Low life | 3 March 2016

Before we left for Sunday lunch at the Les Deux Garçons restaurant, Aix-en-Provence, I checked the reviews on Tripadvisor. I’m mildly addicted to Tripadvisor restaurant reviews — I enjoy their Pepys-like unselfconsciousness — and never before have I seen opinion so equally divided between praise and censure. According to the dissenters, Les Deux Garçons is ‘a worst nightmare’, ‘absolutely horrible’, ‘a fraud and a scam’, ‘a theatre of clowns’, ‘the perfect place to while away a few hours — if you are on death row’. The waiters are ‘imperious’, ‘churlish’ ‘stuck-up’, ‘aggressive’, ‘abusive’, ‘absolutely unbelievable’ and ‘the rudest outside Paris’. Michelle from London reported that they had ‘looked down on us because we are Asian’. A Honolulu man’s romantic dinner was spoiled because ‘a Morocan [sic] guy who served us was on speed or some drugs’. A waiter elbowed Sharon from Dubai in the face. Diane P from New York is convinced the maitre d’ stole her credit-card numbers and emptied her bank account. Other complainants reported a live cockroach in the breadbasket and an overpowering smell of urine in general. Many English customers felt not just unwelcome but openly detested. Several claimed to have seated themselves at an outside table and been pointedly ignored, while French customers arriving later were welcomed extravagantly and served promptly. The actual food, according to the naysayers, is ‘vile’, ‘ghastly’ and ‘dog food’.

Les Deux Garçons is internationally famous because it has been a café since 1792 and because the usual famous people have patronised it. Cézanne and his mate Zola used to go there for morning coffee. Cocteau, Churchill and the ubiquitous Picasso have all put on the bib there. This is the attraction. Today’s smoke-free atmosphere, dress, hairstyles, manners, morals, beliefs, language, currency and even the flavour of the snails and the rosé would of course be unrecognisable to Zola, Cocteau or Churchill.