Café de la Paix

The service was excellent and the food was brilliant. We were also quite surprised at how reasonable the prices were, given that this café is in a popular location of a tourist town, serving huge portions of delicious, gourmet food.


Everything we ordered was 5 times larger than we expected, yet made with dedicated care and attention to flavours and ingredients. I could hardly finish my entrée, let alone the main course! And yet it was all so tasty it nearly made me cry not to eat it.


This place is great and I highly recommend it.

Cafe de la paix is an institution in Perpignan but I only tried the food for the first time recently. I was there as part of a birthday party on a Saturday night and the restaurant was packed. There were other groups as well and people kept coming in and asking for a table until about 11!

The menu offers a large choice of starters, pasta, pizzas and mains such as meat, fish and skewers. I opted for a salmon and scallops skewer. Considering it was a busy night and we were a group, I would say the food arrived quickly and the 14 of us were able to start eating altogether without waiting too long for everyone's food to arrive.
My skewer was served with a side of linguini and vegetable julienne. I was not enthused by either of them, especially compared with the deliciously creamy gratin dauphinois that accompanied the duck magret on the plate opposite me!
That said, the salmon was perfectly cooked and the scallops were just right as well, a little on the underdone side.

For dessert, we all had the birthday cake which was an Opera: a thin layer of sponge cake with crispy praline and chocolate mousse on top. The cake was fabulous but the slices we got were double or three times the serving we would have eaten had we cut it ourselves. Most of us could not finish it...
So beware, keep space for dessert!

The service was friendly but a tiny bit rude sometimes. For a busy night this can be understandable though, but not excused so that's 4 stars for Cafe de la Paix!