RESTAURANT LA TOUR, MONTADY: UPDATE

We'd been to Restaurant La Tour in Montady twice before and we'd liked it. The view across the etang from in front of La Tour at the top of the village is truly stunning, reason enough to lunch there. But the food was better than it had to be, not always the case in restaurants that are satisfied to profit from the view rather than the food. So when we heard that the restaurant had been renovated and both the decor and the menu had been upgraded, we decided to try La Tour once more.

Ooops.

It's true that you could see the results of money spent on interior decoration. This was a new La Tour. Clean and modern. But although we'd made a reservation and arrived in a timely fashion, and although the room had yet to fill up, one of the two starters on the menu du jour was already unavailable. Our choices for our main were either kidney or fish. (Is it just me or is that a strange pairing for a menu du jour?) None of the six of us are into kidney. Five were willing to eat exactly the same meal - the one available starter and the fish - but I decided to ask for a menu. This completely flummoxed our server, who then decided that we all had to order from the menu. After much back and forth, with the server trying to explain to us in halting English why we couldn't order daily special items from the menu, the manager finally arrived. We conversed in French easily and he took our orders quickly and without a problem, five from the menu du jour and one outlier.

By this time, people that had arrived after us were already having dessert. We ended up being about the last folks to leave. Not really a problem. We're all retired and have the time. But added to the initial confusion, we couldn't help thinking that we'd wasted a good bit of the afternoon.

That's a shame. I'm willing to put up with a lot as long as the food is good. And the food was reasonably good. Reasonably. But the fact that five of us ate the same meal complicated judgment. Different people, different tastes. The starter, a bit of salad with a packet of hot goat cheese tied with a sprig of lavender, was both pleasing to the eye and the taste buds...to some. To some, too salty. And so it went. What had been intended to be a sampling of a new, upgraded menu became a study in how five people with differing preferences graded the same dish.

We all agreed that the little bread rolls were good.

With plenty of wine en pichet and coffee for a few of us at the finish, the average of just over 21 euros per person was well within bounds. But we won't go back any time soon. We preferred La Tour when it was less pretentious. In my opinion, the upgrade was a downgrade. Or maybe it was just a bad day. Decide for yourself.

You can find my original review of La Tour HERE. For more of my restaurant reviews, click HERE.