When Google Reviews Lie in Paris

And how I'm still falling for the traps after all these years

A quiche, according to the French dictionary Larousse, is a savory tart of pâte brisée (shortcrust pastry) often garnished with lardons and filled with a mixture of eggs and cream. The dry, dense wedge staring up at me from my plate, then, is not a quiche. The menu called it a quiche. But a quiche it is not.

First of all, there is no pâte brisée, nor any pastry at all for that matter, only filling. Any perceivable crust is a result of that filling having been baked and browned to oblivion. Then there’s the issue of the filling itself, less a mixture of eggs and cream than a solid block of egg pancake. I didn’t think it was possible to achieve such a consistency without a commercial cement mixer. And maybe that’s true. I didn’t actually get a chance to peek into the kitchen and see their equipment.

Decorating this brick and the gritty salade de mâche beside it are black, syrupy streaks. A balsamic glaze? On a quiche? Right, but this is not a quiche. But they didn’t know that! They thought it was. I would expect such a combination in a Cranston, Rhode Island strip mall, but in Paris?

Almost everything about Le Petit Pontoise, 9 rue Pontoise, Paris 75005, is perplexing. And if I’m sharing this experience with you, it’s not to bash an independent restaurant, but to demonstrate how tricky it can be to find a decent meal in what I consider one of the best food cities in the world.

I found this bistrot the old-fashioned way, by walking by it. Initially drawn by a collage of Pudlo and Michelin stickers, I peered inside and saw a room full of what looked like locals having a jolly good laugh over big bulbs of wine and hearty French fare.

A Maître Restaurateur plaque—which, as I explain in this post, guarantees homecooking—sealed the deal. I saved the address to my Google Maps, where it has 4.6 stars with over 1700 reviews. A guaranteed gem! I thought to myself. See the fruits of aimless strolls? I’d be back very soon.

Well, today was that day, and the experience, as you’ve already gathered, was suboptimal. Terrible, actually. How could anyone have known? Well, there were signs. Signs from the moment we stepped through the door. Signs that sent my body directly into flight mode, but that my brain forced me to override. Signs I feel obligated to share with you, to spare you the same costly process of disillusionment.

The first sign came as I stepped through the door and, in a nanosecond, analyzed the decor (let’s see an LLM do that). The tables are old and tightly packed. That’s fine. But on the far wall are a pair of canvases depicting Notre Dame in gobs of colorful acrylic, the kind of thing that’d be sold to tourists in the Place du Tertre in Montmartre. Those, along with some phony “vintage” posters, rendered the vibe awfully kitsch. The first flight alarms start ringing.

The second alarm sounded when a red-headed young lady barked (in French), “Please hang your coats before you sit.” She had barely looked in our direction long enough to see that we were wearing coats, let alone greet us with a simple “bonjour.”

That’s Parisians for you, you say? No. It really isn’t. Or at least it shouldn’t be. I can’t say I really blame her, though. My bet is she was burnt out from countless interactions with tourists from all corners of the globe, clueless as to the basic customs of dining out in France, and thus she operates on low battery mode, turning off all hospitality functions in order to conserve enough energy to perform the physical motions required to carry out service. I’m not defending her attitude, but having been in similar shoes, I can recognize and understand it. In any event, it sent my alarm bells blaring.

More and more, I rely on these instincts to steer me out of trouble. Why, then, did I not press bail and walk out, as I have before? 4.6 stars on Google. Maître Restaurateur. Even François Régis Gaudry, the final boss of French food media, follows them on Instagram! Let’s give it a shot.

I settled into the red banquette along the wall and began to scan the clientele, often a good indicator of what’s to come. But here, just more mixed signals. There were French families, American families, French-American families. In one corner, an old Frenchman dressed in layers of cashmere ate alone. He seems rather discerning, right?

Still, I had my doubts; so I hedged. Rather than order à la carte—around 16 euros for an entrée (starter) and 25-45 for a main—we opted for the menu du jour at 27 euros (still pricey for Paris) for two courses. If we were, in fact, about to suffer a bad meal, we may as well do so less expensively.

“C’est terminé ? Ça vous a plu ? Pas trop ?” (Finished? Did you enjoy it? Not much?), she looked down at the nearly untouched doorstops on our plates.

“Pas trop, it’s pretty dry.” And she took them away, stone-faced, without another word.

During our long wait for the mains, they started rolling in. Germans, Americans, Mexicans, you name it. One man was so deeply confused, I heard red-hair tell him, “No, sir, you sit down first and then I will come and take your order.” Yep, she’s fed up, I thought.

We attacked our mains—a daube de bœuf with rice for me, and swordfish with julienne de légumes for my mother (visiting from the States)—not out of hunger, but just to make it stop. The daube was parsimonious, but passable, whereas my mother struggled to pull away the cooked exterior of the swordfish from the undercooked interior. We alerted the server; she looked down at the glaring mistake and, again, took it away without a word of apology.

This experience reinforced a lesson I’ve learned time and time again in Paris, that Google reviews are a worthless currency. 50 million visitors pass through this city every year, fudging the numbers with their varying food standards.

As for the Pudlo and Michelin stickers? Like I said, they were all quite dated. Perhaps ownership changed hands somewhere along the line. But what about the Maître Restaurateur? I suppose that just because something is homemade doesn’t mean it’s made well. Accolades and distinctions, ultimately, can’t replace your instincts. And after years of dining in Paris, I’m still honing mine.

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If you’ll be in Paris this spring or summer, and you’d like to sample this city’s most delicious products, you can check out my Left Bank Treasures food tour!

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Happy Easter to those who celebrate! I’ll see you next week.

Max