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.