A HILL OF BEANS

The week of the terrible heatwave I was holidaying in the deep south west of France.  It was hot. Fearsome hot.  Around 40 degrees and probably more. The sun would reach full blast just about lunchtime, and so eating out became more of an ordeal than a pleasure.   It was all I could do to lift a lettuce leaf to my parched lips, and made frequent visits to the supermarket just to hang around the chilled food section.  Ideal conditions, you would think, to lose a bit of weight.  But despite profuse "glowing", not an ounce of lard melted from my body. 

My technical adviser and I flew down to Toulouse and spent a night there before following the canal south.  The place to go in Toulouse is the Place du Capitole, where the magnificent Capitole palace, seat of the regional Prefecture, dominates a vast square bordered with arcades, where cafés and restaurants abound, many of them quite fancy.  Instead of patio heaters they had vaporisers, which pumped out a fine water vapour every minute or so to cool down the punters.  It was so hot I didn't even care about my hair frizzing, and hoped to be mistaken for a retired Black Panther with a melanin deficiency.  Pizza Marzano, for those of you who don't know, is the continental name of Pizza Express.  And Pizza Express, for those of you who don't know, make the best pizzas in the UK.  Our waiter was a most agreeable young man who turned out to be English, not that you'd know when he spoke faultless French.  I knew this part of France was overrun by Brits, but was not expecting to be served food by one.  Oliver (for it was he) had mastered that very French trick of being efficient and still finding time to chat.   Our pizzas were delicious, especially washed down with two bottles of rosé (well it was a hot night).  Probably not the cheapest pizza in France, but a very pleasant evening nonetheless. 

The cassoulet is the typical dish of the southwest.  Like every other dish in France, ownership of the "genuine" cassoulet is jealously fought over by neighbouring towns.   Toulouse, Carcassonne and Castelnaudary dispute the recipe, but Castelnaudary has won the right to call itself  "world capital of cassoulet".  The dish informs the whole social calendar, and Castelnaudary's annual cassoulet festival was being held that same week, including such events as bean-throwing, and probably a cassoulet-eating contest, organised by the Confrérie du Cassoulet, who dress up in robes and silly hats for their official dinners, and have long confabulations about what constitutes a genuine Castelnaudary "lingot", or haricot bean, which is the only type allowed to be used in a Castelnaudary cassoulet.  There is even a syndicate of bean growers, comprising about 40 local growers, to defend the provenance of the legume.  They certainly have their finger on the pulse. 

The Grand Master of the Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary

 
 
French provincial food festivals are nutty affairs, as readers of Peter Mayle will know, usually involving the Mayor, funny hats, a number of dogs on the loose going potty, and - always - a brass band.  In Castel they had a mini marathon, and at 9 p.m., with the temperature still at 30+ degrees, we watched the runners come gliding in, not a bead of sweat on them.  The townspeople cheered each runner, and gave especially big cheers for those who ran in groups, like the firemen or the policemen.  We sat at a nearby bar, next to a giant tattooed man who looked like an escaped murderer.  It turned out he had done 16 years in the French Foreign Legion, so my first guess might not have been far from the truth.  I couldn't understand a word he said.  He couldn't understand a word I said.  My technical advisor had to interpret.  The man had a beautiful Golden Labrador who smiled encouragingly at all the runners, and seemed to be on the lookout for Peter Mayle.  The scary man told us how he'd rescued him from abusive owners, and that the dog even slept with him.  Nice to see that even a hard case like that can be redeemed by the love of a good Labrador.

 The Mayor and a couple of other official looking types stood in a row and dished out the prizes, while a bloke with a microphone kept up a nonstop stream of overexcited patter.  The main events would be taking place at the weekend, after our departure, and I made a mental note to return the next year to see the parade of the Confrérie in their robes, throw some beans, and cop some free grub. 

However, there was one thing that remained to be done.  Someone had to try a cassoulet.   In Carcassonne, where it was nudging 40 degrees at lunchtime, we steered clear of the tempting shady terraces under the enormous fig trees trees between the inner and outer walls of the citadel, and headed for "La Divine Comédie" on boulevard Jean Jaurès, technically a pizzeria but we had inside information that the chef made the best cassoulet in town.  The genial Didier emerged sweating from his kitchen to greet us.  I just could not face a cassoulet, and ordered the salade méridionale, but my technical advisor made the ultimate sacrifice.

