L'Avant Gare - restaurant Gare de l'Est — Restaurant in Paris

Just had meal here. Food ok but no better than average French fayre. Onion soup a bit watery and lacking in full flavour. Cheap cut of steak on set menu pleasant enough and moules a la creme reasonably good - all with proper homemade frites which were good. Staff very keen to usher tourists in but once seated they neglected to bring us an ice bucket for the already tepid white wine - and also forget the tap water once we'd turned down the offer of buying the bottled stuff. Also be careful not to be deceived by the menu outside which shows the menu du jour with additions that don't appear on the printed menu inside - and the full menu that is so prominently displayed is actually for takeaways only so once you get in you realise that the prices in the restaurant are actually almost double. When the bill appeared we also got charged extra for not ordering dessert at the same time as other courses off the set menu so chocolate mousse was charged at 8€90 instead of €3!! And when this was pointed out the waiter simply shrugged and said the set menu had to be ordered all together to get the fixed price. A free shot of limoncello didn't quite make up for it - so needless to say they didn't get a tip. Oh and I almost forgot - we also had a visit from a mouse scuttling under our table half way through the meal! Overall not...

Beware of the Scam

This is a tourist trap in the literal definition. The reviews are fake – click on the reviewer profiles and you’ll see they’ve only left one review. There are about five restaurants on this block running the same scam let me explain.

How the Scam Works:

• Local Menu – Correct prices. • Displayed Menu – 50% higher. • Inside Menu – 100% higher

It’s designed to rip off tourists.

The Experience:

We went from restaurant to restaurant on the same block (you can identify which is the same owner as they have the same menu), we went around calling them out on the scam one by one. Eventually, one restaurant gave us the original prices after we explained we knew what was happening. On top of that, we used The Fork 50% discount, so the scammers were extremely angry!

Excuses We Heard:

• “New year, new menu.” • “Takeaway prices.” • “Tourist tariff.”

If you catch on, it can actually be fun to watch them backpedal. Just stay sharp and don’t fall for it, if anything go and have...

How to start how BAD our experience was. The service was super slow, and they mixed up our order. I ordered the magret de canard au miel, it was maybe the worst I've EVER tried. My friend took the escargots as a starter and she also did not like them. It took about 30min and asking to 3 waiters for the check to come to our table.When we asked them why the prices are higher than the one on their online menu they made fun of us and sarcastically told us "yeah yeah we will tell the owner to change it right now". Overall, very bad experience. The food is NOT worth the price. You can go to a better restaurant, with better quality and service, and pay the same price and...