Camaraderie

Frenchies are not all awful and unwilling to help (despite what you may have heard and what I may even have said or written). Sure there are those that couldn't care less about customer service but there are those who in fact sometimes they go out of their way to help you...

10:55pm stuck at work on a Sunday night where you've been since 10am with no end in sight and having had no time to eat dinner. Restaurants in Paris are notorious for being closed Sundays (and sometimes Saturdays, Mondays and/or Tuesdays). We are lucky that there are restaurants by work that are open for dinner. But of course, it's late and they will close around 11pm, 11:15pm if you're lucky. On Marche Saint Honore, two restaurants said they couldn't help us, one because their kitchen closed and they only had antipasti left and the other because they didn't have emballage or take-out containers. The third, which I have written about previously (albeit unfavorably due to their awful burgers but I have started warming up to them since I discovered they have pretty good salads) couldn't help us with the food. But he did know the guy who manages the restaurant three doors away and led us there. This one had food but no emballage. What to do? 

As long as the manager at this restaurant was willing to give us food (why wouldn't he? It's a €60 sale!), the other guy was more than willing to bring take-out containers from his restaurant! It was the cutest thing watching him scurry off in search of containers for our food. We actually didn't end up needing them as the manager gave us the food straight on plates wrapped in foil, with real cutlery and steak knives. Why? He saw our work badges and said how a lot of the bosses come to eat there and sometimes get food to go (on regular plates) and since they always return the dishware to him, he trusts us too. AWWWWW! This was probably some of the the best customer service I'd had in Paris. And the food wasn't too bad either. 

I liked my salade de chevre chaud so much that I went back the next night and sat down to have another salad (I guess all the lardons don't hurt!). Oh, the restaurant was Le Zinc on Marche Saint Honore.