Les Convives - Paris

As it turns out, I'm not a big fan of french cuisine, so after a few days into our euro vacay, the wife and I were desperately looking for rice (yes we are asians)! One evening, as we were going out for dinner, the wife and I accidentally took the service elevator of our hotel and ended up exiting from a door that led to a small alley instead of the hotel lobby. Much to our pleasant surprise, we found this asian fusion restaurant right there on the alley! We didn't even blink an eye, in we went. I have to say.. i really enjoyed the variety of food here. They served japanese, vietnamese, chinese, and even some korean dishes. I kept telling my wife "I wonder why there aren't more restaurants like this in the bay area (where we're from)?" She had pho while I had sweet and sour pork over rice and we shared sushi on the side. Everything we ordered were surprisingly good. I would even say slightly better compared to some of my go to asian restaurants in the bay area. So good, in fact, that we just had to come back to this resto 2 days later before we left france.That said, I did have to take off one star for one bad customer service incident. The second time that we went to this restaurant, there was a mishap with our order.. mainly my wife's food never came. So we called the server and asked politely about my wife's food, her reaction was quite shocking. In a very very defensive tone of voice she said repeatedly "did you order from me? I don't remember you ordering that! You didn't order that!" First of all, she was the only server at that restaurant that evening, and secondly, my wife DID give her order. Normally, whenever something like this would happen in a restaurant, regardless of who's fault it was, the server would apologize and assure you that the order is coming. It was almost comical how defensive our server got. If we hadn't been walking all day and absolutely famished, we would have walked out. So yeah, 4 stars for the food.. minus one for the service.

Food was okay, but the service was limited. Although there is a Visa/MasterCard sign on the door, they do not accept credit cards nor debit cards. The waiter played the POS machine in front of us and canceled the transactions claiming the machine did not work. A typical trick played by many Chinese restaurants. Pathetic!

Les convives serve a combination of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese food including an all you can eat in-table fondue. The food was okay, but nothing special. The interior is not very cozy and the service lacks ambition.

Sat at the hot pot bar where the ingredients go around on a conveyer belt. The Tea citron vert glacé was excellent, all of the dishes I ordered were good. I will come back, go - it's fun, tasty and unique. Service was excellent.

We were looking for a place to eat sushi nearby when we found Les Convives. It was not on our list of sushi restaurants but we went in. And it was a good decision. The atmosphere was quiet, the service was attentive, we enjoyed the food and really enjoyed the price. We would not hesitate to come back.