La Baleine Joyeuse — Restaurant in Nice

This is possibly the worst experience I ever had in a restaurant. My 3 friends and us went to eat something for lunch and found this place in Villefranche. We sat at the table. When the waitress came for our order I kindly asked if a specific dish was vegan (essentially pasta and a sauce with chopped olives). Just to be sure you know. The waitress huffed in annoyance saying she could not guarantee the dish was vegan. We just want to be sure that there is no egg or dairy in the dish. It is a restaurant right? They should know what ingredients they use. I believe she was very annoyed by us asking those questions, even though I asked very kindly, and before going away in an additional huff, she passive-aggressively asked “So, all the 4 of you are vegan?!”. To which I said “Yes…”, but what does it matter if we are 1 or 4 vegan? Anyway. She went to the bar where she talked to the owner and the other waitress behind the bar. I could hear everything they said, and they know I speak French, they didn’t care. The owner reacted like the first waitress: really annoyed by the presence of vegan and non-French customers. “Pffff, they are vegan? How can we know if there is eggs in the pasta, we can’t guarantee anything” said the owner. “We have salad if they want to eat!!” said the waitress behind the bar. Then the owner said “You know what. Just tell them there is egg in the pasta!”. So the waitress came back to us and said with a little smirk “There is egg in the pasta”. We immediately left. They were rude, unwelcoming, judgemental, and decided to just find a good excuse to not have us as customers. If you have any diet restriction or if you are not French, avoid this place at all costs. People like this should not own...

Had a really nice salad with fresh tuna from the menu of the day. No complaints there. It wasn't groundbreaking but it wasn't bad either. Tuna was fresh and very tasty/nicely done. However, I ordered a citron cake which I have never gotten because the waitress forgot, but I had to pay for it. That's really rude because we had to leave and the cake never arrived to the table (others ordered coffee, which was brought to us). I don't even mind that they forgot to bring it, but expecting to pay for something which they didn't even serve is very rude. I wouldn't really eat at this...

We have been coming here regularly for 20 years and have recommended it to many friends. We love it and so pleased that it didn’t change significantly with the change of ownership. However, our visits have been spoiled recently due to the terrible toilet facilities. There are now only two cubicles and only one with a door that closes. On recent visits they have been absolutely filthy with no soap or hand drying facility resulting in extremely poor hygiene which is very...