You didn’t read wrong. That was not a typo. My trip was in September 2010 and I’m just now writing about it and I feel terrible. I am a deeply flawed Fodorite. That said, there was a LOT of good eating on this trip and I want to share my experience.
(The househunt aspect of this trip is not a lost dream. We gathered a lot of very useful information. Here, though, I will focus on food and wine and other touristy stuff.)
My partner and I flew from Los Angeles to Lyon and spent two nights in the Hilton. Our first dinner was at Brasserie Sud. The setting couldn’t have been lovelier…
Let me just pause here and say from the start that every meal we ate in two weeks was good. No bad food, no complaints, no bad treatment of the Americans. EXCEPT…one night in Besançon, but that’s a much later chapter in this saga.
Anyway, Brasserie Sud faced both an attractive esplanade and the Rhône, and the food steers toward, as the name suggests, the Mediterranean. I see in my notes: provencale vegetable terrine, chicken tagine with golden raisins, gigot from the rotisserie, and a 2008 Yann Chave Crozes-Hermitage. This was a delightful meal. The tab: 108 euros including aperitifs.
The next day, after an enervating walk up the hill to the cathedral we fretted over the abundance of attractive restaurants in Vieux Lyon. Finally we plopped ourselves down at Le Layon on rue Merciere. Excellent choice!
Another interruption to tell you about my method. At each meal I’d use “Notepad” on my iPhone to jot down what we ordered, and then keep the receipt to help me remember later as many details of the meal as possible. We’d also snap pictures of all our wine labels. Even in the fanciest places, no waiter ever gave us attitude about asking to do this.
Among the dishes we enjoyed at Le Layon: Salade Gourmande (a veritable feast in itself, with green beans, magret de canard and pate de foie gras), poached eggs with mushroom cream, quenelle with crab cream, and the largest oeufs a la neige I’d ever seen. Each was about the size of a deflated softball and covered with almond nougatine. After all that and a 2007 white Rhone (St. Peray), we were ready to face the afternoon.
We strolled towards the gare, where we picked up our rental car for the road trip that lay ahead. (Note on renting a car: I’m hardly an old hand at this but we used EasyCar. Picked up in Lyon and dropped off in Besancon. Had a nice Peugeot station wagon and for 12 days, all in, taxes and insurance and the works, we paid under 600 euros. It was a breeze.)
Dinner that evening at Léon de Lyon. Crisp white linens embroidered with a colorful “L” logo. I see that we both had pave of veal and recall the food being exceptional. I also see a picture of a 2007 Domaine Piaugier Gigondas in my album. I’d go back to Léon in a heartbeat.
Day three – off for the longest drive of our trip. A circuit through the Beaujolais cru, then eastwards to Limoges. There’s no shortage of wineries in Beaujolais, but they were all closed for lunch except for Domaine Gay-Coperet in Chénas. We rang the bell and Monsieur Gay came in from the vineyard to greet us and tell us about his wines. We took several bottles with us, then continued to wind through the hills to Villié-Morgon, where we had a wonderful, inexpensive lunch at the Hotel du Parc. The rest of the clientele seemed to be wine workers, the chairs were molded plastic and the tablecloths were vinyl. The menu for two of us: tomato-feta salad, escargot, breaded veal with spaghetti and tomato sauce, faux filet with frites, a cheese plate, crème caramel, fromage blanc, some local Morgon and a glass of Beaujolais blanc. Sems the tab for all that was 40 or 50 euros. On a warm fall afternoon I couldn’t imagine anything nicer.
Next post and our next stop: Limoges. (Note to naysayers: two nights there was not at all excessive and it’s a lovely place. Plenty to do and plenty to eat.) Still to come: Clermont-Ferrand, Bourges, Auxere, six hours in Paris, Dijon, Beaune, Besancon and Zurich. Please stay tuned.
France Trip Report - September 2010
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I am enjoying your report - Thanks for posting.