La Divine Comédie, Carcassonne

It looked easily enough for two people, with a duck leg perched on top of a big terracotta bowl of haricot beans, duck and a gigantic Toulouse sausage.  My salad on the other hand looked like a summer dress, with big slices of Cavaillon melon, mozzarella balls and slices of duck magret sitting atop a mound of fresh salad.    "Good luck old chap," I saluted him, as he looked slightly warily at the giant steaming dish of cowboy food.  But he set to it, taking his cue from Mo Farah - slowly at first, spooning a little onto his plate at a time, chugging steadily through it, and picking up speed at the end, to show a clean plate. As he crossed the line, he raised his spoon and fork in the air triumphantly and was awarded the gold medal for cassoulet eating in very hot weather.  

My salad had been an elegant sufficiency for me, but I still ordered an ice cream, just to cool me down, you understand.  

Of course on my return to Brussels, where the weather was less than half the temperature - 15 degrees and drizzling - the urge for a cassoulet overcame me, and I had to research where to find one.  There appear to be five recommended restaurants specializing in the cuisine of south-west France.  I cannot vouch for the provenance of the beans, but here goes:

 

Au Coin des Artistes

5 rue du Couloir

1050 Bruxelles

Near Flagey

Tel: 02.647.34.32

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g188644-d2315660-r126250546-Le_Coin_des_Artistes-Brussels.html

La Grenouille Bleue

97, rue des Alexiens
1000 Bruxelles

Tél : +32 (0)2 514 00 05

www.la-grenouille-bleue.be

Le Saint-Boniface

Rue Saint-Boniface 9

1050 Ixelles

Tel:  02 511 5366

www.saintboniface.be

Domaine de Lintillac

Rue de Flandre 25

1000 Brussels

Tel:  02 511 5123

Closed Mondays

http://sitebe.resto.com/d/domainedelintillac

Le Domaine de Chavagnac

Place du Beguinage 6

1000 Brussels

Tel: 02 223 3340

http://www.ledomainedechavagnac.fr/

And if you're ever in Toulouse or Carca:

Pizza Marzano
Place du Capitole
Toulouse

La Divine Comedie
Boulevard Jean Jaures
Carcassonne
Tel:  +33 (0)4 68 72 30 36
Closed Sunday

VALLEY GIRL

The Loire Valley is a mere three and a half hours from Brussels on the train (including a metro journey across Paris) or five hours by car.   You can visit it in grand style, staying in a chateau, or on the cheap, as I did.  I chose my hostelries mostly from the Logis de France guide, small hotels in the 65-85 euro bracket, with good restaurants attached.   In the run-up to Easter, most of these hotels were underoccupied so you could just turn up, although these days my nerves wouldn’t be able to stand the uncertainty of finding myself without a bed.  I worked my way downstream from Orléans to Chinon, stopping off at Bourgueil, Vouvray, Saumur and Chinon. Just to see the chateaux, you understand.  It was purely coincidental that all these towns make stonking wine.

Le Pavillon Bleu, Olivet 

Orléans is an elegant town built mostly in white stone. It’s smaller than you would expect of a regional capital, and most sights worth seeing have a Joan of Arc connection.  It’s got quite a bourgeois feel to it, and it’s the sort of place where well brung up young men take their ancient mamas out for lunch.  I stayed at Le Pavillon Bleu, a delightful olde-worlde hotel-restaurant in Olivet, just south of Orléans, on the banks of the peaceful Loiret.  On weekends in summer it turns into a "Guinguette" - one of those olde worlde riverside open-air restaurants with accordion music and dancing, as seen in Auguste Renoir paintings.     I arrived mid afternoon to find the place shut up, and a sign saying that the hotel opened at 5 p.m., so  I went for a walk along the river path which was popular with the old dears from the old people's home along the road.  I could think of worse places to retire.  There are only four or five rooms, which overlook the courtyard and the river.  My room had a gorgeous walnut "lit bateau" or sleigh bed.

The €33 menu gourmand comprises no less than six courses - an "amuse-bouche" to get your gastric juices going, a starter and main course of your choice, then a "pré-dessert" before your chosen dessert, and finally "mignardises" which I think used to be known as "petits fours" in the better class of Harvester, with the coffee.  I fell into my sleigh bed a happy bunny and dreamed I was riding through the snows of Siberia wrapped in furs with Omar Sharif, the tinkling of the rain on the surface of the Loiret somehow transforming itself into the sound of sleigh bells.

