Skip to main content

LA COUR PAVEE, PEZENAS CREPERIE: QUICK TAKE

If you can find a place to park, Pezenas is worth a visit on a pleasant Saturday morning. The market is in full swing and the sheer mass of stuff offered for purchase tires out your eyes. The artisans in the old town display all manner of handmade, unique, or just plain interesting goodies. You might come upon a wordworker, jeweler, or weaver plying their craft. And there are restaurants at every turn.

Come noontime on a recent Saturday, four of us lunched at La Cour Pavee, advertising itself as a creperie bretonne. Indeed, we sat in a paved courtyard under a canopy of green with blooming bougainvillea covering a stone wall above us. Pleasant space.

We started by ordering a crisp salad featuring artichoke hearts, bleu cheese, ripe tomato slices, and toasted bread. Plenty to share and the server was happy to provide four plates and sets of utensils. Then came the galettes, savory crepes made from buckwheat flour. I don't know why these are so hard to find in the States. We each ordered our personal favorite and shared around bits that featured all sorts of cheeses, meats, and veggies, nicely spiced, with or without egg. After, we shared two dessert crepes, one with chocolate and almonds, one with crunchy meringue bits and lemon curd. With the meal, one of our party sipped a light white wine. The rest of us shared a pitcher of hard cider. After, coffee.

I can't speak to the bill. Our visiting friend managed to pay the bill during an ostensible trip to the loo. But the prices on the menu were reasonable, the portions generous and filling, the service proper, and the ambience soothing...after we convinced management to change the music from techno to jazz.

Recommended.

Read the rest of my restaurant reviews HERE.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

RESTAURANT TEN, UZES: RESTAURANT REVIEW

Ten sits just off the market square in Uzes, one of the prettiest villages in southern France. The newly renovated space is airy and comfortable with tables of sufficient size and sufficiently spaced to provide for a pleasant dining experience. Service was cheerful, fully bilingual, and attentive without being overbearing. The food presented well to both eye and tongue. And the rate of approximately 30 € per person for a party of five included starters, mains, a dessert or two, two bottles of local wine, and coffees at the finish. Reasonable if not cheap eats.  So why am I hesitant to give an unqualified thumbs up?  It took me a while to figure it out. Uzes is a quintessentially French village in a quintessentially French region of southern France. There are those who will say that the Languedoc is just as beautiful but less crowded and less expensive than its eastern neighbors. I know. I'm one of those people. But the fact remains that for many people, villages like Uzes are t

Kreuz Market vs. Smitty’s Market: Texas Barbecue in Lockhart

I was born and raised in New Jersey. I didn’t taste Texas barbecue until I was twenty-two years old. What the hell do I know about barbecue? And what could I add to the millions of words that have been written on the subject? Well, I know a bit about food. I’ve managed to check out a few of the finer joints in Texas – Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse in Dallas, Joe Cotton’s in Robstown before the fire, the dear departed Williams Smokehouse in Houston, and the incomparable New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville . So I can speak from a reasonably wide experience. This will not be a comprehensive discussion of the relative merits of Texas barbecue as opposed to the fare available in places like Memphis or the Carolinas. It’s simply a take on our recent visits to Lockhart and the relative merits of Smitty’s versus Kreuz from our point of view. I’ll get all over academic in a later post. On our way out to the ranch in Crystal City, we stopped at Smitty’s. You have to look

VINS I LICORS GRAU: LARGEST WINE BOUTIQUE IN EUROPE

One of the regular sporting activities that those of us living in the south of France enjoy is the semi-annual Run to Spain. Most everybody takes part. It's not a track meet, though. It's a shopping run. We go because some items are cheaper in Spain, substantially so. (I buy Cathey's favorite perfume there because it sells for less than in the duty-free shops, much less than in the local French parfumerie . But don't tell Cathey that. It'll be our little secret.) Some items simply are not available locally - a reasonable selection of Spanish wines, a bottle of brandy to feed the Christmas cake. And so, off we go Spain. Just across the border sits La Jonquera, a small Catalonian town whose name is now attached to a massive array of opportunities to spend euros - department stores and specialty shops, garden centers, liquor stores, tobacconists, groceries and butchers. You want it? You can buy it somewhere along the main drag heading south out of the old town. We