During my trip to Paris, I wanted to have at least one French meal. It’s always been a bit unclear to me what French food is (sorry…), so the plan was to eat at a French restaurant in France and find out first hand.

Bouillon Chartier had been recommended to me by a friend, one of the major selling points being the affordability, so I decided to go and check it out. Using my Google Maps Pinning strategy, I realised that it was a chain and conveniently, I happened to be heading in the direction of one of Bouillon Chartier’s restaurants in Montparnasse on my second day. I’d heard a lot about this restaurant but I wanted to know what it was like for myself, so here’s an honest review of my what my experience was really like.

The Queue

In the day and a half that I had already been in Paris, I’d not seen one queue outside of a restaurant, so I had not anticipated the zigzagging line of people. I asked a lady nearer to the front of the queue how long she’d been waiting and it had only been about 10 mins. She said it was moving very quickly so I figured the wait couldn’t be much longer than that, particularly after the man at the front went down the line asking how many people were in each party.

When I said it was just me, he asked me to wait separately from the queue as I’d be going in shortly. And indeed I was promptly led towards a table which was both right next to the entrance to the kitchen and near the toilets.

The Meaning of the Seating

It was at this point that I realised I had stumbled upon a restaurant that might somewhat resemble the one featured in the book ‘A Waiter in Paris’.

If you have not yet read this book, I would highly recommend it, particularly before a trip to Paris. The author, Edward Chisolm, gives us such a brilliant insight into the behind the scenes world of Parisian restaurants.

In the book, Chisolm explains that there are ‘rangs’ to which each waiter is assigned, and each one is for various echelons of society. The waiters would be pleased on the days when they were assigned to the good tippers. There were areas reserved just in case a VIP showed up, even if there was a huge queue. Then there were areas for the tourists or for the less well-dressed people who the restaurant wanted to hide from view.

Essentially, when they sat me at my table in the corridor, I figured they were putting me in the cheap seats, out of sight. The tips will always be low on a table for one so the approach is to get them in and out as soon as possible with no regard for whether they actually have a good experience.

Fortunately for me, the worst seat in the house was actually the best place for me to observe the workings of this fascinating machine that is a French restaurant.

Placing My Order

My waiter returned to me within about one minute of me being seated and was already asking for my order. I was still taking everything in (both the menu and my situation), that I’d barely looked at the menu so I asked for another moment.

I started desperately googling each dish as my phone battery drained away and once I’d made my decision, I tried to catch his eye several times but he seemed to be avoiding me as if to prove a point. It’s like he was saying “Ok so you want to take your time to look at the menu? I’ll give you your time”. Eventually I had to ask another waiter if I could order and of course, he went to fetch ‘my’ waiter. There was no escaping him.

After he scribbled what I assumed to be my order on the tablecloth and disappeared into the kitchen, I tuned in to the absolute racket coming from the doorway. The sound of plates and cutlery being moved around by people who clearly deal with them all day and probably could not care less if anything smashed.

A Whole New World

The prices at Bouillon Chartier are intentionally lower, which places the restaurant at a certain level and attracts a corresponding crowd so I’m sure that not every restaurant in Paris is like this, but on this occasion, I really felt like I had stepped into the pages of the book.

I hadn’t been expecting to write a blog post on one specific restaurant but the whole experience was just so fascinating that I had to. Chisolm’s book unlocked a new world within a restaurant and for that meal, sat between the toilets and the kitchen, it was one that I was privy to. As close as I would come without actually becoming a waiter in Paris

I tried jotting down notes on my phone but it was only lunchtime and I was already on less than 10%, so I had to save my battery as much as possible. My phone did eventually run out of charge, leaving me momentarily lost in Paris, but I felt like a journalist, wanting to note down every detail and noticing every small interaction.

I didn’t have a notepad and pen with me so in order to continue writing notes, but also to have a phone for the rest of the day, I asked my waiter, an unfriendly, portly man, whether there was anywhere I could plug my phone in to charge it. He responded with “No, this is a restaurant, not a -”. My French is fairly decent but I didn’t catch the rest. I got the idea though.

The immediate passive aggressiveness would usually rile me because I care about customer service, but on this occasion I was actually entertained. It all felt like part of an orchestrated experience. Like a tame Karen’s Diner but without even trying.

Every Waiter For Themselves

After I had placed my order, I was just settling in when the waiter re-emerged with my meal.

The starter and the main.

It genuinely took less than one minute and I was stunned. It wasn’t the most beautifully presented meal I’ve ever seen – they definitely had more of a budget look in that department – but I promise it tasted better than it looked.

