Denfert Café — Restaurant in Paris

Context: I've been to this place for the polyglotte club Saturday evening event. I'm mostly rating based on the event and drink policy.

My wife was there earlier to try one of their free French class. I joined her later for the evening event.

Feedback: The free French class was okay despite having to pay additional 1.5 euros fee on top of a drink. The drink was a Fanta that is clearly overcharged as it was more than 6 euros!

When I joined, my wife had to order a second drink despite she hasn't finished the one she originally ordered. They charged 3 euros more on top of the drinks we ordered while it was the 2nd drink my wife ordered.

Of course, my feedback here is only about the drink fees policy for that specific event so I can't tell much about the usual running hours of that café.

On the event itself, there is not much management. People just go to a table for a chosen language, then they just introduce themselves and start to talk. However, there is no guidance nor direction to really help people to improve on their language skills. They write your name on a sticker following by "hello" in the languages you claim to speak or learn, but this is really difficult to read. It would be way better to use flags for example.

Note that this is not my first polyglot event and I've been to much better ones in other countries. This one is clearly not well managed in my opinion. I think it's more like: you come, pay for an overpriced drink + additional 1.5 euros extra fee and you have to basically try to communicate with people to practice the language of your choice but there is no real help for bonding people nor helping people to practice! In this case, it's almost better to find people online on apps like HelloTalk for example and organize something offline. At least, you'll really practice, learn and avoid paying an overpriced drink...

Forget the fantsy-pantsy dishes in expensive Parisian restaurants. If you want very good copious food well prepared, go to Le Denfert Cafe at 58 Boulevard Saint-Jacques, overlooking LaPlace Denfert in the 14th arrondissement. There you will find a friendly neighborhood bistro with possibly the best couscous in Paris prepared in several different ways that is their always on the menu specialty, as well as a fondant souris d'agneau that's downright delicious. La patronne is a delightful lady that cares about you eating well at very modest prices in her non-pretentious établissement. And yes, they do take out as well. We've recently eaten their famous couscous there and happily returned a week later for the souris and a wonderful tongue dish. The boulevard is one of the widest in Paris with 5 rows of plane trees and a lovely large square with a lion in the middle to look at while dining. Enjoy! Of course, we are very happy, friendly, and outgoing and it’s very rare that we get a bad reception wherever we go. Generally speaking in 80 years of life and 60 years together, we’ve seen many sourpusses, especially in overcrowded large cities who unhappily vent their own frustrations which may well account for other unfavorable reviews here. We didn’t go for the beer or coffee that can be found everywhere, we went for good reasonably priced food and that is what we got,...

I never write reviews unless I've had a really good or a really bad experience, and unfortunately this is the later. This place was racist af and really mean. DO NOT recommend if you are Asian-presenting!!

Ironically I came here for a language exchange and the bar owners were incredibly rude and racist towards me and 2 other Asians - one from Asia and one from France. You want receipts? They were condescending to me and another Asian woman when we tried to order.

But the most obvious was when my friend tried to pull a chair over to another table, and the management were furious! They were shouting in French like, 'no no no! what are you doing? you can't just do what you want, mister!' while legit 1 minute ago they stood by silently without complaint as the 2 white French people (man and a woman) from the same table we were at, pulled up their chairs to another table. Like wow, the obvious change in treatment for the same action just because we were Asian vs white was unbelievable. Terrible hot drink too. All around a bad time, don't let all their little flag garlands make you think they're accepting of everyone. Really disappointing to see...