Le Café des Epices

Absolutely superb!!! A very cute, small restaurant offering the best of it all. As a vegetarian I am besotted by the choice and quality of food. If I lived here I’d be eating here every night. The choice of wines and the service are impeccable. My trip to Marseille is now complete. Mes félicitations au chef.

Runs a set lunch menu of 3 courses for €24. Food was delicious and a steak for that price. Excellent service despite my pigeon French, will definitely try to come back again.

This restaurant is fantastic! The Chef is wonderful, friendly and is producing delicious French dishes. Dined here 2 nights in a row and far surpasses other restaurants around the port. A gem just off the main quay. Highly recommend a visit to this super restaurant, looking forward to returning! Great food, fine wine, friendly staff & a wonderful chef.

Absolutely atrocious!! 8 of us booked for 8pm as 2 of the party had been here before. Not many diners when we arrived but the place soon filled up, which seemed to work against us!! The menu was all tapas, which had changed since the 2 who had dined here before visited. Waited over 2 hours to get our pretty basic plates of food, with not all of them being delivered, despite making complaints to the waiting staff and then finally the owner/chef who was extremely rude. We Refused to pay full amount for the food (happy to pay for the drink) due to some dishes not being served......this resulted in 6 police turning up to sort things out. Pretty ugly end to what promised to be a good evening.

We, a group of seven, came here for lunch following Google users' advice. I can tell you that this is a great place if you are care for food quality: the ingredients the chef used were all fresh and tasty. Trust me, as I have tasted too many "plastic foods" in Hong Kong, where I live, and in many countries that I have visited. Good service too, even they were surely under staffed to keep the customers satisfied with their food and good wine recommended: we managed to converse with the chef and his able head waitress. Good people, good food. We will certainly come back if we are in Marseille again.

Bad decision to go there, slow and average quality. We waited 30 minute for one of the two ordered starters, an average soup of zucchini. After other 30 minutes a main arrives, a fried mackerel served curved inside a bowl (!), completely raw inside. After other 40 minutes the waiter tells us that the other main course is finished altough we ordered it 1.5h before. Meanwhile the chef is outside the kitchen (which remains empty as it is possible to see it inside from our table) chatting with a table of his friends. Waiter offers us a drink but we deny and pay 50€ for 1 starter, 1 main and 1 glass of wine. Also, the waiter at the beginning didn't change the dishes, glasses and forks from previous table because they haven't used it and just took 2 glasses of wine (that's what he said). It's a pity that the place is so bad managed because the terrace is beautiful.

Superbe! Had lunch: entrée, plat et dessert for 27 euros! Very good in quality and creativity. Unusual combination that worked really well. Wine also good for a very reasonable price. Definitely recommended!

In short: rats, cockroaches, and the worst service I have ever received. This is easily the worst restaurant experience either my wife or I can recall and we honestly cannot comprehend the positive reviews or listings. Upon arrival, we were told that we couldn’t sit inside, even though the restaurant was empty. We assumed that this was because all the tables were booked (as we’d only booked an hour or so in advance). A table of four turned up and were seated inside. The waiter noticed us watching this and produced a blanket for my wife - which had a cockroach nested inside. He flicked it off and gave her the blanket again. If his reservations didn’t turn up, he said, we could sit inside. Another couple turned up without a reservation and were seated outside with us. Twenty minutes later, they were moved inside onto a large table with others. We weren’t sure whether they were part of a larger group, so gave them the benefit of the doubt and didn’t question it. It got colder when the sun went down. Our mains were served and went cold before we could finish them. Then, before they cleared our plates, the rats started to come out. The outside seating is in a darkened courtyard, lit only by a single string of fairy lights and with numerous large New-York-subway-size rats running about and eating from around diners’ feet. Waiters would occasionally come out to chase them off, but mostly just tried to assure us it was fine. It wasn’t. We were served our desserts while the rats were still running around our table. As there were spaces still inside, I asked my wife if she wanted to sit inside to finish our desserts and then leave. Before she could answer, the waiter told her she couldn’t. We finished most of our dessert, then cut our losses and left. The couple who had been moved inside had moved to a communal table, which had three spaces left at it. Why couldn’t we have sat at this table? Paying the bill, I asked: is this a communal table? “Yes.” Why couldn’t we sit at this table? “You want to order at this table?” No, I’m paying the bill. Why couldn’t we sit at this table? “You want to move your table?” The waiter laboured on with nonsensical questions until we gave up and paid. An embarrassing and utterly shameless pretence. The food: the starters, a lamb neck risotto, was promising, but overpriced at the a la carte price. I had lamb for main, which was unremarkable aside from the vegetables. My wife had fish in minestrone soup - decent enough ingredients, but at best the sum of its parts. Desserts were hard to recall, due to the swarms of rats.The wine by the glass is genuinely good for €6, but by God will you need far more than a glass to make it through a meal here.

