food that we'd ever tasted in France. He was also markedly surly. We should've heeded the visual warning. There was a huge NO PHOTOS sign on the awning of his booth. I saw it and immediately placed my Nikon into its bag, so as to signal 'no worries, we respect your wishes'. We also had what we thought was a friendly chat with that same vendor in French--my bilingual wife is from Montreal and I used to work all over Quebec.
There were two additional clues that we were um, dealing with difficult individuals. That vendor had what appeared to be a partner. That latter jerk spewed an endless series of anti-tourist comments, some posed as humor. Then out of nowhere, a passerby local leaned in to alert me (as though I were blind) "NO PHOTOS!" That, despite my Nikon being inside its bag.
I wanted to say to the vendor as we left: "Monsieur,---were we rude to you?"
In all, it was 'tres etrange'.
Note that everyone else at that market was positive and friendly as we made our numerous purchases, as always.
I am done. the crap paella
The paella guy at Quimper's weekly market sold my wife and me what
was, for us, the worst food we'd ever tasted in France.
Ha ha! A guy selling paella in a market in Brittany is like a sauerkraut vendor in the Basque Country— an absolute red flag!
FYI paella is what restaurants make at the end of the week to use up their leftovers. Always beware unless in a restaurant that specializes in the rice dishes, and preferably in Spain.
I think for Americans the confusion between andouillette and andouille in France is because many of us know andouille as a spicy, very tasty sausage used in the Louisiana Cajun cuisine, often in gumbo, that is nothing like its French namesakes.
I fell for that in Chartes. Not at all what I expected. Scraped the andouillette off the crepe it was served with and ate the crepe. I was too hungry to not eat something. Never again! If I don't know what something is, I don't eat it.
Dunno, the paella that we just ate at the Tours market was top-shelf delicious. We've also had excellent paella at markets here in the land of ice and snow.
I am done. le riz