Better late than never!
bmk
More please!
Always happy to read more about France.
Bookmarking
Ditto all the above posters! Anxious to read more, especially about places we've been, like Bourges!
Limoges we know for its porcelain but not much else, but even if we hadn’t visited the Bernardaud museum and outlet store the city would have been worth a stop. It’s clean, compact and has good restaurants. We stayed two nights in the Richelieu hotel, a Best Western. It was nondescript but a fine value and centrally located.
Your strolling will inevitably lead you to Vieux Limoges, the old city. We discovered Chez Alphonse and immediately knew it would be the place for dinner. It’s small and it was crowded but we were happy waiting at the bar with a glass of Tariquet from the Cotes de Gascogne. Once seated we were burdened with a sumptuously appealing menu of bistro classics and local specialties. Our choices: Terrine de foie gras de canard, Entrecote w/ gratin dauphinois, Salade de rotis de veau, foie de veau with the gratin, gateau au chocolat with crème anglaise, and chocolate mousse. For the mousse they set an enormous bowl of it down on your table, along with a bowl of whipped cream, and you help yourself. This was a charming touch and I liked it. A 2006 Minervois-la-Laviniere from Domaine de Borie et Maurel helped to lubricate the gullet. We ate a lot that night, and amid the gastronomic festivity we forgot to take a picture of the wine bottle. The next day we went back at lunchtime, whereupon the waiter remembered not only us but the wine and gladly produced a bottle so we could snap a picture.
Lunch the next day was just around the corner from Chez Alphonse, at Restaurant des Petits Ventres. Set in a medieval house, they also have a few tables outside on the cobblestones, and that’s where we chose to eat. Again, the food was terrific and we loved the restaurant. Marbre de boeuf piqué with anchovies, Poelé de boeuf with potatoes en brochette, Roast breast of guinea fowl, potato gratin with parmesan, tarte tatin, and an assortment of three wonderful sorbets (cherry, apricot, raspberry). We had just a glass of wine each since we were heading out of town on an afternoon driving excursion.
I have not visited any concentration camps so do not want to compare the chill I felt at Oradour-sur-Glane to anything else. Maybe an hour east of Limoges (ample signs will point you the right way), the town was the site of a terrible Nazi atrocity. A few days after the Normandy invasion – on Saturday, a Market day – foreseeing their inevitable excision from France, the Nazis shot, burned, killed every soul in the town. It has been preserved as a shrine, mostly just as it looked after the massacre, and you can walk freely through its 10 or 12 square blocks. The visitors’ center through which you must enter and exit the ruins themselves is so-so.
After the disturbing sight of Oradour-sur-Glane we drove on to Rochechourt. The contemporary art museum there is worth a side trip, housed in a beautifully-restored chateau.
We were back in Limoges by 5 or 6pm, which gave us time to stroll a little more before dinner at Le Versailles.
While I’m thinking of it, there aren’t many local specialties, beverage-wise, connected with Limoges. A clerk in a wine shop, however, recommended a liqueur called Crème de Chataignes (chestnut) so we bought a couple of bottles to bring home. It turned out to be delicious – just enough alcohol, sweetness and richness. Back in L.A. we made Kir Royales from it and they were quite distinctive.
Le Versailles rates high on most lists of “Best Restaurants in Limoges,” and it deserved its reputation. My recollection of the décor and service is vague. Possibly that’s related to how much we ate and drank: Salmon with charlotte potatoes and “melted” leeks, Limousin beef with sauce poivre, poached foie gras in red wine and cinnamon, Onglet de veau with frites, crepes soufflés w/ Cointreau, an ’08 Fevre Chablis and an ’02 Chateau Guillot from Pomerol. I can’t find the receipt so don’t know how much it cost but I can honestly say that nowhere on our trip did we not feel that we got what we paid for in restaurants. But then, I think your attitude going in makes a difference. I’ve read too many bad reviews on the Fodors forums to believe that I have just been lucky with my dining choices.
