I'm not too sure how this restaurant has so many positive reviews, but I'm going to unfortunately go against the grain and write a less flattering one. First off, the staff seemed friendly and accommodating, the food came out much more quickly than I'd expected and the service overall was excellent. The restaurant, on the other hand, was much less pleasing.
It seems to advertise itself as a "French New Wave-inspired restaurant," but, really, it's just a run-of-the-mill bar with a few cheap tables and some cheap, bright damask wallpaper. It seems to want to strive for a Hop Sing ambiance, but unfortunately falls short - very short - of achieving such a feel. It isn't as decorated as it should be and I don't see the French New-Wave inspired ambiance that they pride themselves on (personally, I think the name "Jean-Luc Goddard" just ropes in some hipsters in that neighborhood). I want to say that the furniture and the decoration of the place had a certain "je ne sais quoi," but I know what I want to say and that is "cheap." This place is to a French café what Olive Garden is to an Italian trattoria.
The food was also cheap and poorly done - I ordered a Bardot burger, which was much smaller than the bun and tasted odd. The dish had some pommes frites on the side, but even those just tasted outright bad. (There are other places in the city with great pommes frites - Monk's and the Belgian Café both have pommes frites that are to die for.) Couldn't finish the salad, since it was soaking in dressing and the saltiness of the dish actually made the skin on the inside of my mouth start to peel. The "house red" was also scanty and a bit stale.
Overall, I'd neither recommend this restaurant for a date nor for general dining. It's sort of off-the-beaten track, somewhere in the developing parts of Northern Liberties where there's a lot of construction going on, and it's not worth the long trudge. The food's overpriced, not worth the value; the ambiance fails to achieve what it sets out to do.
Bardot Café is cheap in many respects and no, it didn't even have a French New Wave film. And to make matters worse, I went there at 8PM on a Friday night and only 3, maybe 5, out of the 35 tables were filled and one or two hangers-on were sitting at the bar.
This place didn't do it for me -- and seemed to fail so miserably at what it sets out to do that I just needed to write a review to make sense of it all.
But again, the staff was great; this place just wasn't to my taste.
Cheers. read more