This is definitely my favourite restaurant that I've experienced in Marseille. The menu is quite limited with just 2-3 choices for each course. To me a short menu is usually a sign that the food is going to be high quality and in this case it most certainly was! The menu was also in French only but the waitress was very friendly and explained to us what everything was. We shared the rabbit rillets as an appetiser, which was delightful and then had fried fish with rocket salad and rouille for starter. This was also delicious with the richness of the garlicky rouille perfectly complimenting the dish. For main course we chose the veal which was perfectly cooked and still pink in middle. It was served with deliciously creamy polenta that had just a subtle hint of cheese and some roasted peppers. For dessert we had choux bun with vanilla marscapone and chocolate sauce which was the perfect end to the meal. The only disappointment was that we fancied a glass of sweet muscat with dessert but unfortunately they'd run out of dessert wine! All in all I'd definitely recommend this restaurant. It was one of the more expensive places we ate but not unreasonably priced and definitely worth it for what you get.

The lunch we had here were definitely the best lunch I had in Marseille, though it was also the most expensive, but the slightly higher price is definitely justified. The lunch menu is as in a lot of other lunch-restaurants in Marseille a thing that constantly changes, and the daily menu can be found on the board. In this case it's also displayed outside the restaurant. I'm not entirely sure about what we had. Our waiters English was decent, but she did have some issues explaining to us what was in the courses. I actually think we by now knew enough French food-words to grasp more by just reading menu. But none the less, she did her best to explain. We shared a starter; a creamy sauce with shiitake mushrooms with a crispy croquette filled with foie gras and perhaps pigeon. The mains were a perfectly fried fish with a creamy sauce and spring veggies, and a piece of meat with a carrot puree with ginger and pieces of celeriac. Everything was really good, except the meat, though perfectly cooked, was a bit too though to cut and chew. Curiously, my visit here has been the only time during my visits to France that I have experienced that gender was suppose to determine our roles. Apparently my husband was the one who was supposed to order and address the waiter. I don't take offense to this (by the way that is also rather difficult when the waiter is female), it's just rather silly. In the situation it was actually rather funny, since my husband wasn't feeling his best and I therefore was doing everything I could to make things easy for him, including ordering. So it was actually nice to see him at work for a change.

This is a hidden gem on an off-street to the touristy Vieux Port. I was recommended to go here by a local, and went here with my wife, kids, and parents-in-law. We had an amazing experience! I was putting the kids to bed in the stroller, and it was taking a bit of time, especially with the 2-year old. Suddenly, a man from the restaurant staff appears, hushes to me, and takes the stroller and resumes putting the kids to bed. I resume my meal. Later, we realize it was the owner of the restaurant that did this! Wonderful! I've only been here once but I imagine this is a good example of the personal touch this place offers. The food is excellent, with a blackboard menu you get a feeling it was put together just for that day. But it's the service and ambiance that makes this place top notch.

I would like to give CDE 5+ stars. We had an amazing meal and wonderful service from our waiter and great conversation w/the owner/manager who cooked at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, DC (tyson's corner,VA to be exact). The menu changes daily, in fact it changes from lunch to dinner. See the attached photo for details on this evening's dinner choices. A quick run down. Me: scallop & lentil starter, pigeon main, and rice in milk w/orange sauce dessert. Co-pilot: homemade mushroom ravioli starter, fish & vegetables main, mascarpone dessert. So well done!

One of the best restaurant in Marseille. A unique fresh menu, with great original wines. May be the most creative cooker mixing the best ingredients of the area. Spices perfectly used. Book in advance. During summer period, nice terrace outside, in the city hall area.

secret hideaway perhaps it's the unprepossessing look of the place - crammed into the bottom of a tower block, facing a huge construction site with a glimpse of the harbour between tall buildings - but instinct suggested there must be more to this restaurant than met the eye... and there was! with barely half a dozen tables, a tiny kitchen that you almost walk into upon entry, and the ever present possibility of stumbling straight out of the loo into a fridge, it's intimate enough to feel like someone's home. the food, too, looks and tastes home-made - as it should, being cooked within arm's length of your table. a short menu (just four starters and mains) offers inventive twists on classic cooking: a mushroom ravioli with the lightness of Chinese dim sum but bursting with woodland flavours was simply sensational; a 'millefeuille' of scallops another delicate masterpiece; by contrast, a chunky steak as perfect as a hunk of beef can be. wines were also superb, if a little overpriced, focusing on the local region. the owner-chef has only been there for two months, having trained in some impressive kitchens around the world - among them New York's famous Le Cirque - and when the construction work is finished, creating a new square outside his restaurant, this should be a perfect spot to enjoy lunch or dinner. NOTE: it's a no-smoking restaurant inside, although there is a tiny terrace for the summer months.