Le Bistro 30

I've just got back from Paris, where on one night I ate at the awful Bistro 30, on rue de Severin, near to Notre Dame and the Bd de St. Michel.

From outside, the interior of this restaurant looked nice, and the menu looked good. I chose the 16E menu, starting with the goats cheese salad. This was ok actually, a large amount of lettuce, nice vinagrette, 1/2 a ripe tomato, 2 pieces of toasted baguette. However, it was spolied as the goat's cheese had obviously just come out of the fridge as it was really cold, rather than just slightly warm, and it crumbled under my knife rather than slightly squashing. It had the slightly crisp top, though, so had obviously been baked earlier on (whenever that was) and then put in the fridge.

Next I had the steak in a roquefort sauce, with chips, which was probably the worst meal I've ever eaten. The chips tasted really greasy, like chip shop chips, and the steak was cooked to within an inch of its life, really hard, dry and tastless.(Actually it did taste quite burned). Plus it was a really tiny steak. I ate some of it, then we had to send it back. The waiter said he was sorry and that he'd bring out another. When steak no.2 came it was slightly less overcooked than the first, but still very hard around the edges and dry. What made it even worse was that the sauce wasn't roquefort flavoured but peppercorn, which I hadn't ordered! I ate a bit, but gave up.
I then had a selection of cheeses for dessert (camembert, goats and roquefort), which came with some lettuce. Again, these would have been really nice if they hadn't come straight out of a very cold fridge.

My mum chose the onion soup, which was a little as the young reviewer before me described, followed by the turkey in sauce (not great, she said), followed by chocolate mousse(ok).

To make the experience even worse, when we got the bill, VAT was added on top of the prices displayed for the menus/water.

The service was ok in terms of speed, however the waiter was quite abrupt and abrasive and although he apologised for the awful steak it was a defensive apology rather than a genuine, embarrassed one.

Another thing was the chipped crockery, which I'm normally not too fussy about, as some quirky, rustic places with terrific food have chipped crockery, but at this establishment I felt it was just laziness and indifference on their part. On reflection I felt that they probably don't really care about the rubbish food or their overall presentation as it's probably not a place that locals go to, and after I visited and vowed never to go again there would have been plenty more tourists the next night, the next night and the next night to fill my place.

On leaving the restaurant I was able to advise a couple who were looking at the menu not to go in, which did give me some satisfaction!

Needless to say, I definitely won't be visiting this restaurant again EVER! I would advise you to do the same, unless you like poor quality, extremely overcooked steak.