 The next day I swung by Chambord and Cheverny to Blois, and then on to Amboise.  That’s four castles just in that last sentence.  Amboise on the left bank is a delightful town stuffed with history.  The castle is the last resting place of Leonardo da Vinci, which is reason enough to visit.  I paid my respects to the Maestro, whose presumed remains, as far as they could tell after they had been chucked unceremoniously into the communal pit by the revolutionary hordes in 1789, are interred in a special chapel under a marble slab engraved in French and Italian.   Nice touch.  About a mile down the road is Le Clos Lucé, the mansion where Leonardo lived for the last 3 years of his life as a guest of King Francis 1st.

Il Maestro

But can’t hang about, on to Tours where I stayed in the Hotel du Manoir, a small hotel with its own (small) car park, although it’s only 5 minutes walk from the main railway station where you can park a car underground for €10 a day.  This hotel didn’t have a restaurant, so I had dinner in Le Bistro du Chien Jaune, an old fashioned bistro next to the tourist office which does a pre-theatre menu for theatergoers to the Salle des Congrès across the road.  While I waited my turn, I tipped my head back and looked at the original artwork on the ceiling.  I had the €19.50 three course "menu gourmand" and treated myself to a half litre of Chinon for €12.50.  

Tours old town, place Plumereau

Tours is an eminently pleasant town which behaves as though it was the regional capital, although that honour falls to more sedate Orléans.  It has a university, a cathedral, a big Préfecture, a big opera house, an old quarter, a market, a big station, the TGV, and, more importantly as far as I was concerned, a Monoprix, a Galeries Lafayette and a Printemps.  The old quarter around Place Plumereau is delightful and stuffed with restaurants.   

My next stop was Saumur, which I reached via Bourgueil and St Nicolas.  You can tell you're in a wine growing region when the road into town is lined with wine shops.  The  Hotel Cristal in Saumur has rooms overlooking the Loire with a 180 degree view.  The rooms are clean and quiet, but I literally did have to open the bathroom door to turn around.   The hotel restaurant Au Quai de la Loire offers a €19 gastronomic menu which did not disappoint.  I washed it down with a half bottle of Réserve des Vignerons white Saumur for €11 extra.

Azay-le-Rideau

From Saumur, my westernmost point, I headed back east via Azay-le-Rideau, one of the fairytale castles.  It sits in the middle of its own lake and has lots of pointy turrets where you might expect Rapunzel to stick her head out the window and empty her chamber pot.  The roof space of one wing has been opened up to show off the magnificent eaves.  French roof timbering has been classed as of exceptional cultural importance by UNESCO.  In fact, the whole Loire Valley has been classed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  It struck me that maybe UNESCO is not situated in Paris for nothing.  I stopped by Rigny-Ussé where there is a gorgeous chateau that allegedly inspired Charles Perrault to write The Sleeping Beauty.  They are milking that for all it is worth.  They wanted a whopping €14 to visit, and you can't even get into the grounds for free.  All of the chateaux charge, but usually €8 or €9. 

I veered away from the Loire to spend the night in Chinon at the Hotel Boule d'Or which is situated on a pedestrian street.  There is free parking on the riverbank, a few minutes walk from the hotel.  The town was gridlocked the day I arrived by a huge crane on the river road.  I read in the local paper over breakfast the next morning that the crane had been fishing out of the Cher a car which had been stolen from the very car park where my car had spent the night.  Fortunately it was still there when I arrived.  The hotel restaurant is called At'able (geddit?) serving a superb menu for €22.40, with excellent service by a charming young waitress who spoke good English.  I had the honour of being the first person to taste the first asparagus of the season, which came from a local supplier and melted in the mouth.   Only three tables were taken on a Good Friday evening, two by British people, one by a young American couple.  Some French people came in at 9:20 and were seated without a murmur.  There's no separate entrance to the hotel, but there's not much else to do in Chinon so unlikely you'll be out past midnight.

Chenonceau

En route to Bourges I made a detour to visit the stunning Chateau de Chenonceau which is actually on the Cher river, although generally included in the Chateaux of the Loire.  The €11 entrance charge here is entirely justified, as it is truly magnificent and extraordinarily well maintained, down to the fresh flower arrangements in every room.  If you only do one chateau in the Loire region make it this one.  It has a wing built out right across the river, which of course makes the river unnavigable.  You couldn’t get planning permission like that these days.  During the Nazi occupation of France, the Cher formed the boundary between Free France and the Occupied Zone, and resistance fighters were smuggled to safety through the basement of the Great Hall and the door that opens onto the opposite bank of the river.  Chenonceau is the most visited castle in France after Versailles, and the car park was full of tour buses.  However the gardens are vast, and there was no crush inside the castle. 

