Cafe Francais

The owner looks like the Steve Coogan character, Tony Forrino! This is just a typical greasy spoon, with a slight Italian slant (the owner’s and staff’s looks). It’s egg and chips central, and a place where old people go to die, preferably with a cup of tea in their hand! My soup obviously came out a tin, and tastes dreary. I feel i’m wasting my time with such an imaginative and depth review, cos if these people have no desire to make their café better, then why should I care? I’d have given it one star, but it got two — cos it was clean!

This is another place I’ve meant to visit for some time now. We had lunch here on Friday, and I’m sorry to say here is another independant Fleet eatery let down by surly staff. I would much prefer to eat in a family run business than a big olé chain but I won’t put up with being treated like I’m a nuisance rather than a valued customer.
We both wanted a jacket potato with a hot filling and both chose something from the good range on the board, only to be told there was only one option available — beans. The problem was the tone used was as if I’d asked something moronic. She said we could choose one of the sandwich fillings if we wanted but nothing was labelled and I like to know what I’m eating (himself asked if one thing was curry and she just stared blankly at him and didn’t reply) so two spuds with beans was what we had, we were also told rather sniffily to get our own knives and forks upstairs and when I asked for a diet coke each I also got that ‘I’m talking to an idiot’ tone to tell me cokes are kept in the fridge, which I took to mean to help myself, asking for glasses caused a bit more fuss, first I was told to get them upstairs too but then she added that there probably weren’t any up there anyway and offered me coffee cups instead which turned out to be hot. Great.
The spuds were delicious though, I must say and it was nice to have proper coke not the horrible mix stuff so thumbs up there.
Having said that, the seating area upstairs is nice enough, but one of the grumpy staff came up and started loading up a dishwasher REALLY heavy handedly, all that crashing and banging went right through you so we didn’t hang around and won’t be back.
Just one last thing, what on earth possessed them to call it Café Francais? It’s about as French as I am. I suppose they must be referring to the baguettes they sell.