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Restaurants Insiders Tips
Here are a few operating principles when selecting a restaurant.
In general, don´t plan on eating in a large café on a major boulevard. You´ll pay a lot of money for quickly prepared, average food and rapid, not particularly careful service. Here, slapped together salads at high prices is standard fare. If you´re caught between hours and you´re famished, use the café for a quick croque-monsieur (a ham sandwich with grilled cheese on top) or an oeuf dur (hard-boiled egg with salt) for less than 5 FF at the counter. Otherwise, cafés are for coffee, drinks, passing time, meeting people, etc.
Distinguish yourself from the unknowing tourist. Running shoes, guide books, cameras, and loud voices are give-aways. Attempting to recompose a fixed menu is not only revealing, it´s taboo. As for ketchup, learn to settle for mustard.
Read the menu posted outside before entering. It´s uncool in Paris to be seated and then change your mind.
Be prepared in advance to be squeezed into tight tables and booths. Paris restaurants can be densely packed, but privacy is respected. Don´t get too annoyed if in a half-empty restaurant your expressed preference for a larger table is refused. If you´re a party of two you will not be given a table for four. Non-smoking sections, despite a law passed in 1993, are often nonexistent although more and more Parisians are beginning to realize that some people don´t like smoke.
Steack tartare is raw, but delicious. Carpaccio, thinly sliced, cured beef, is also raw. It´s very uncool to order these unknowingly, be repulsed, and then try to send it back. Sending something back signifies that there is something very wrong with the dish.
If the food (or service) is absolutely horrible, don´t eat it-and leave. Have an iron stomach or head for the door. If you eat half, forget it; there will be no recourse, no refund, no apologies, no free meal your next time back.
Avoid the Champs-Elysées area unless someone else is paying. And even then suggest somewhere else.
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