Les Belles Plantes — Restaurant in Paris

I visited Les Belles Plantes last Saturday, after walking past the restaurant many times over the last few months living in Paris. It's a great location, inside Jardin des Plantes and it really looks beautiful - both the outdoor terrace and inside. I waited until I had a friend visiting and then tried to book a table online, which I couldn't as the link was broken. However we thought we'd chance it without a reservation and we were lucky to get a table for 2, it was a lovely sunny day and the restaurant was very busy.

Now, I live in Paris and eat out a lot. I always try and speak in French and in my experience 99% of people will make an effort to understand you. Unfortunately at Les Belles Plantes, the waiter who took our order seemed very confused as to what I was saying, he barely seemed to be listening and would question every word back to me. We finally managed to order a bottle of rose, ice and tap water. He then came back with 2 glasses of wine, no water and no ice. We waited another 10 minutes for this to be corrected.

When it came to ordering food, we chose to share the mixed cheese and meat platter - which was again met with much confusion. Then we wanted to follow this with a main and two other starters to share. I appreciate that this isn't the standard entree, plat, desert that is common in Paris - but unless there is a reason the kitchen cannot do it, I see no reason that this should be comprehensible.

The platter then arrived about 2 minutes later, incredibly quickly, but with no plates to share it. We tucked in anyway, and then after 5 minutes (and having barely touched it) we were asked if we were ready for our next course. We said no, and were then asked again every 5 minutes for the next 20 minutes, despite it being obvious we were still eating every single time, and the waiter became more and more impatient with us, even rolling his eyes!

On my way to the bar to request more ice, I noticed that our order (mussels, prawns and a salad) had been sat in the sun, complete with flies buzzing around it, on a tray by the restaurant door. Knowing that our waiter was unlikely to understand my explanation of why we wouldn't want to eat that food, I asked him if we could speak to somebody who spoke English. We had to ask him again 10 minutes later before the manager came over, but she was great, very apologetic and offered to cancel the rest of our order free of charge. We accepted this kind gesture and finished our platter, then asked our waiter for the bill - which it took him 20 minutes to produce!

Overall, while the restaurant is beautiful, the service is hopeless, there just didn't seem to be enough staff working and the ones that were there seemed very inexperienced and lacked confidence or charm. The food is very average and there is only 1 toilet for a approx. 60 guests. Although it wasn't an expensive meal but I still wish we'd spent our...

Run, turn around and run. Do NOT eat here. while the staff were charming and did what they could, this place is a disgrace, Wildly overpriced for inferior quality. 17 euros for a salad with bottled dressing, a plop of quinoa wilted leaves and half an avocado. frozen, tough fish and chips, a mediocre caesar salad at 18 euros, For these prices you expect quality, but there was noneThe beautiful terrace was closed on a gorgeous spring day, which means something is seriously wrong with the management. another terrace was open but 'too hot' the acoustics inside were horrible, Under previous ownership I had a decent meal here, outside,. This is a very sad place with food at the level of a school cafeteria and outrageously inflated prices, taken us back to 1970's consciousness of rip off tourist cuisine.. If the Museum of modern art can house mr Blue, the Jardin des Plantes...

Atmosphere is great. We went early. We asked them if they were opened. They said yes. We ordered orange juice, and other drinks and two croissants, I neglect to take photos but somehow it was funny, coz we aren't croissants expert and we were so into the croissants we just ate, we thought maybe it was filled with soft and chewy cheese, it was crunchy from the outside, but inside it was soft, though it taste good but my friend suggests it was not fully baked yet. All we did was laugh and maybe complained about it but we were hungry and devoured the thing, I even poked it and it feels like marshmallows. The orange juices was kind of old, I felt sick afterwards. They maybe served us even though they aren't fully prepared yet. Really so sad they served us like this kind of croissants and...