The Search for the Perfect French Restaurant (3 of 3)

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Travelling "First Class" on the TGV

The gripping finale to a tale of adventure, intrigue and gluttony.


Part 3 of 3

Chapitre Trois - in which our adventurers head to Paris, encountering on the way trains en grève and the angry gods of Eyjafjallajökull in far away Iceland rain down a cloud of ash upon Europe, leaving our gourmands-errant stranded in Paris and unable to return to England.

We left Avignon with four “First Class” tickets to Paris on the superfast Trains à Grande Vitesse (TGV). A train which has clocked speeds of upwards of 574 km/h and in whose first class cabins we were expecting, to quote from the Rail Europe website “drop-down tables suitable for laptops”, “powerpoints” and “extra legroom and larger seats equipped with power recline”.

Arriving in the cathedral-like Avignon Gare TGV we found a ourselves amidst some form of popular unrest. The CGT and SUD-Rail workers had stopped work in protest over planned redundancies. We could forget about “extra legroom” - we were given new tickets on a train at a different time and everyone was bundled together, sitting on the steps, sitting on our suitcases in the aisles, in fact if you were sitting at all you were lucky. The French word complet doesn’t seem to me to sufficiently convey how packed it was. Thus for two and a half hours, whizzing by at 200km/h we sat in the aisles and on the steps of the train. Sporadically, from my standing position on the train steps I was able to lean over some seated passengers and armpit over their heads shove my camera against the window. I have some photos of the countryside we would have enjoyed.

On our last evening before flying back to London, we found that we still hadn’t found le repas parfait, only had some tantalising glimpses of existence, a nice tagine at Au 35 Rue Jacob, outstanding chocolates, croissants, viennoiseries, cafés aux laits - but the perfect meal? Not yet. We had one meal left, we thought we’d try Le Pré Aux Clercs in St. Germain des Prés.

Le Pré Aux Clercs is a nice restaurant in a nice part of Paris, bookstores are open till midnight and there are cool looking Jazz clubs on every street corner. The restaurant was bustling, a good sign and the service was good notwithstanding being a group of noisy Anglophones, something which doesn’t always predispose one to receiving excellent service in France. But there was something missing, the food and wine were both very nice - but the place lacked the je ne sais quoi necessary to make le repas parfait. So, happily we walked home on a full stomach and contented, but I still felt a tinge of sadness that we had never found le repas parfait.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Admiring Le Louvre

The next morning we packed our bags and readied ourselves to leave. My aunt and Esther’s mum went to a cafe to have one last café au lait as only the Parisians can make them and Esther and I crossed the Seine to Le Louvre to have one last look at my favourite building in the Universe. As we were admiring Renaissance architecture at its finest Esther received a call from her mum: apparently there had been a volcano in Iceland and flights were being grounded. Esther and I laughed together in the Paris sunshine of the Tuileries as we returned circuitously to our hotel

“Imagine if our flight was cancelled from this volcano. First strikes and then a volcano.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t that be funny.”

Well, I suppose it was a bit funny, in retrospect. Rumbling away in far off Iceland an angry Eyjafjallajökull had spewed forth an ash cloud through fire and ice that had grounded flights all over northern Europe. It would seem that Hephaestus the old god of artisans had sought revenge on the fact that human industry no longer made sacrifices to him and thus sent a cloud of ash to ground the European aviation industry.

Returning to the hotel we found out that our flight was delayed, indefinitely. We were in fact fortunate that my aunt’s sister (also my aunt) had warned her about the volcano because I’m sure it would have been chaos had we found out about it upon arriving at the airport. So there we were stranded in Paris. When we went to the nearest Air France office the staff there were less than useless, more or less directing us to a local SNCF office. The SNCF offices in turn were already full of angry Frenchmen whose train tickets had been cancelled due to the strikes. Hearing rumours that Calais was fast filling up with stranded Englishmen, we instead bought tickets to Dieppe, hoping to be able to procure passage on the Dieppe to Newhaven ferry.

It was in fact a pleasant and mostly uneventful journey to Dieppe, past Normandy meadows filled with cows and occasionally sheep. Arriving at the train station in Dieppe, LD Lines had organised representatives to be present at the train station to organise a bus to take us from our hotels to the ferry at five o’clock the next morning. This self-same representative dropped us off herself at our hotel, Mercure Hotel La Présidence. So we strolled along the waterfront at Dieppe admiring the ancient castle, and we headed into the market area and bought some cheese and butter to take back with us to our house in England. After a long day we retired to our hotels defeated and resigned ourselves to the hotel restaurant - having no energy to hunt out the perfect jolie brasserie for our stay.

