Joan of Arc Cafe — Restaurant in Argelès-Gazost

Can't complain about the price-performance ratio (Für deutsche Besucher*innen: deutsches Menü vorhanden)

After a long day and just having some Air France in-flight snacks, we were pretty hungry and stumbled upon this place. Because we are used to German dinner times, we came earlier than most French, Italian or Spanish visitors.

When I walked in, I asked the waiter for a table for two. He seemed not to have heard me. At the same time my mother when straight in, accordingly to German etiquette. I just went with the faux-pas and sat down. We waited for a while. After a few minutes, a friendly waiter came and asked what kind of menus we wanted. I said that German and French would be great. He gave them to us and asked about the drinks. He took our order and went for a few moments.

He returned quickly and gave us our drinks and took the order for our meals. We were pretty lucky because our meal just came seconds after a large group of female Spanish pilgrims entered the restaurant.

To our surprise, the meal was good and we could not complain at this price. We had one spaghetti bolognese and one Steak frites. Both plates were each 8.80 euros. The steak was cooked to my liking and came with a nice pepper sauce. The spaghetti were alright, according to my mother, authentic Italian parmesan would have been nice.

It was a quite a good place in total. Can't go...

This time we decided to visit a pizza place. So, there is this cliché in France (don’t remember it existing in Spain or Germany) that you “can’t” eat when it’s not time. I always feel so frustrated here in Lourdes, when we want to eat out around 5:00 but none of the restaurants operates at that time, their response is quite rude and arrogant everywhere: “ it’s not time to eat”, as if I’m not the one who decides when and where to eat. So it was around 5:00 and apparently their cook hadn’t even arrived yet, however the two waiters welcomed us. We’ve ordered two pizzas and I felt something odd about them: there was too much stuff on them 😂 however they were super delicious (even though seasoning could have been better). And only when we paid the waiter “confessed” he was the one cooking. I was in awe 🫢😁 Thanks for not rejecting future customers cuz we live in Lourdes 😈😁 P.S. in my opinion the restaurant should hire more staff to keep the place cleaner. It’s the only reason...

The food is good, at least the pizza is, but if you happen to order a pizza (the size of which is between a medium pizza and a large pizza) for two people, be prepared to be poorly served, or better still, to be completely ignored (I'm not French, but I understand a lot, be prepared for them to insult you to your face). When paying, be prepared to be almost insulted if you pay in cash and try to make change easier (something I've never seen after living in France for months). The atmosphere is utter chaos, with the waiters choosing your table (which is quite common in France), but they look with a grin when you choose to sit at the table that was given to you.

Tl;Dr.: Food is good, the atmosphere is chaos, and don't think about...