Le Cercle Rouge — Restaurant in Marseille

This is a fantastic little hideaway that we stumbled across when looking for a place to eat. First tip: go with the ‘outside’ seating in the walled garden.

We had the shrimp, octopus, and poached egg entrees. Each of them had amazing different flavour profiles: the octopus reminded me of escargots, the shrimp had a ‘sauce of St. Florent’ that was likely influenced by the town of the same name with Mediterranean influences (tomatoes, herbs and red wine), and the egg, sour cream and sautéed leek combination with a bit of that cured meat was sublime. All delicious with bread, but I suspect the staff at Le Cercle Rouge already knew that.

And for mains we shared the lamb shank with sauce. I think that might have been the first time the sauce was better on bread than the meat. This with the perfectly fried chips and homemade garlic aioli unfortunately meant that we finished all of the food and couldn’t have dessert.

The waiters were nothing but service superstars and honestly I think the only thing that could be improved was an English menu - everything looked delicious if only we knew...

It was a delightful experience dining at this establishment. I really enjoyed the food. The flavour profiles were quite unique and tasty. The restaurant was also quite spacious so I didn't feel crowded at all which was a plus. It was nice to dine in the dim lighting with the interior decorations which made the place look quite fancy. The waiters were pleasant, they were all welcoming, easy to talk to and were always smiling which improved the dining experience. However, I feel like they were a bit understaffed. The waiter took a good 15-20 minutes before he came back to take our order and it took a good 30-45 minutes before we received our food after we ordered. I understand that we are a rather large group which requires a bit more time, but I feel like they were a bit too unprepared for larger groups. The portions were pretty reasonable for the prices. Each appetiser was 11 euro and the main courses were 23 euro which is a fair price. I do feel like the shrimps were a bit underwhelming though, only 4 shrimps for 11 euro is...

The good: pork ribs, eggplant. The bad: lamb skewers (partially cooked pieces of gristle), studious avoidance of wait staff (except at the beginning when one waiter was very helpful in translating). The odd: squid figlette (very strange taste-looked this up later and discovered figlette means corsican, a style of cooking a squid body with stuffing made mostly of chopped liver).

The roof seating was very nice but you have to be among smokers. Since it's open air, it's not too bad if you're non smokers like us. The inside is very cramped and dark - unappealing atmosphere. If you reserve, you must state where you want to sit, otherwise you're defaulted to the inside.

I think the high rating is due to all the liquor, beer and cocktails that comprise a whole...