The French bistro is one of the pleasures of Paris. There are few genuine bistros in London, but the Bar du Marche has the same atmosphere, and gives the same value for money. I had the set menu, which includes a glass of wine with a starter and main course for under £15.

Strongly recommend avoiding Bar du Marche. The guy who runs the venue is offensive in his way of addressing guests and also dishonest to on the border of fraud - overcharged us for our drinks and slapped on a charge on the card bill without us agreeing so beforehand.

Awful venue.

Excellent food, good value, handy location, friendly and attentive staff! I took 8 friends as part of my 30th birthday celebrations. I had tomatoes salad for starters which was simple but very tasty with the dressing and swordfish for mains which came with rice&vegetables. The fish was firm but also tasty and the veg was cooked just right. We had house wine but had to leave to get to my party so we didn't stay for dessert.

Bar du Marche is a real treat. Excellent food, genuinely good service and a wonderful environment. Bar du Marche comes highly recommended.

I SO wanted to like Bar du Marche but I'm afraid I have a horror story to share. On a positive note it's a likeable French style cafe with lots of tables packed in to a small space. The staff and owner are all enjoyably poker-faced and take everything very seriously. If only the same approach was taken in the kitchen. I probably don't need to say anything more than I went with my girlfriend and we were both violently ill in the night and suffered some horrendous symptoms all the following day.

In more detail, I ordered pate to begin and it had the taste and consistency of supermarket's own brand. My GF's forgettable starter was equally bland. She then had the toughest beef in the world. It was the sort of cut that would melt in the mouth in France but here it had to be chewed for an hour before swallowing. I had a Boeuf bourguignon which was surprisingly, worryingly, watery and seemed to have been cooked for no more than an hour. It certainly didn't have the consistency you'd expect from an authentic mid-French stew. We had a salad with it but I've tried to block this out of my mind because it must have been this which carried the bacteria that made us so ill.

Trying to be more positive, the wine is cheap. Less positively it also tastes cheap. The selection is nowhere near clever enough and the Bourdeaux we chose was a very average example from a very average vineyard. One last gripe is that at £66 for the two of us we could have eaten much, much, better in most restaurants in Soho. Ah well.

Sickness aside, the evening passed and no one died. We won't be going back though.