La Ferrandaise and Maison du Jardin

[pierre45]

These restaurants are close to jardin de luxembourg.The heart of touristy 6th in paris.I beleive John Talbot has them in his top 10.

I am mentionning them because one still could find family run places that provide very tasty food in cute surroundings at a very reasonable price.Usually you have only 30 % tourists and the owners work hard to please .

I ate yesterday at La Ferrandaise.Small funky place,warm reception and a busy waitress.You start with 2 amuses bouches,both very tasty. An unbeileivable feat for this kind of a place.The appetizer was a lively st jacques soup and the main a wonderful cote de cochon aux jus de truffles.Dessert was a dry and average cake.

THe whole thing cost 30 euros.Bergerac red went nicely with dinner.

Maison de jardin also small is charming.The clientel was older,however the smiling waitress was as harried as the one in the 1st restaurant.

I started with a mixed salad with foie gras ,deliceous and had veal liver with mashed and legumes.IT was a bit too vinaigry but not bad. Dessert again was forgetable.Nice gevrey chambertin rounded things up .

Again the total cost was 30 euros. Overall a nice and honnest place ,although i prefer la ferrandaise.

INcidentally another similar restaurant is les papilles.Which started the trend of eating in a country store setting ,wine beeing served at almost retail prices

[raisab]

I went to Ferrandaise tonight with another couple. The food was wonderful. Amuse Bouches of Creme de Chataigne, Entre was a vary classical Foie Gras Poele with Grapes, Plat was Veal a la Ferrandaise, basically a seared veal with some sort of brown sauce reduction, served with Puree de Pomme and petite onions and mushrooms. Dessert was a roasted Ananas with Vanilla Glace. This was good but not great. The wines, a 1993 Fixin and a Chateauaneuf were outstanding.

The service? I do not believe I have a chip on my shoulder. I try my best to speak the French language, even with my awful Spanish accent. I know we all have stereotypes about each other, but being in a service business myself, I never let it interfere with the person and their comfort. So when I come to any restaurant I would like to be treated just as the person next to me. Why were we not greeted for over 15 minutes? Why were our coats the only ones not taken? Why when our waitress finally came to the table did she not ask us what would we like as aperatifs as she did the other tables? When I told her that we did want them , why did she only take three of our orders and leave out the fourth person, bringing him a random drink? Why did she not come back to take our meal order, instead motioning to another server to take care of us in a loud enough whisper that I fully understood? She asked if we wanted coffees and again walked away before we were finished speaking, of course not getting the order right. Then she did not bring any sugar until my husband got up about 5 minutes later and asked for it. She finally smiled when we paid our check. I looked for the young man who helped us for a while to tip him personally, but I refused to give her any encouragement for her service or lack of it. She was truly pathetic. She was a disservice to La Ferrandaise.

Edited December 27, 2006 by raisab (log)

[Felice]

She was truly pathetic. She was a disservice to La Ferrandaise.

←

That terrible Raisab. I think more and more restaurants are hiring people without experience becasue they can't afford to pay any more than the minimum wage. She may not have purposely given you bad service, she sounds like a pretty bad waitress and probably was already 'in the weeds' (which is American waitress slang that means you can't handle anything else--literally) and you were the table that suffered. Or maybe figuring you were tourists she assumed it didn't matter what kind of service you would have because you wouldn't be back. But she is right, you probably won't be back. Even if the food is great, if the service is poor I have a hard time finding a reason to go back somewhere.

Actually I felt that way a little bit at Sensing, that the waiter took us for tourists and didn't seem to care what kind of service he gave us.

[raisab]

Hi Felice,

I reread my post as I was pretty harsh, but I was so angered. I used to waitress also, and I can tell you she was not "in the weeds". At first I thought that may have been the case, but then I saw her leaning against the bar a few times. There was only 5 tables when we walked in and two servers. I am sure she thought of us as tourists who did not know the difference. It is a shame for the owner and chef who work so hard to put out a good food product but they suffer at the expense of their service.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

We also loved the food at Le Ferrandaise. The female server started out cool, but warmed to the table as we ordered. I agree that the male server was in all ways the better of the two. But what we couldn't understand was the older man we took to be the owner or manager. He totally ignored us when we entered, throughout the service and when we left. Both the woman and young man servers made a point of seeing us to the door, saying thank you and goodbye.

A foursome, we were the only identifiably Anglo-speakers in the room.

[John Talbott]

Ahhhhh, at the risk of being overly defensive, I gotta stand up for the place I may be partially responsible for hyping in the Digest, review and Best of 2006's; vide

Best meat

Ferrandaises

I've only been three times but I never had a problem with the service. It may be because of my charisma, charm and beauty, but à part ça, I've had no problem. I'm not saying that restaurants here don't hire novices but sometimes that's charming - I fondly recall a lunch when the owner was short-staffed and brought down her South American femme de menage to serve and she was a "natural." I've also been to 3-stars where despite the staff/client ratio, things moved incredibly slowly. And I could write a book about not being served the amuse-bouches everyone else got, not being given the carte for 20 minutes and waiting forever for the check. However,....