Skip to main content

CAFE DE LA GRILLE, CAPESTANG: RESTAURANT REVIEW

If you prefer video to the printed word, click HERE.

I lived 50 miles from New York City for most of my life and I never visited Liberty Island, home of the Statue of Liberty. I've seen that green lady in the harbor hundreds of times on visits NYC. I've just never taken the time to take the ferry and check her out up close. Familiarity breeds contempt? Who knows? Do I regret the omission? Only a little. There was always something else worthwhile on the agenda. Maybe next time, when...if...I'm back in the neighborhood.

It's been at least two years, maybe three, since we've lunched at Cafe de la Grille. I have no idea why it's been so long. We've had coffee there dozens of times on visits to the market in the square in Capestang that the Cafe de la Grille faces. We just haven't stopped for a meal. That changed last week. Spur of the moment. We were passing through Capestang. It was just past noon. Let's have lunch.

We're glad that we did.

The covered patio was bustling on a late summer Thursday afternoon, a comfortable day after the summer heat had broken and you could begin to feel autumn in the air. It's a pleasant space, nearly full with families, couples, and the guy who manages the cave cooperatif. We think that the folks next to us might have been boat people, two couples whose conversation moved seamlessly between English and French. That's Capestang for you.

Cathey ordered from the menu of the day. She started with a small salad accompanied by a bit of quiche Lorraine. Cathey puts together a fine quiche herself, so her obvious enjoyment was an important endorsement. For the main, poitrine porc, pork belly, with frites. I've said before that one of the joys of eating in France is that the food tastes just like it's supposed to. Do you like pork? You can't get much porkier than good pork belly. And this was good pork belly.

I ordered the Assiette de la Grille, an assortment of charcuterie that delighted this carnivore. The picture tells the story, a full plate and a varied assortment. My side order of frites was, like Cathey's, fresh-cut and substantial.

With a demi of rosé, the bill just topped €34, a fair price for a filling, wholly satisfactory meal.

You can read more of my restaurant reviews HERE




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

JOE WALSH, RONSTADT, MEEZERS AND MORE - #19

    MEMORABLE CONCERTS - PART 1 I first saw Linda Ronstadt in concert in about 1973 in a little venue in Atlanta called the Great Southeast Music Emporium. I have since seen on various websites that the capacity of the venue was about 540 people. It seemed smaller, a converted shopping center movie house that sold beer by the bucket. Literally. Little metal buckets. Search the name and read about the place. By the time that Cathey and I went to concerts there, some of the acts that they were booking went on to the big time. One such was Linda Ronstadt. Imagine seeing Linda up close and personal in such a small venue, blue jeans and bare feet and with a band that would become the Eagles backing her. Imagine that it's the early show and she's just hit town and she's kinda tired so it's mostly ballads. That voice just a few feet away. Singing love and loss right at you. And imagine, when the show is over, that management comes out and says that, since the second show wasn&

IT'S ME AGAIN - SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE CORRUPTION OF DISCOURSE

Drafted months ago. I think I'm going to start writing again.       What happened? On the evening news fifty years ago, like clockwork, millions of folks would watch Walter Cronkite describe daring flights in space while raptly watching grainy video that we would only see once. No VCRs. No YouTube. Perhaps more importantly than his space exploration commentary, Walter's grainy video described the moral complexities of the war in Vietnam. Whether or not we considered either or both of those endeavors noble, we trusted Walter's presentation. He showed us pictures and commented on them truthfully, so we believed. There were other guys sitting in the chairs in the other two networks. They seemed like nice guys. But Walter was the standard, at least in our house. There were the three national networks with just one or two independent stations serious enough to consider in the major media markets back in those days. More locally produced radio and more local, often daily newspape

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