Hanoï Cà Phê Opéra — Restaurant in Paris

I have been to Hanoi Ca Phe twice for lunch. I was very impressed with the place, very well decorated, good music, nice menu, good prices for the neighbourhood and good service. Having had these two great experiences there, I invited two friends to go there tonight (a sunday evening), to grab a drink before going back home. A waiter was standing by the door like usual, welcomed us with a smile and asked if we wanted to drink or eat. We said we wanted to drink, then he asked us if we wanted to stay INSIDE the restaurant or CHOOSE one of the terrasses. We didn't know where to pick (the house was far from being full) and he said then "I'll let you make a tour and pick wherever you like best". We went outside but there where a lot of people smoking and one of my friends has ashtma, so we decided to go back in so we could be more comfortable and smoke free.

This is where the problem started. Another person who works at the restaurant asked us again what we wanted, we repeated "drinks" and then she demanded us to go to the terrasse. I explained we had been there already but there are a lot of people smoking so we preferred to stay inside. She told us to leave then, cause we were not allowed inside for drinks.

Again, the house wasn't full. Again, we were told we could choose where we wanted to sit. But in 5 minutes time, the house rules changed. I have worked for many years in the restaurant business and I have never seen a waitress tell a client to leave like that, "we can't take you in", with a very angry tone as if we were disturbing the order of the restaurant. I repeated we were already told we could chose, but then she dismissed us! It was incredibly humiliating, the administration should be ashamed of the kind of treatment their employess offer.

I will never again recommend this restaurant. No one should risk being badly treated by the staff like that. Oh, and I said I was going to write about it, and she made it perfectly clear that she couldn't care less about what I think....

I showed up about 2.45pm and simply wanted a drink, and saw some drinks on the menu that said happy hour. Asked a waitress what time was happy hour, she looked at her watch and said “in 10 minutes” (obviously factoring in the time we took to look at the menu from when we sat down).

I then asked “is it ok if we wait until 3pm to order then?” She says “of course!”.

3pm comes and goes, we wonder why we were not being asked what we would like to drink after a while, but that’s ok, we were not in a hurry, and my partner raises his hands and calls for a waitress to order.

Drinks come out, we finished it.

Went to pay, and was charged full price. My partner tells the waiter (a different waiter than the first, this time it’s a male), and he says “oh happy hour is 3.30pm” and points to the front of the menu where the time was listed (but it was so small it is VERY hard to miss).

Bear in mind this is a menu that opens into 4 columns (for lack of better word) and has words everywhere. All in French.

I feel like there was so many things the waiter could have said for me to not be disappointed with his response, but I WAS very disappointed.

You could have checked with the female waitress, or you could have acknowledged the error and said something like unfortunately the system doesn’t let you change the end price as it is locked to a specific time the order was put through. I would have been fine with any response that showed some level of concern, except the response he gave.

In any case we just paid and left.

We also sat outdoors and one of the staff decided midway to open the retractable awning. It started drizzling, which I tolerated, then it started POURING, which we had to move. This incident however, I suspect was another customer wanting to smoke outdoors hence why they retracted the awning, so I am not faulting them on this, however it was just a minor inconvenience as I had assumed when I first sat down that I would be sitting in an area where I would...

We got back from the tour late and had to look for somewhere that's open past 10 PM so we picked this please. The worst restaurant experience we have had. Long story short. Our table weren't attended. Had to ask a waiter a few times to put in orders. He said he couldn't speak English but we travel a lot and we can normally just point to what we want on the menu, very easy. We finally ordered on our third try. There were food and drinks out waiting at the kitchen and bar area to be picked up and served but they were just sitting there for a long time. Other tables were also waiting. We had to get up and pick up food that were sitting by the kitchen there by ourselves. I think They were meant for other table that were there before us but those dishes were just sitting there. Servers were busy talking and walking doing nothing productive. We picked up what we ordered and other table started to get up to see dishes sat by the kitchen as well. Food was cold, cold pho wasn't that great but we just wanted to eat and get out of there. We literally finished our food in 5-10 mins, max, after waiting for over an hour and a half to eat since we went in. We were starving and yes, we were being nice about it. We had to flag down the waiter to get silverware after we served ourselves food. Then had to call them a few times to ask for water at the very end of our visit because water weren't served for the whole time. 2 hours restaurant visit when we only spent 10 mins eating is bad. I mean, for once I wish this happened in the US with tips system when we felt like it was a...