Table Du Marche — Restaurant in London

Call me a cynic however I would question the veracity of some of the hyper-positive reviews on here. Whatever this restaurant is, it is certainly NOT an authentic French brasserie or bistrot experience. I think the French would be tearing their hair out at some the dishes we experienced here.

The worst had to be the tarte tatin. A congealed and boiling-hot apple gloop on top of an almost non existent and soggy pastry. It had clearly been prepared earlier (much much earlier) and then nuked before being presented to us. And when I had the temerity to ask (ever so politely) about this, the waitress proceeded to lecture us about how a busy restaurant like theirs doesn't have the time to prepare everything from scratch on the night and that this was all perfectly normal. Which was not my point at all - prep all you want in advance, but do the cooking on the night, and above all do not precook and then microwave food to within an inch of its life and then pretend that you are running a proper French (or indeed any) kind of restaurant.

A bit less of the attitude would not have gone amiss either actually. Had the waitress, who appeared to be nominally in charge given the conspicuous absence on the night of anyone I would venture to call a patron or Maitre d, not tried to lecture me on how restaurants are run, and how it would be crazy to expect them to cook a tarte tatin to order, then I would have let it go as opposed to writing this review. At the end of the day, you get what you deserve.

It takes, what, 20 mins to bake an individual tarte tatin in a hot oven? I'm sorry if that's too much of an effort for the folks at Table du Marche. Then again, it was busy on the night we went, so perhaps the combination of the sheer volume of hyped up reviews (on here and other sites) plus a dearth of decent restaurants in the area is enough for the good people of East Finchley to flock here in their droves.

Overall, a completely soulless "French bistrot experience" devoid of any authenticity and with a distinct lack of actual French savoir faire in...

We came at this restaurant before and it's always the same but this time it was terrible. We arrived at 5 minutes to opening time and we waited outside which wasn't a problem. They let us in 1 minute before the opening. We ordered a starter at 18:05 and it arrived 19:20 because the waiter forgot to place our order and some customers waited for very long time too. Their communication is not very good and how they organised everything for customers and opening the restaurant. From the kitchen you could hear a lot of frustration as well. 🫤 The main course of course came even more late and brought us raw liver full of blood and it was disgusting taste. We kindly asked the waiter to cook the liver properly as we can not eat raw liver and it came back exactly as we send it back and said, this is how the cook makes it. One of their staff the Indian young man has a very poor communication skills towards customer and very rude. Be well aware⚠️⚠️⚠️ One very important thing, we saw from our tables every single member of staff going around people taking order or taking payment and other things they needed to do and every member of staff went where the breat is near the kitchen and cut the breat for customers with bare hands without washing their hands. 🤢🤮🤮🤮 ✋️ Just because is a French restaurant it doesn't mean anything, you won't get good service, good food or good higyne. You can get very sick regarding which restaurant you may eat. The prices are absolutely ripping people off and extremely small portions. Extremely disappointed. I left this place very hungry after I waited for so long there and brought raw liver that I couldn't eat. We would not return here again...

Don’t get me wrong this is the best restaurant in East Finchley. But…

My sister got me a £50 gift voucher for this restaurant. I went with my girlfriend to redeem it and they initially said they aren’t honouring gift vouchers because people have been printing fakes.

I pointed out this could be easily prevented by keeping a log of gift vouchers issued and ticking them off as they are redeemed.

Anyway, after passing the trustability test we were allowed to redeem the voucher.

The food was excellent and service good.

I went to pay the £88 bill (less gift voucher) and opted not to tip on the card machine due to gift voucher redemption reluctance.

The waiter then gave the snarky comment “It’s not included but never mind it’s fine”, in reference to not tipping.

Firstly, waiters have no idea the personal circumstances of customers. Deliberately making the customer feel bad is terrible.

Secondly, the French invented the service charge. If they want to expect tips, then just add it to the bill - no more snarky comments needed!

So the comment basically ruined the otherwise pleasant experience and will now make me very reluctant to return despite living very close by and...