Le Fumoir — Restaurant in Paris

Disappointing experience at Le Fumoir.

You get to choose your options from a prefixed menu.

There was two of us. We got the appetizer and main, and a main and dessert combo.

It started off great with the appetizer, beef tartar. The flavors were bright and fresh and the daikon added a great new flavor that I've never had with tartar before.

But the rest of the evening went south after that. It took a little over an hour to get out main dishes. No idea what was going on. No one came by to check on us, ask if we wanted refills on our drinks while we waited for our food. Someone finally came by, said sorry and 10 mins later our dishes showed up.

Burnt Mackerel: dish came recommended by the server. Besides being very salty, the dish had no other flavor. I think because our dishes were forgotten, they had the kitchen rush it and they just messed up cooking.

Duck: this was a great dish. Meat was Nicely cooked. The cherries and roasted beets were a great added flavor to the meat.

Dessert: yogurt ice cream with almond cake. Average. I've had better of both. That's all.

It wasn't until the end when I asked for the check and pointed out that the food took longer than usual did the server say, "well, the kitchen lost your check. What can I do." -- he could have informed me that had happened instead of letting me just sit there in oblivion. And he didn't care. Didn't even offer some sort of customer service to make up for forgetting about us. It was a long uneventful meal that was worth spending my time at.

I'm sure the food is good and I'm that rare anomaly that had a bad experience. It sucks to be...

Came here 2 weeks ago for lunch, vegetarians be warned there’s barely anything on the menu for you.

My friend picked the restaurant, there wasn’t much for me to eat but I figured I could get a glass of wine and fries. I asked if I could order a side of fries, the waitress was annoyed and said I couldn’t. I explained that there’s barely any vegetarian options on the menu, (the two options are cold asparagus covered in a sauce or fried tofu dish) neither of which appealed to me.

She said I’d have to order a main dish to get fries, which I explained there wasn’t a dish I wanted. She said very rudely “I’ll tell the chef there’s nothing that you can eat”. My husband and friend also tried advocating for me, but she said the chef doesn’t allow sides of fries.

I ended up eating bread and butter and ordered a glass of Chablis. For the rest of the meal every time she came to our table she had an attitude and was quite sharp with us. As a French expat, I have never had a restaurant experience like this in Paris. This is what people complain about when they come to visit Paris, extremely rude servers. Mind you this entire interaction was in French.

Will not ever come here again and don’t recommend; especially if...

The best value-for-money we found during 5 trips to Paris (15 weeks total). Part of the menu changes weekly (on Thursday) and a fish dish changes daily. The best value is the formulae for lunch or dinner (first course, main course and, if you want it, dessert). They also have ala carte dishes on the small menu if nothing on the formulae pleases you. They always have a vegetarian combination for the lumch and dinner formulae, something unusual for Paris.

The Sunday brunch is also a great treat, with fancy breads, juice, choice of main dish, and pancakes or yogurt, plus American-style drip coffee or tea. Make sure you reserve a table because the brunch is often sold out.

We've always found the service friendly with good, English-speaking servers. After awhile the servers got to know us and they became very friendly, often stopping by our table just to say hello.

Le Fumoir is our favorite fine dining restaurant in Paris.

AFTER PANDEMIC UPDATE - Many things changed after the pandemic, but fortunately Fumoir remained basically the same. Even many of the servers hung in there with the restaurant and the food remains delicious. Still recommended,...