We've had the opportunity to dine at Michelin Star restaurants serving multiple courses paired with appropriate wines and we've soaked down artisanal beers while eating burgers at our local bar. The sheer number of pleasant places to pass a leisurely two or three hours across a lunch or dinner table beggars the imagination. To flourish in such an environment, the food had better be fresh, should be as locally produced as possible, and must be reasonably priced for its slot in the restaurant pecking order.
During summer, we have a tendency to go casual. Perhaps a seasonal pop-up restaurant on the beach, perhaps a 'guinguette' or roadhouse, likely but not necessarily seasonal as well. Which leads us to today's scribbling, two quirky restaurants, one a neighborhood joint and one a pop-up on a river bank, that Michelin has passed by but that we have really enjoyed.
GUINGUETTE ROQUEBRUN
The term guinguette comes from the name of a cheap green wine served at roadhouses in the small towns outside of Paris and other French cities in the 17th Century. Today, the makings of a seasonal guinguette are stored in warehouses or shipping containers in the winter, set up along rivers and in campgrounds in time for the summer crowds, and packed away again a few months later when the season is over. Today, you can bet that a successful guinguette doesn't sell cheap green wine. In fact, today many modern guiguettes have bottles of good, local wine to go with an interesting and varied dinner menu. Lunch is usually not so fancy, featuring the obligatory burgers and a couple of different salads. One of the better guiguettes in our region sits on the banks of the Orb River, calling itself simply the Guinguette Roquebron.
The picture that I took of Roquebrun that appears at the head of this post has not been altered in any way. I just walked over to the front of the guinguette at sunset, pointed my phone, and shot. In other words, Roquebrun is one of those French villages that looks exactly like the typical French village that you have pictured in your mind's eye. During COVID lock down, we took picnics by the riverside. When the nieces come visit, we take them to swim in the river. Last week, we had dinner there with friends.
I won't force your mouth to water by describing every dish. Check out the pictures. All properly prepared and portioned, presented at a leisurely pace by reasonably attentive servers, and thoroughly enjoyable. Every bite. Of our party of five, two had two starters and no main dish, one of us had a main dish but no starter, and two of us had both a starter and a main. Three desserts and two coffees. A bottle of white wine and a liter of house rosé. And the bill came to about $40 pp plus tip, which in France is just a few euros to show appreciation because servers are paid for their work and don't rely on tips.
The Guinguette Roquebron closed on September 8th and will return next June. The good lord willing and the creek don't rise, we'll be back then.
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| Rump Steak with Garlic Butter, Fries and Salad |
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| Slow-Cooked Lamb Shank with Polenta and Veg |
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| Gazpacho |
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| Ceviche |
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| Lemon Cheese Cake |
Au fil de l'air
Above the air. Over the air. Through the air. That's the translation of the name of a restaurant with small, simple interior and a nice-sized terrace with a great view of the Orb valley below. Maybe the name of the restaurant references that view. Maybe, it's a play on words on the town's name - Les Aires - and the fact that the restaurant and the Les Aires town hall share a parking lot. We'll have to ask. But that's just the name, never fully capitalized for those of you who have noticed. It's all about the food. And the food's good.
Each day, they post the lunch special on a Facebook page. 16€ plus wine. Three courses. We've been twice. For starters we had tomato and mozzarella slices with pesto the first time, Serrano ham and slices of sweet melon the next. In season, fresh, and nice little portions. For the mains, slow-cooked rabbit quarters the first time and aligot with grilled sausage the next. (For those who don't know aligot, it's from the hills of the Massif Central. Mostly potatoes and cheese with butter and garlic and such, you almost have to wind it up like pasta it's so cheesy, twirling it on your fork. Keeps those folks up north warm in the winter.) Again, good portions, well-prepared, and faithfully executed. Not farmhouse cooking. Country cooking. Finishes of fresh peaches in vanilla-flavored syrup and a layered raspberry pastry made for excellent, lunch-sized desserts.
With the menu and wine, maybe 20€ per person. With an aperitif, wine, and coffee, 25€.
Every town needs on of these, a place to spend an easy couple of hours over a good meal in a nice space and leave with your wallet relatively intact. If we lived closer, it'd be on the circuit. Well worth the drive.
Au fil de l'air prepares 20 servings of the posted menu, so get there early if that's what you want.
Ira - I adored your post on restaurants. When we return to France in the fall of next year we’ll absolutely look for these opportunities. We have a lingering question perhaps you can answer….the economics of French restaurants baffle us! The food is usually reasonably priced, diners linger for hours and the waiters get paid a decent wage. In our American minds, the numbers don’t add up. Can you illuminate us?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words. I can't say for certain how restaurants finance themselves here. Certainly, the fact that we all accept a leisurely pace of service, particularly in smaller local eateries, means that there are fewer servers, often only one server dealing with one seating per meal in smaller places. Our favorite restaurant gets by with one server for about 30 covers and nobody complains. And the chef is often the owner. So my guess is that, even though servers in the States are paid horribly, staff costs here are low in comparison. Secondly, most menus here are filled with locally sourced produce, meats and fish. The lunch menu special won't feature asparagus or raspberries in January. And food costs here have definitely not inflated to the same extent as in the States, although the lunch specials have increased a few euros on average since COVID. I have no idea if all of those are the proper reasons, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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