Easter floral arrangement at Chenonceau

I must say the Loire region ticked all my boxes.  The climate is temperate, the landscape is gentle and green, and the city of Tours has everything you could need, including not one but FOUR Irish bars;  property prices are alarmingly reasonable; it's an hour and a bit from Paris on the train, has good public transport (like all French towns) including a new tram network under construction, and the food is amazing.  You could eat your way round Tours every night of the year and never come back to the same restaurant twice.  Every village in the region has at least a couple of top class restaurants.  And then there is the wine. 

Oh yes, and I nearly forgot -- the chateaux.

NHUBE

NH Hotel, Lyon St Exupéry airport

I recently spent a week touring the Luberon, and was frankly underwhelmed on many fronts, not least the food. Avoiding expensive and tourist-infested places was easy, however finding alternative places to eat was less so. On a couple of occasions I resorted to buying some bread, cheese and fruit from the local market and picnicking in a beauty spot. At Isle-sur-la-Sorgue I had a couple of fairly agreeable lunches but pleasant places to eat an evening meal in small Luberon towns - in Apt, at least, where I was staying - are thin on the ground. You would be forgiven for thinking the national dish of Provence is pizza.


I flew back to Brussels from Lyon, where I arrived with a few hours to spare before my flight. Lyon St Exupery airport, which caters mostly to the likes of Easyjet, doesn't boast much in the way of gourmet dining, but the NH Hotel at the airport had a nice-looking restaurant offering a 16-euro two-course lunch during the week. I calculated that I had two and a half hours to kill, so I went for the 22-euro formula, which throws in a third course and a glass of wine. It was quite delicious, well served by courteous and well-trained staff, although I apologise if I can't remember what I had. Some kind of fish as a main course, I think. Chef himself came out to greet each table individually and ask how we had enjoyed the lunch.

"I've just spent a week in Provence, and this is the best meal I've had all week!" I told him. He beamed.


Only on my return did I check out the restaurant on the internet and found it was part of the Nhube concept restaurants designed for the Spanish NH hotel chain by famed Catalan chef Ferran Adria. Well of course! I should have guessed. Nhube restaurants can be found in many NH hotels in Spain and elsewhere, many of them at airports.

Next time I won't bother going further than Lyon, aptly named "la capitale gourmande".

I may not ever make it to El Bulli but at least I've sampled a little of Ferran Adria's magic

SEVENTEEN

I recently jumped aboard the Thalys to visit Vi Hornblower who has just taken up residence in Paris not a million miles from the Champs-Elysées, having become the Paris correspondent of the Reading Chronicle. Vi's retired husband Desmond had still not awoken after a week in the sleep clinic last March, so she called up her old flame Reggie, who used to be Something Big in Bauxite, and was on one of his regular jaunts from darkest Africa where he has an important position as The Despot's Special Adviser, to join us for lunch.

We piled into the Bistro du 17eme, on avenue de Villiers near Pereire RER and metro, which offers a 38 euro menu including aperitif, three courses, half a bottle of wine per person and coffee. The Bistro is part of a chain of seven restaurants which all serve the same menu, and includes the Bistro Melrose, one of Harold's and my favourite troughs in the old days. Harold used to love the foie gras, although could not pronounce it to save his life, and ended up making it sound like some kind of sushi.



The Bistro du 17e is very classy, with proper linen tablecloths and napkins, and lots of plush and mirrors. We perused the menu over three kir royales, which gave me flashbacks to the Bloggers' Christmas party the year before last in Reading. Violet and I had foie gras de canard to start, in memory of Harold, and Reggie had a Gateau Landais, which was a very posh potato cake.




To follow I skillfully dissected a simple but perfectly cooked sole meunière au beurre, served with a little tub of flawless creamed potato. I do find it sad that restaurants don't have fish knives any more, even in Paris. Vi had perfect carré d'agneau, cooked à point, with gratin dauphinois. Reggie, being a fairly unadventurous type, had entrecote with pommes frites, or steak and chips to you. We washed this down with a bottle of Touraine blanc between Violet and me, and Reggie had a whole bottle of Premières Cotes de Blaye red at no extra charge. The service was elegant, efficient and the staff all spoke English, which was just as well as a number of our neighbours appeared to be from the better parts of Surrey.

