Eating Out At The Café De La Paix In Saint Jean Pied De Port, France

Today we are in the south western part of France in the Pyrenees eating out at the Café De La Paix for a quick family lunch.

Please note – I write restaurant reviews based on favourite meals out as a family. I have never been paid or given any incentives whatsoever and the owners are not even aware that I have blogged about them.

Let me start by saying that the last 2 days have been difficult camping days and I am dreaming about walking around the town of Saint Jean Pied De Port for a nice lunch or just to eat a French chocolate éclair.

If you have been following our story, you will know that we have decided to go on an 84 day holiday. That we plan to visit 8 countries in that time across Europe and have a great time as a family of 5.

When we visited Café De La Paix in Saint Jean Pied De Port, it was on day 7 of our holiday and we were miserable. Our first campsite that we stayed at was not that nice, then we ended up having car problems and then when we arrived here in the Pyrenees it was during a storm.

Dominic had to put the tent up in a storm, while I entertained the kids, then we had lots and lots of rain and a tropical storm.

We were covered in mud, our trainers looked like they were naturally a brown muddy colour and all we cared about was a nice trip out.

Well it was nearly not to be, you see we have a fault with our car. It does this stupid thing where when it is damp the windows won’t stay up. And I don’t want to leave the car with the windows down, just in case someone breaks in.

Well the windows went up (eventually) and we headed into the town for a walk around. After discovering how beautiful Saint Jean Pied De Port is, we chose the Café De La Paix as our restaurant of choice.

Café De La Paix Eats & Drinks

As you may already know we live in Portugal and Portugal is a lot cheaper to eat out at compared to other European countries. This is something that we need to learn to accept, otherwise we will never enjoy a meal out.

My first thought (after looking at the prices) was that the dinner cost could become out of control, unless we stuck to a budget.

I said to my son, who never looks at the prices, that he had a budget of 10€ for his meal and that he wasn’t allowed to go over this.

With that in mind the following was ordered:

• 2 pork steaks in a tomato and pepper sauce served with fries
• 1 vegetable pizza
• 1 cheese pizza

This meant that our younger 2 that are aged 3 and 1 could share one of the kids’ meals of pizza with a drink and a dessert. It was a good deal for less than 10€ and a great money server. Plus, if you see the pizza picture below you can see it looks HUGE.

Then Kyle also had a pizza but his was loaded up with vegetables and was easily big enough to fill him up for a bit.

Then for mum and dad we ordered the same = chicken in a tomato sauce with fries. Sadly, it was all gone, so we had the pork version instead.

Then for dessert we had all the gooey naughty desserts that are really not good for the diet! I had cookies with ice cream and cream, Dominic had the same but with brownies instead of cookies. Kyle had an ice cream sundae and Sofia & Jorge shared their chocolate ice cream pudding.

We were sat outside in the sunshine and the storm had stopped long enough for us to enjoy the atmosphere of the great outdoors. The views were spectacular, and it felt like we were in the holiday spirit.

Café De La Paix Highs & Lows

The biggest high must be the waiter. Often when you eat out in France they will laugh at you for your bad French accent or try to sell you the most expensive item on the menu. Instead we got this lovely guy on his first day. He did a fantastic job and really made us feel special.

For a low point it has to be the portion size for the meal of the day that Dominic and I had. Unlike the kids who had huge pizzas ours were tiny. It really needed a small salad on the side of the plate to make it feel balanced.

Another low point has to be the dessert. I was expecting a nice homemade cookie on my plate and it felt like a shop bought cookie had been placed on my plate with the ice cream and that no effort had gone into it.

The location was amazing, and it felt fantastic to sit outside in the sunshine and watch the world go by. It really felt like we were in France and made us feel like part of the local eating out community.

It was nice to get some free bread. Normally when you eat out, they serve the bread and olives and don’t tell you that they are extra and will be added onto the bill later. Instead they were included in the meal price.

Plus, as we are in France nothing beats fresh French bread!

Café De La Paix RecipeThis.com Ratings

I love the ratings part as it puts all the restaurants and cafes that we eat out at next to each other and helps us remind ourselves which was the best. Plus, if you are also travelling it gives you an idea of the best places to eat out at.

This is what we personally thought of the Café De La Paix at Saint Jean Pied De Port:

• Location = 5/5
• Service = 4/5
• Value For Money = 3/5
• Quality Of Food = 3/5
• Variety Of Food = 5/5
• Overall Rating = 4/5
• Cost Per Person = 12,10€
• Visit Again = No

Lunch out worked out at just over 12€ each. To an American this would probably be considered as really cheap and great value for money. But from the point of view of a European it is quite expensive.

I would consider the Café De La Paix to be AVERAGE. It didn’t give me the X Factor but it wasn’t terrible either. It was not one that I would go out of my way to return to in the future, but we still had a good time.

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