Dar Papillon, Berkhamsted

Vegan and Vegetarian Cafe Restaurant

I really wanted to love this place. I really want to love it. It's good natured and rather sweet. 
It's heart's in the right place.  Everything else however, is just a bit out of sync. 

The food is really quite basic. The ingredients include some more exotic than I might use at 
home but nothing stands out. Some, I'm afraid, stand out for exactly the opposite reasons.I ordered a 

jewelled salad  in here one Summer evening to find this consisted of boiled rice with sweetcorn in it. 
With not a lot else to it.

The staff are so keen to be good and helpful that you almost feel it would be churlish to note
that they've twice mixed up the drink order or brought one dinner guest entirely the wrong thing. We 

think. Other main courses bear  limited relation to what we had been expecting so we can't be sure.

The cakes were nice and varied on one visit but stale on another two optimistic visits. 

Great fresh juices, good coffee but the pleasant teas are expensive. For that price, I don't 

want to be sitting on a plastic chair. This isn't quirky, it's just tatty. Shabby chic without the 

chic. The decor looks amateur but done so earnestly I feel bad karma for just having written that. 

I am so sorry to write anything negative as I can't help but feel that the place is someone's
very personal project. Someone without a lot of restaurant experience I'd guess.

Fairtrade and Organic where it can, oh that must count for something mustn't it? Should it 
have to?

Oh, but I do want to love this place and that perhaps explains my satisfaction of seeing that 
it's still open when I pass by.  It doesn't explain my surprise though.

Go and experience Dar Papillon. It will be good for the soul if less edifying to the palate.

http://www.darpapillon.com/ourfoods.html

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