Blog | HPRG Cooking with herbs at Côté Bergamote – Hotels Paris Rive Gauche Blog

Cooking with herbs at Côté Bergamote

We really wanted to like this restaurant. We left a little disappointed…


We’re not infallible at the Hotels Paris Rive Gauche. We always do our best to find the nicest, most interesting restaurants for you, but sometimes we just don’t have any luck. Take, for example, Côté Bergamote. We’d been past a couple of times, and were intrigued by their promise of “cooking with herbs”. Being vegetarian, we were especially hoping for something out of the ordinary. Through the window the décor looked nice enough, and the prices were fairly reasonable. And so it was one night, forced on by pouring rain, that we decided – finally – to give it a try.

The restaurant was almost empty (although, to be fair, this was during the recent transport strikes). The waiter greeted us with no smile at all, and sat us at a table sandwiched between two others, despite the fact that there was plenty of room elsewhere. O-kaay… He came back shortly asking if we wanted an aperitif. I though he was more likely to bite me than serve me, and I’ve dealt with a few snooty French waiters in my time. We said we hadn’t decided. He didn’t look happy.

We eventually opted for a glass of herb-infused wine each. My companion got up to go to the bathroom. The waiter came back with two teeny tiny glasses of wine, and asked if we were going to order more wine for the meal. I said I wasn’t sure. He didn’t look happy. Not happy at all.

My companion came back. We drank our teeny tiny wine, and very nice it was too, but it was clear that we would need something else for the meal. The waiter came back. He wasn’t looking any happier. There was perch on the menu and we asked where was from (have you seen the film Darwin’s Nightmare? If you want to understand why we asked read this). The waiter didn’t look happy, and went off to the kitchen to ask.


I’ll spare you the rest of the details of him scowling and us umm-ing and err-ing. We finally managed to order and he left. We were relieved. Then we had a look around us. Instead of the seemingly sweet décor that we had seen through the window, we were in some sort of olde worlde land of kitsch, with candle flame light bulbs and glittery silk butterflies. A stone fireplace over the other side of the restaurant was walled up. Fake. Ivy hung from baskets and cages hooked to the ceiling. Fake. With only four tables filled and some rotten R&B radio station playing in the background, the ambiance was not all it could have been. We looked at each other. I began to understand the waiter’s despair.

Our first course arrived. My “fresh vegetable soup with parsley cappuccino” sounded more spectacular than it tasted, although I wasn’t really disappointed with it. The “beetroot tartar with feta cheese and pesto” was beautifully presented, but not bursting with flavour as we had hoped.



Main course: the “wok of crunchy sautéed vegetables” actually just came in a bowl, and although the menu said it was cooked with sarriette (winter savoury, a herb found on the Mediterranean coast apparently), I couldn’t really pick out the taste. The “Côté Bargamote salad” with smoked salmon, prawns, emmental and walnut oil flavoured with fresh herbs was just bland. If you are going to cook with herbs, the food has to taste at least a little of herbs!



Dessert was not a great success either. The white chocolate tart (that day’s special) was sweet enough, but the apple and pear crumble was not good at all. A real disappointment.



I finished off with a coffee from Guatamala because the menus said it was “suave”. I have no idea what that means when talking about coffee! In any case, it comes from a sachet (albeit from a posh French brand), which they place under your coffee cup to prove it!


All in all, we got the impression that the restaurant had seen better days, and that the original chefs had moved on and left someone else to go through the motions in their place. The food was fair to poor and the service was appalling (that was the most unfriendly water I have ever had in Paris!). When the waitress started singing along to the R&B on the radio, we decided it was time to go. We really wanted to reccomment Côté Bergamote, but with so much choice in the area we think you can do better.

Restaurant Côté Bergamote
8 rue Montfaucon, Paris 6th arrondissement. Métro Mabillon (line 10).


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