From Limoges, we’ll drive eastward to Clermont-Ferrand, another gem about which we were warned not to stay too long but where we loved the one night we spent. En route, a stop for lunch in Le Mont Dore and a hike to the top of Puy-de-Dome. Details in the next episode.
PS: This forum isn’t a French examination but at the risk of sounding defensive it’s worth saying that I’m quite able to apply diacritical marks properly in French but since I’m playing a mad game of catch-up here with my trip report, I’m giving myself a pass and skipping most of them. So shoot me.
For the mousse they set an enormous bowl of it down on your table, along with a bowl of whipped cream, and you help yourself. >>
the restaurant we went to a couple of times last year in the village where our gite was situated did this with the terrine they brought out for the entree - the danger was that you'd eat so much of this terrific dish that you wouldn't want anything else. safer to have this system for dessert!
glad you liked Limoges so much and thanks for the restaurant recommendations.
Mea culpa! Oradour-sur-Glane is an hour WEST of Limoges. But you would have looked that up before you hit the road, anyway...
It would have made more sense to go from Lyon to Clermont-Ferrand and THEN to Limoges but we didn’t do that. Offhand I don’t remember why. Our route was a little like driving from Cincinnati to Indianapolis via Chicago.
From Limoges we took a roundabout route to Clermont-Ferrand, stopping for lunch in Le Mont-Dore, an absolutely beautiful ski town. It reminded me somewhat of Ketchum, Idaho, except without the saloons. Many of the souvenir shops were closed at lunchtime but that was fine because we didn’t plan to linger for much more than a meal.
The drive into Le Mont-Dore is full of twists and turns, up hills and down them. We’re not skiers but this is still a place I’d like to visit in the winter. The most attractive restaurant option was Brasserie Laurent 1er, which was big and bustling and seemed to be full of locals. We each ordered the same thing: the charcuterie plate and Truffade. Now, Truffade is a regional specialty and consists of little more than sautéed potatoes with melted Tomme cheese over them. They bring you a whole skillet of them and after this meal, even if we had driven off the road and been stranded for a week, the Truffade would have sustained us. Rich, beautiful regional food, this was. Oh, and dessert! They were serving rectangles of a tart of puff pastry, custard cream and little wild blueberries. This wasn’t gourmet food but it was very, very good food, and it suited the restaurant, the town, and the crisp September day perfectly.
After lunch we drove out of the valley northwards. Le Puy-de-Dome, the best known of the ancient volcano cones in the area, summoned. The drive was beautiful, through farmland and hills and forests. Because we were past the height of tourist season the traffic both to the Puy and at the parking area was light. In the past it was possible to drive all the way up (and maybe it is again), but when we visited they were doing work on the road and the only option was to walk. My inclination here is to warn people that it is a very strenuous walk, and I came close to turning around more than once. I will not issue that warning, however, because it would be shameful to gripe about a walk up a hill when we were PASSED numerous times going up by women in their 60’s and 70’s wearing open-toed wedge-heeled shoes.
Once at the top there was a minor thrill, and the view was fairly spectacular. If you go and the option exists to drive up, then drive. Your time will be better spent elsewhere is my advice.
Next stop - Clermont-Ferrand and our first Michelin-starred restaurant experience of the trip.
clayrr - how reassuring that places such as that brasserie still exist. it's not an area I know at all, and hopefully it will stay unruined by tourists for many years to come.
we had an experience a little like yours in the Lake District once - we were making very heavy weather of walking round the side of a mountain, when past us, running like a gazelle, came a chap CARRYING his bicycle. he must have wandered quite what he'd done to provoke the laughter he'd have heard behind him.
anyway, I'm looking forward to your Michelin starred establishment almost as much as you are.
For those interested in porcelain, this is the museum to see in Limoges:
http://www.musee-adriendubouche.fr/gb/pages/page_id18319_u1l2.htm