Le Grand Pan

I posted a review on Yelp as well.

Absolutely lovely restaurant! I'd give it 5 stars if it weren't located in the middle of nowhere (okay, the 15th).


Friendly staff greeted me for lunch, seated promptly. My friend was running very late to lunch and the host brought me a nice glass of dry white wine to sip on while I waited. They serve wine "tonnelet" here which apparently means from the cask, i.e. not-bottled. This makes for some tasty and inexpensive wine.

For the entree I had poached eggs in a lovely cream sauce covered with shaved truffles. I love poached eggs and I love truffles and this dish was perfect.

And then we moved on to the bouef blond d'Aquitaine which is served for two people. The waitress helpfully pointed out I could have my side saignant (rare) and my buddy could have his a point (medium rare). And the meat was great. And the handcut fries were great.

When I am stuck in the 15th, this is my new favorite restaurant. And in fact I'll go out of my way to get back.

Frustrated with Yelp

I use Yelp.com for restaurants. Or I try to. They launched some time ago in France and I switched from Qype to Yelp. And sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't. Bottom line though is there are several areas that the site just gets wrong:

  1. When I type in yelp.com, why does it take me to a city which I don't live in? My profile clearly states I live in Paris. I have visited Seattle. And worse their menu bar along the top even knows that and lists out these cities that I might want to search for something in. No, what Yelp gives me today is Duncanville. No offense to the fine folks in Duncanville but a) I have no idea where that is and b) have never been there.
  2. The search box is pre-filled with "Paris, 75116" which is great since that is in fact near where I am. So I quickly do a search for "pink flamingo" which is a pizza chain in Paris which is supposed to be the best pizza in the city. That's a dubious honor since the pizza here is just so-so, but still... my results are from somewhere in Texas! Guys what is going on here? You actually got the right location for me in your search box but then decided not to pay any attention to it. I can only assume 75116 is the zipcode for somewhere in Texas but this is just ridiculous. I told you I am in France. You even identified that I am in France. And then you ignored this fact entirely.
  3. I checked in at a restaurant in Paris which Yelp had no listing for from my mobile. When I got back to my PC browser I checked all over for any way to find the new restaurant that I had just checked into. I would like to review that restaurant. Nope. Since I didn't leave a Quick Tip I couldn't figure out how to get back to the listing. Searching didn't work either although I suspect this was because it was taking some time to work through the system.

Bottom line is that Yelp appears to work in the US. But  international locales are treated as second class which is a big mistake. There are more people in the EU than in the US. The culture here is even more mobile-friendly and people tend to dine out more.

Kind regards Team Yelp, but there is work left to be done.