How we managed to hold a conversation with our faces constantly in our plates is a mystery, but we hardly stopped nattering. I now know more about bauxite than I will ever need to, but Reggie was so charming that he kept us both enthralled. It is unusual for Vi to be enthralled by anything over 25, especially fully-dressed, but I guess Reggie and she had previous. It was sweet to see the two of them flirting competitively with the young waiter.

Vi and I were already stuffed but couldn't resist the dessert list. I was served something wonderful called a Magnifique, which was indeed magnifique, a sort of mousse with a caramelized topping, which I admired for several seconds while Vi demolished her Millefeuille with its salty caramel sauce. Reggie, ever circumspect, went for the cheese, having the dregs of his whole bottle of red to finish off.

Three coffees later we paid the bill and staggered back to Violet's luxurious penthouse on a roll, where we polished off two bottles of champers and Reggie, who is what is known as an Old Africa Hand in the office, regaled us with his tales of derring-do and adventures up the Zambezi. Vi dug out some old photos of her dancing the can-can in a dugout canoe going over Victoria Falls, and how we laughed when she told us that Desmond was known to the local lingo as "Little White Man With Huge Set of Bongos".


The Bistro Company comprises:

Le Bistro du 17e, 108 avenue de Villiers, Paris 17e
Le Bistro Melrose, place de Clichy, Paris 17e
Le Bistro St Ferdinand, 275 boulevard Pereire, Paris 17e
Le Bistro de Breteuil, 3 place de Breteuil, Paris 7e
Le Bistro des Deux Théatres, 18 rue Blanche, Paris 9e
Le Bistro Champetre,107 rue St Charles, Paris 15e
Le Bistro de la Muette, 10 chaussée de la Muette, Paris 16e

PARIS IN THE SPRING - LE PHENICIA

Tango dancers by Botero

On my last night in Paris we all went out for a lovely Lebanese meal at Phénicia. It's posh Leb, with tablecloths, Fairouz warbling discreetly in the background and subdued lighting, none of your doner kebabs and belly dancers wobbling their navels in your face. Vi and I clinked kir royales and Desmond woke up long enough to order a pastis, before demolishing a selection of mezze, which if I remember correctly, consisted of kebbe (lemon shaped meatballs with a crunchy coating), stufffed vine leaves, spicy sausage, tabboulé and Lebanese flat bread. The Hornblowers have healthy appetites, and even the children attacked a main course. I had skewered lamb, which was tender and perfectly cooked - just pink inside. The wine was Lebanese Chateau Musar and surprisingly pleasant. Not cheap, mind you, but at least there were no burnt bits to set Hepzibah off.

Children get bored easily, so I lent Hepzibah my camera to keep her quiet. She took some rather good pictures of the food:

Kebbe by Hepzibah Hornblower

The children have been schooled early in art appreciation. Hermione, for example, is a fan of Kandinsky. Hepzibah, being a typical 9-year-old, found the Botero painting on the wall fascinating and took a photograph. It's a bit out of focus. Can you see which part of the painting it is, boys and girls?

We thought we were stuffed after all that, but still found room for a plate of baklava pastries shared between us, which we adults washed down with mint tea. Service was unobtrusive but attentive, and the best thing was we only had about 20 metres to waddle back to bed.

PARIS IN THE SPRING - LE PETIT VILLIERS

The weekend before Easter I tripped down to Paris to visit the Hornblowers. On arrival they whisked me off to Le Petit Villiers for dinner. An unexpectedly reasonable and down-home family restaurant in a posh part of town, it offers French country cooking in a traditional atmosphere, with red checkered tablecloths and a covered enclosed terrace for smokers. You get a fair choice for your 22 euros menu du jour, with a 9-euro fixed menu for kids (steak-frites, dessert) which was fine for the Hornblowers two granddaughters, Hermione and Hepzibah. Or so we thought. It was past Hepzibah's bedtime and she was going to make us pay. She didn't want the children's menu.

"But you always have steak-frites!" said Vi.

Hepzibah whinged, wittered, griped and grizzelled. When her steak-frites arrived she didn't like it. It was a bit burnt on the outside and she didn't like "the black bits". Children's menus are all very well but, like vegetarian menus, they shouldn't be a variation on the normal menu. Chefs should know how to cook for children. She ate her frites, and drank her Coke, which at least woke her up and made her forget about the burnt steak.

