La Cantine du Troquet by William - Pernety — Restaurant in Paris

I have been 3 times to this restaurant. Twice was it a great experience: great food, reasonable prices and freindly waiters.

Just went back from the 3rd and terrible experience. We (3 persons) came at the worst hour possible (8.30PM) and were told we would have to wait at least 30 min. This was absolutely no problem, knowing beforehand it would be the case. We were served 2 nice glasses of red wine each by the very polite young bartender, together with free saucisson.

After waiting a whole hour, we felt like asking the waitress if she could give us an idea how much we should wait more. VERY bad idea.

She was behind the bar and had been chatting with a customer for the past 5 minutes, her back in front of the clients, when we asked with a smile the bartender, 20cm from her, "Do you think we can bother her with just a simple question?" he answered "of course, just ask her, her name's Clémentine". We turned to her: "Clémentine, please?" she turned her back and, hand on my heart, swear to God, said with the meanest face "Can't you see I'm talking here?", then turned her back,and continued "Guys interrupting women, what kind of education is that?".

We were so shocked we didn't know what to say. A disappointing, symptomatic of the "Parisian waiters" way of dealing with customers followed (I'm a Parisian myself) . I won't write here all that was said but it went along of:

Us "Are you kidding? We just asked a question and you're attacking us on our education, that's absolutely over the line to treat customers like this!"

Clémentine: "Yeah right, i don't give a *, that's how we do it here, come back when the Manager is here to complain, great, yeah, yeah, right"

and so on...

We couldn't do one thing but to leave the place, feeling sorry for the waitress but most of all for the young bartender who obviously felt bad with the scene but couldn't feel the courage to stand up for this shame of a waitress.

i wish I could say "please try this restaurant, forget about the personnel, the food is worth it", but unfortunately, this being the worst experience of my life in a restaurant,...

We went to this place on Friday night. We waited only about 15 minutes and then e got our table. We chose the surprise menu for the whole table: a bunch of very good starters, then we got fish (very well cooked) and meat with puré (quite deceiving), then cheese and mousse au chocolate. The price: 35€ plus wine and coffee. A person didn't want parmesan and we politely asked to avoid dishes with parmesan. The result: the first two dishes that we had were with parmesan in them :))) we asked to change the dishes and they did it. Since we didn't know the dishes it would have been nice to explain the ingredients, the waiters didn't do it. We felt as if the personnel lack of intercommunication. In fact, when we asked for coffee we had to repeat our demand even if we were the only ones left in the restaurant. All in all, nice food, good price but in our opinion, service could be very...

If I could give it 10 stars, I would. Have eaten there 6 or 7 times during two separate trips to Paris, and I have a hard time understanding any bad reviews. The menu, in fact, does change and no matter what you get, it is superb at reasonable prices. There is no printed menu, but the "carte" is printed on an old fashioned blackboard. I have found the owner and the wait staff (it is small....2 or 3) to be extremely attentive and helpful.

I do want to add that no matter where you are in Paris (or France for that matter) it DOES help if you can speak some level of French. You do not have to be fluent (I am not, but speak at a pretty good level), but if one just makes the effort to speak French, I think you'll find that people are much more helpful and will often start...