Finally, where we least expected it, on a circuitous detour to a town we never would have visited were it not for the intervention of an angry Icelandic volcano, we found ourselves seated at a round table enjoying le repas parfait. Sitting by the sea, enjoying a bon vin, although I didn’t care to take note of the name, discussing and laughing about the crazy circumstances that led to our arrival in this town and happy in the knowledge that we were safely on track to arrive home, we finally realised the most important components of le repas parfait as the waiters brought beautifully dressed plates to our tables with vegetables sliced thin as paper, sauce drizzled around the plate and tender pieces of beef, duck and chicken on our respective meals. I don’t recall the names of the meals, because the perfect meal is not about filet de boeuf à l’ecorce d’orange or vermicelles dores aux baies roses, le repas parfait is about company, comfort and not having a care in the world.

Image via Wikipedia

Dieppe Castle

To be sure, the restaurant La Présidence is a Michelin-recommended restaurant, run by head chef David Limare formerly of La Cote Saint-Jacques (3 Michelin stars) and the Responsable de la Restauration is Patrick Pollet member of the Disciples Escoffier. These details do help a little.

The Search for the Perfect French Restaurant (2 of 3)

A quixotic quest for romance in a time that chivalry has forgot
Part 2 of 3

Chapitre Deux - In which our pilgrims set-off to visit the Court of the Pope only to find themselves 700 years too late. On the way an injury is sustained at Nimes the site of the ancient arena and we have a very nice baguette in Toulouse.

Other than its famous wines and truly beautiful city we had little luck in Bordeaux searching for the ideal restaurant. So we departed on our next leg with only one restaurant to recommend.

As the organiser of the trip and resolute leader of our plucky band, I had already paid for “passage to Avignon” with Rail Europe on the regional TER and Corail Téoz trains; not super-fast like the TGV but still fast and comfortably furnished. We passed vineyards, cherry orchards and wheat fields, we passed canals cut as straight as a Roman Road and winding rivers and creeks, we saw the Gothic steeples of Aquitaine give way to the sun-baked Mediterranean houses of Provence, we saw wind farms and ruined churches, we saw willows and oaks, we saw sometimes green sometimes golden rolling hills and we all strained at the windows trying to catch a glimpse of the walled-city of Carcassone as we sped past. Everything was delightful, even the station food that we ate in Toulouse didn’t seem tired - though we had already eaten countless baguettes in Bordeaux. That was until we came unstuck at Nîmes where we had to change trains - there was no train from Nîmes to Avignon and we were expected at the Palace of the Popes in order to get Papal blessing for our undoubtedly righteous Quest.

Instead we found at Nîmes a replacement bus service (sound familiar Sydney readers?), but unlike what one would find amongst the good citizenry of Sydney and definitely not something ever to be found anywhere in England, there was a great round blob of people, une foule des passagers, waiting for the next bus to Avignon. Not even the slightest semblance of a queue and as we discovered when one of our gutsy troop received une blessure falling over in the rush of people to get to the bus there was no queue sentiment in the blob either and it wasn’t a good idea to position oneself too strategically unless you were willing to put your elbows to good use. The famous Arènes de Nîmes were of course built by the Romans who’s gladiatorial penchant for blood is today visible in the tauromachie still practised at this ancient site and which maybe helps to explain the dog-eat-dog spirit that pervaded that god-forsaken bus bay.

Thus, long after the sun had set, close to midnight in fact, we finally stumbled through the gates of Avignon, seat of the Papal See. And we were welcomed at the very hospitable Hotel de l’Horloge. There was only one lonely member of staff on duty at the concierge that night and a telephone which never stopped ringing and had to be answered in Spanish, Italian and French; guessing from my poor French that I was a native English speaker the gentleman at the concierge obligingly switched to a near perfect English. There had been a mix-up with our rooms and the computers were down - so sweat running from his forehead and ignoring the persistent ringing of the Italian telephone the host at the Hotel de l'Horloge went upstairs himself to find us an alternate room. Exhausted, we sought our evening repas from a McDonald's that we noticed was open, the stench of which soon filled our otherwise very agreeable chambres.

