La Cantine — Restaurant in Digne-les-Bains

I post very rarely, but it felt unfair that this place enjoys such a high rating while the food is just terrible. The rating is very confusing for 1st time visitors like 99% of the customers here, I guess, since the village is very touristy, locals wouldn't eat here. I took a linguini vongole and my wife a cucumber gazpacho. I know it's a bad idea to take pasta / Italian in France, it's almost guaranteed it would be bad, but I gave it a try, as the place was so highly rated. My wife couldn't even finish her gazpacho, so bad it was. I left more than half of my portion of pasta, it wasn't really disgusting, but simply tasteless, such a shame for a 20+ Euro dish in such a simple cafe place. The linguini were broken before being cooked (typical French way, it seems), so you can't roll them on your fork aside from general aesthetics of the dish, slightly overcooked, tasted very plain, means that after cooking they were not simmered / tossed in a frying pan with the sauce / other ingredients before being served. The restaurant was only serving linguini, gazpacho and burgers, nothing else, nothing local, i.e. just the catchy popular international dishes aimed to draw tourists' attention. They didn't really care that they have no idea how to cook it, they should rather concentrate on what they know how to cook, there is a number of great recipes in France too! A typical tourist trap.. The service was ok though, the atmosphere no different from any other place around...

I do not recommend this restaurant.

I ordered a pork dish, but when it arrived, several pieces were visibly undercooked on one side. I pointed this out to the waiter, who took the plate back to the kitchen. About five minutes later, the same dish was returned to me after being cooked further.

However, as I continued eating, I noticed that parts of the pork were still not properly cooked. When I raised this again, the waiter told me the chef insisted that the pork didn’t need to be fully cooked. I strongly disagree in all my dining experiences, pork has always been served fully cooked unless clearly specified otherwise. If this restaurant chooses to serve pork partially cooked or “rosé,” that should be clearly communicated upfront on the menu or by the staff when ordering.

They did apologize and offered me a free drink, but the health risk here is serious. Undercooked pork can lead to foodborne illness, and I believe it’s important to warn others — especially travelers — who may not expect or tolerate this kind of preparation.

If you’re concerned about food safety, I would recommend choosing another...

Absolutely terrible. The chef can’t cook and the owner doesn’t know how to run a restaurant. We ordered starters and mains, and a bottle of wine. The starter was tasty (tomatoes and mozzarella with ham) and we said so to the waiter. The main course (salmon with tortellini in a saffron sauce) was terrible. The salmon was so OVER cooked it was chewy and the tortellini was so UNDER cooked it was chewy! The sauce was tasteless yellow cream. We politely said to the waiter that there were a number of problems (he seemed to understand) and he went to tell the owner. The owner came over and I have honestly never been spoken to so rudely by a restaurant. He told us to leave but with everywhere full we didn’t think we would be able to eat anywhere else! He eventually changed our dishes to a pork dish, which, to be honest, was also over cooked but was edible. We ate and left. I would not go here. It is a...