Mensae — Restaurant in Paris

The food was delicious. My friends and I enjoyed it a lot until the bill came.

being tourist and English speaker, we read on the carte that “ entree plat dessert for 42 euros” with our limited french. We were confused because one of the main plates costs 42euros itself, so I asked the blonde lady waitress , “ so it’s entree plat dessert for 42 euros ?” She answered in English “ yes exactly.”

My friends and I went on and took 3 courses for each of us. When the bill came , there was no menu price, all dishes were charged individually. We asked why , the blonde lady said “ let me explain to you , menu for 42euros is that , if you take the dishes with the * with it” , otherwise all individual price.

We looked at the carte again , it does say on top “ entrée plat dessert a choisir parmi les plats notifiés d’une * €42”

Well , it’s the first time I see a carte like this, usually restaurants says you can form a menu with the below choices but will have to supplement certain amount if you choose steak for example. When we saw some plates were * , we thought oh maybe chef recommendation.

Honestly, we feel cheated because the blonde lady knew clearly that we don’t understand french. It would have be useful if she explained to us at the beginning when i asked the question “ entree plat dessert for 42 euros ?”

We traveled a long way to the restaurant and was really happy when we were having the food. It is a shame that we ended up feeling cheated.

For locals and french speakers , I don’t suppose this is a problem , but for non french speakers, all I can say is read the carte carefully and Google...

The quality of the appetisers was incredible. The service was fairly friendly - I wanted a tea and they said they had run out but as I wasn’t feeling well the waitress made an effort to find something.

We got the beef which we were super excited for but unfortunately it was so chewy we couldn’t even eat it without worrying about swallowing it. It was super disappointing as we planned this meal for so long. The potatoes were also very dry and had no flavour. It didn’t feel like much care was put into the food.

The manager said the chef was off sick and would try to discount our bill but wasn’t overly empathetic. In fact he barely made eye contact when I was explaining how disappointed we were. That steak is well over €100 euros so I can’t understand how this happened. My advice is not to order this if going to the restaurant. Overall it was quite a disappointing experience considering we spent a long time researching this restaurant to celebrate our...

Always researching for new places for us to try on our annual Paris trip, I saw some great reviews for Mensae and guess what they were right! Intimate, small and simple decor with a really friendly and knowledgeable team. Great set menu of 3 and 6 courses are an option which are really good value but we went for the a couple of courses (iberico ham and a roast lamb shoulder) both to share and both substantial, flavoursome and delicious. Too full for a pudding but fellow diners seemed to be enjoying theirs immensely. Wine was fab too. One of the best orange wines I’ve had from a small regional list and very reasonably priced. This place is not touristy but was very busy for a Tuesday evening so clearly loved by the locals and I can see why. Music was pretty cool too - even dropped a tune onto my playlist! Not pretentious or flash just simply great food and wine delivered by with attentive and friendly service....