We woke to the sounds of human traffic, the Place de l'Horloge was waking up and the cafes were filling below. Ignorant of the Mistral winds we had slept with the door to our terrace balcony open allowing the sounds and smells of a Provençal morning to greet us as we awoke. We breakfasted with the usual French petit dejeuner of the 6EUR variety in one of the cafés that open out to the Place de l'Horloge. And we departed for our audience with the Pope.

Soaring above the great city of Avignon, cast in gold and glistening in the morning sun, Jesus - in statue form, guided us towards the Palais des Papes. But to our aghast when we arrived the Palace was deserted, we had in fact arrived 700 years too late. Apparently, in the intervening years since the Popes had abandoned Avignon, a succession of 9 anti-Popes had taken residence in Avignon and left, a heretical new doctrine known as Protestantism had taken root in the country and been almost entirely wiped out in a series of bloody wars and finally le Roi de France himself was beheaded and France proclaimed a republic, bringing liberty to Europe at the end of the bayonets of the Emperor Napoléon. So now the Palais des Papes is the property of la Republique de France and it would seem the seat of the papacy is in Rome - of all places.

We went on a a tour of the old Pope's palace. It was once the central feature of the Avignon known to Petrarch as “a sewer where all the filth of the universe has gathered”. Our guidebook informed us Petrarch knew it as a place where “princes, dignitaries, poets and raiders” came to “beg from”, “extort” and “entertain” the Popes of old. The palace is now a spartan and empty stone building peopled with camera-carrying tourists. Afterwards we had lunch at one of the pleasant yet unmemorable restaurants that open on to the Place de l'Horloge.

The night was troubled; not for me, I slept fine, but some of the crew were complaining of a certain restlessness during the night. It was all explained the following morning by our driver: les mistrals - Mistral Winds - ceaselessly blowing down the Rhône valley. Whilst some people are fine with them, for others these winds can lead to madness, sleepless nights, headaches and sore throats leading people to commit "crimes of passion", they always blow from the North, and we were told are usually strongest just after it has rained in the Lyon region.

That same day however, we were given a hint that we might find what we were searching for here, by coming to Avignon. In the small town of Gordes we found Le Provencal Hotel Pizzeria - don't let “pizzeria” in the name fool you however, this restaurant was the home of a superb Coq au vin and the servings were enormous. My aunt and Esther's mum both opted for soup - which they maintained was nice but I can't imagine a soup ever being nominated for le repas parfait and Esther, foolishly, opted for their pizza - supremely disappointing given how nice the Coq au vin was - so a fantastic restaurant, serving a delicious meal but unfortunately, not le repas parfait.

That night we ate at Le Lutrin just opposite the Palais des Papes. Esther and I had in fact been there the night previous, just the two of us, and had found the atmosphere charming - solid stone masonry, Gothic arches and a great big roaring fire. So we came again, this time we had to request to be let into the same room of the restaurant and not its modern other half, the four of us were sat not in a cosy corner for couples like the previous night but at a great big table for the four of us in the centre of the room. Believe it or not this changed the atmosphere considerably, on the first night we presented a young couple, obviously from les pays anglo-saxon but who earnestly tried to order in French and converse with the waiter in French, who in turn tried to explain everything on the menu in English back to us. However, on the second night we returned, a troop of anglophones with a poor interpreter for the group (me) and we found our reception a mite cooler. To be sure, we returned at a busier time, yet there was still something a little unwelcoming on this second dinner. Our meals were very tasty, in particular I enjoyed my entrée, although simple, it worked very well, an assortment of patés, I had a Magret de Canard as a main and I would also like to recommend the dessert which Esther had - a trio of Crèmes brûlées: lavender, thyme and vanilla and which was also delicious. We washed it all down with an excellent red - Mas de Cadenet (I forget the year - 2006 perhaps).

In the next and final chapter of this story our adventurers head to Paris, encountering on the way trains en grève and the angry gods of Eyjafjallajökull in far away Iceland rain down a cloud of ash upon Europe, leaving our gourmands-errant stranded in Paris and unable to return to England.

Image: Gordes PROVENCE, Tom Häkkinen.

Image: Le Palais des Papes, Tom Häkkinen.

Image: Le Palais des Papes - l'intérieur, Tom Häkkinen.

Image: Decisions decision - Le Lutrin, Tom Häkkinen.