At this suddenly unparalleled speed of service, I wracked my brain for an explanation. It was even too quick for it to have been microwaved. Edward Chisholm talked about the fact that it was every man for himself and that behind the door separating us and them, waiters would take whatever plate they needed, even if it wasn’t their order. They would even pick bits off one plate and put it on another with their bare hands…

I wondered whose order he had stolen, or whether it was simply a dish ordered so frequently that the cooks make it continuously. Maybe it was none of the above. All I know is that something fishy was going on and it wasn’t just my Filet de Hareng starter.

The food itself was actually pretty good and I really enjoyed all the simple but effective flavours of French food. Many thoughts flooded through my mind including ‘Why does butter have to taste so good?’, and I tried not to think about whether my waiter may have actually picked up my duck with his bare hands to complete my plate so quickly. Or worse still, the potatoes. It certainly looked like they had been thrown on there…

The Show

I was taking in this whole experience through the lens of Edward Chisolm’s book, so I was satisfied to see that the waiters really did look like they were doing a dance as they dodged each other, slithering up and down between the rows of tables. All of this observed through a slim window of view from my table in the distance of course.

Plates were stacked high up waiters’ arms on the way out from the kitchen with no care for the fact that one plate was tipping into the food on the other, and dirty plates were stacked even higher on the way back.

I tried to keep a straight face as a waiter dropped a dessert in the middle of the aisle.

I pretended, for my own sake, that I hadn’t seen another waiter pass with a fresh dessert in one hand and a dustpan and brush in the other.

I watched as a waiter relaid the table in front of me, picking up a new tablecloth, cutlery and glasses.

The tables were all laid with both wine glasses and water glasses, but mine had only wine glasses. I feared that the snarky waiter would have something to say if I asked him for another glass when I had two in front of me. I also figured I’d probably get judged by the French waiters for drinking water out of a wine glass, so there was really no winning.

I began drinking my water out of a wine glass but it felt weird so I eventually resolved to ask another waiter for a water glass. He looked around, noted the table in front of me with the newly laid water glasses and – you guessed it – took one from that table. Did he replace it? Absolutely not.

The person who had laid it later came by and looked confused, but did not care enough to go and replace it.

I’d usually be bothered by being seated at such an awful table but it was honestly like watching a live performance. It wasa live performance because nobody knew what would happen next and I had the best seat in the house for this show.

The Friendship That Will Never Be

After I had finished my fish starter and duck main (is it too flippant to boil these full French dishes down to one ingredient?), I decided to order some escargots, because when in Rome and all that. As my snails arrived, so did another guy who the waiters had deemed equally as unimportant as me, because they seated him on the table opposite mine with the stolen glass.

I would still say that my seat was worse because my plate could have been frisbeed directly from the kitchen doorway to my table, but it was still very much out of sight for the rest of the restaurant.

So this guy sat down facing me but with our two tables between us. I don’t remember how the conversation started but it definitely wasn’t with me.

May I just stress the fact that I was actually speaking to him en français! He did try to speak to me in English a few times but I persisted and he eventually continued in French – it felt like a great achievement. To be honest, the main reason I couldn’t understand some of what he said was not because of the language barrier but the physical barrier of two tables and a huge gap between us. Also the restaurant noise in the distance and the kitchen noise right beside me.

After we had been chatting across the tables a little bit, he eventually asked if he could join me at my table. I was actually excited at the possibility of making a French friend and having a spontaneous lunch with a stranger, but I panicked and said I was about to leave.

This may have seemed confusing to him because he’d just seen me eat the snails (usually a starter dish), but I genuinely was about to leave. I didn’t have to though. I wasn’t in any major rush but I didn’t really know what to do and now I wonder how things might have panned out if I had stayed.

I learned that it’s beautiful moments like these that you cannot manufacture or plan. Always leave yourself time for moments of serendipity so you don’t let them pass you by.

The End

After I had paid, the waiter said something that sounded like ‘Merci pour les tips’, and flashed his first and only, if somewhat strained, smile as if that was going to do the trick. To this day I still have no idea whether the amount I paid was correct and I don’t know whether he had been thanking me in advance for a tip that he was somehow expecting me to leave, or whether he had taken the liberty of adding the tip to the totally illegible bill scrawled across the tablecloth. Or maybe it was service charge.

I’ll never know but I was never going to tip him after his very first snarky comment about charging my phone. That and the fact that I had no cash, but in principle, it was an active choice.

All in all, I did actually like Bouillon Chartier, even if my waiter was a bit sour. The food was great for a reasonable price in Paris. I would recommend it, but do yourself a favour and go with a group of people so that you are seated in the actual restaurant…