Our food was fine, although Vi did say she knew what Hepzibah meant about the black bits on the steak. My eyes lit up when I saw "rognons sauce moutarde", my favourite. They were served in a creamy mustardy sauce, but hadn't been separated, they were still "on the vine", so to speak, which made me wonder how they managed to get the piddle out of them. I was always taught to cut the sinew out of kidneys and salt and rinse them to remove the traces of animal urine, and it's true they do smell a bit pissy when they're cooking. However, they had obviously found some way of taking the pee, as they were delicious and very tender, although I would have preferred them to be pink inside, as ordered, rather than plain raw.

When it came to the dessert, Hepzibah of course didn't want the set pudding. The manager, who had remarked kindly "There is always one who is a star," told her she could have anything she wanted from the menu, which defused her. During all this time Hermione, her 11-year-old sister, had sat good as gold and eaten everything that was put in front of her. She didn't much fancy the set dessert either but to reward her grown-up behaviour, I had arranged to swap desserts if she preferred mine. In years to come, Hermione will be quietly and successfully negotiating in the background while Hepzibah is selling her story to the tabloids.

The service was friendly and brisk, although the manager had his hands full with all tables busy on a Thursday night. Apart from the slightly overcooked steak and the slightly undercooked kidneys, we had to agree that the 100 euro bill for 3 adults and 2 children was indeed, as the website says, "un rapport qualité-prix exceptionnel".


Le Petit Villiers

75 av. de Villiers

75017 Paris
(near metro Wagram)
Tél. : 01 48 88 96 59

LA ROCHELLE - A TASTE OF THE SEA

Like any French town qui se respecte, La Rochelle has so many restaurants that you could eat lunch and dinner in a different one every day for six months and never come back to the same place twice. Half the restaurants in town seemed to be owned by one or other of the Coutanceau brothers, or their famous father Richard. Gregory owns not one but three restaurants, two of them in the Rue St Jean! Les Flots, right under the Tour de la Chaine, is his flagship restaurant. Le Comptoir des Voyages showcases dishes from all over the world, and L'Entr'acte is his bistro. His brother Christopher is content to run the beach restaurant (two Michelin stars and membership of the prestigious Relais et Chateaux group) named after himself and his father, at the Plage de la Concurrence. And apparently there's a kid sister called Jennyfer who's just qualified as a chef, so expect to see the Coutanceau marque expand even further.



La Rochelle is famous for its molluscs, which is unfortunate for me, as I can't eat them. Mouclade is a casserole of mussels cooked in white wine. The oysters are fresh from Fouras, opposite the Ile d'Oléron. But there are plenty of creperies owned by Bretons who've slipped down the coast.

La Part des Anges
Tucked into a corner of the rue de la Chaine just off the Vieux Port, the Angels' Portion offers a menu within the 22-28 euros range.

Le Rozell
46 rue St Nicolas
Agreeable little creperie in the bobo Quartier St Nicolas, where you can have a filled crepe and a bowl of cider for under 10 euros.

Les 4 Sergents on Rue St Jean du Pérot was fully booked on the Friday night I tried to get a table, but I've earmarked it for my next visit. So instead I ended up in

Le Terroir 45 rue St Jean du Pérot. The menu was around 29 euros, but it was my last night so I pushed the boat out. It was a sailing town, after all.

Apart from La Rochelle, Nanteuil-en-Vallée in the Charente deserves a mention. It's one of the Michelin Green Guide's Villages Pittoresques de France, and has two decent restaurants:

L'Auberge de l'Argentor, where I had a slap-up four-course Sunday lunch with wine for under 40 euros. The menu costs 29 euros and includes a mise-en-bouche, starter, main course, cheese and dessert. The chef is a real proper chef, and every dish is a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach. The service is excellent, and the place is very popular with the English. Don't let that put you off. The Argentor, if you were wondering, is the name of the little river that runs through the village, and along which you could take a stroll after lunch. It will lead you to an arboretum with a water garden and some excellent landscaping.

L'Auberge de l'Argentor

The Auberge de St Jean was not tried, but looks good too with a 24 euro lunch menu and tables set out in the shadow of the church.




Les Flots
1 rue de la Chaine
17000 La Rochelle
Tél. 05 46 41 32 51

Richard et Christopher Coutanceau
Plage de la Concurrence
17000 La Rochelle
Tél. 05 46 41 48 19

Les 4 Sergents
49 rue St Jean du Pérot
17000 La Rochelle
Tel: 05 46 41 35 80

L'Auberge de lArgentor
17, rue Guillaume Le Noble
16700 Nanteuil-en-vallée
Tél: 05 45 31 85 20

Auberge de St Jean 5 rue Fontaine St Jean
16700 Nanteuil-en-vallée Tel : 05.45.89.11.79