Cafe Rouge James Street

the food is excellent, staff very friendly. but dont go here! unfair ‘service charges’ and tipping policy to the staff and the customer for the benefit of the company!!! if you go tip cash!!!

Excellent place with friendly staff
a place where you can just have a coffee in James street.
The food is fantastic.
I recommend it for all my friends

A very bad service from a very rude staff that is not helpful and want to get rid of you as soon as possible.

Good place to drop in anytime of the day for a coffee and cake or full steak menu. I like the oldish frenchlike décor and quietness of the place. It well located in the Christophers Lane and nice in the summer to sit outside

Horrible. We ordered an orange juice and a latte that took 20 minutes to come to our table. Then our food, which was an omelette with a salad and a croque madame with fries, took 50 minutes to come out and was completely wrong and cold. The salad and fries were switched and on the wrong plates but the most ridiculous was that the fried egg for the croque madame was on top of the omelette! Wtf… seriously we asked for the bill and obviously didn’t pay because everything was wrong.

I actually kind of enjoy a visit to Café Rouge every now and then. Despite the hokey décor and other such affectations, the food and generally makes up for this.
The service here on my last visit was most definitely below average, however, with the voucher that my friend brought with him, it made up for the lacklustre experience.
The steaks that we had were fairly well cooked and tasty enough. Just what was needed for some sustenance before a night on the town.
My local Café Rouges in Maida Vale and St Johns Wood do things a little better than they do in this touristy area. That’s not to say that the service is much better in the Maida Vale branch because it really isn’t.
Overall I would return to Café Rouge but maybe not to this particular location…

We ordered the beef bourguignon and the chargrilled chicken salad. Both meals were tasty except the avocado on my salad was so crunchy! It definitely wasn’t ripe enough to be put on a salad. I was a bit gutted because I LOVE avocado but I’ll get over it because the rest of the experience was fine — friendly service, cosy restaurant, good lunch times specials. There’s outdoor seating too which would have been nice if it wasn’t so cold!

One of my friends is heading off to La Belle France to be a chalet girl (or as he calls it ski instructor). We had a French themed night to wish him well on his way, and part of that involved a meal at Café Rouge. Probably because it sounded French. Anyway, we got there, sat down at our table for 20-​odd and after working out how much wine we could drink between us, ordered it and our food. I went for the French Onion Soup, which was actually a pretty good call. Not the best I’ve had (but then I’ve had this a fair few times in high quality French restaurants in France!), but a pretty decent go. Could have used more cheese, and a thicker croûton would have saved some of the crunch, but the soup itself tasted good and was a good start to the meal. For main I had the Pavé, a ‘single muscle steak’ which I asked to be cooked medium rare. Medium rare seems to be one of those grades of cooking that never actually happens. You usually have to ask for your steak one grade below what you actually want in a restaurant in England as most of the time they seem to overcook it. I wrongly assumed that here would be different the French are usually spot on on the steak front, but I was a bit disappointed when it came medium to medium-​well. However, it still tasted good, just a fair bit over. The béarnaise sauce was good and the fries also well cooked, so overall not a bad plate. Pudding next, or desert as they call it down here, and I was having a bit of a tough time. I fancied crème brûlée, and also the tarte tatin, but settled for the Coupe Rouge and pilfered some of my friends other deserts, which as it happened, were very tasty. My ice cream sundae consisted of white chocolate ice cream, raspberry sorbet and a red fruit sauce, which I liberally drizzled on top. I was very pleased with pud, it all worked together well, even though the ice cream had melted a fair bit by the time it got to me. Atmosphere was amazing, and the waiting staff good fun too. We’d brought along comedy themed items, including a baguette which we hit my friend over the head with a few times. The waiter spotted this and pointed out that the baguettes in the basket on the wall would be harder as they’d been there a few weeks. After we asked him to, he brought us a couple we proceeded to have sword fights and also broke one by smashing it over our friend’s head. Hilarious. An expensive (even though we had 9 taste cards between us giving us 50% off each plate of food, it still cost us around £28 each) but worthwhile meal, and a great night out.

We’re not locals, so we didn’t know that Café Rouge was a chain until we saw them everywhere we went. At first i thought it would be kind of dull like a TGI Fridays or something but we really enjoyed both meals we had there. One night we went and had drinks and dessert and it was really great. I love the patio seating and as long as you order everything up front you’ll get it in a timely manner. The second time we ate there we ordered dinner, my croque monseiur was really good as were the fries, my husband had the Beef Borgenon (sp) and ordered some bread so he could soak up the great sauce. Again desserts and drinks were great.

Not planning well for a holiday Monday, we happened upon Café Rouge as 1 of the only places open in the neighborhood & London friend thought she remembered it being tasty
Plus — we had rezzies for High Tea at the Langham Hotel so we didn’t want to overdo it
Friend got the Croissant & it was a bit dry & too flaky — served w/​jam.
I opted for the French Toast & it was very strange. Sliced bread that has been soaked in simple syrup and had a light layer of marzipan on 1-​side. Served in a basket w/​a little jar of strawberry jam… I was expecting an eggy bread, served with syrup but the Café Rouge interpretation runs differently
Coffee Au Lait was good & served in the appropriate au lait bowl — so we had that
But for a «traditional» french toast — look elsewhere

This is a great place to refuel and take respite from Oxford Street crowds when in town for the day. It serves reliable Café Rouge fare, the staff are nice (better than in a couple of other Cafes Rouge I can think of) and there are often meal deals to take advantage of, so if you think you might be in the area, check the internet for deals first.
My only gripe is that whoever painted the motifs and French words in the interior didn’t check with a French dictionary before putting his brush in the pot. In an establishment promoting French food and a French environment, that’s really quite unforgivable, so it loses stars until someone fixes the mistakes.

Took the opportunity to wander off Oxford Street in search of somewhere for lunch and discovered this place. It had a nice warm cosy atmosphere and was busy enough to suggest it was popular. I might add that this street was a quiet backwater away from the shopping crowds and it had a decent selection of eating places along its length, we chose this one.
Overall the experience was not bad at all, the place had a nice french restaurant feel, food was well presented and certainly the staff member who served us was charming. However the food let them down on this occasion and while would not write them off, they will need to do better next time! Steak was overdone! But I could see their potential and I will look out for a future reviews to see if I have got the true picture.