I know I'm writing this entry way late but it's honestly taken me this long to get over and recover from such an amazing vacation. I won't go into all the details but a close friend of mine decided to celebrate his birthday in the South of France in a beautiful area 45 mins outside of Avingon. I haven't been to France in really long time, partially because I've always held a soft spot for Italy in my heart but this trip has really opened my eyes to how lovely France is as well.
One would think that I would have a ton of food entries for this trip since France is also well known for its food and wine scene but we spent a lot of time cooking at home, so we ended up only going to 4 restaurants during the whole week. Sorry guys!
One of the places we did go was this cute little bistro in the town of Orange - 30 mins from where we were staying in Sablet. We chose this place because it's right across the street from the Roman Theatre where we were going to later. It's your typical adorable French style bistro with outdoor seating and chalkboard menus. The waiters were super cute as an added benefit for your viewing pleasure. As expected the menu has typical French bistro food - all of the menu is in French but it's easy enough to figure out and the waiters all speak English.
As many of you know, one of my favorite dishes is beef tartare. But it's not often on menus in the States (unless it's a French restaurant) so I rarely eat. it So I was beyond thrilled to be in France and see it on practically every menu here. When in Rome (or France...) I guess. I didn't even bother reading the description of it and excitedly ordered the tartare de boeuf. On paper, the dish is pretty simple. I mean it's cut up raw beef but in reality it's a dish that requires a lot of finesse and this one hit the spot. It was this beautiful dish with raw beef, capers, garlic, parsley, pesto flavoring (I think?), chopped red onion, chives, shallots and most importantly a gorgeous raw yolk. After spending the last few days eating nothing but stinky soft cheese and croissants, this dish was light and clean tasting. It was bit unique in that it came with sprouts on top but I love sprouts so that was totally ok with me. It could have been even cleaner tasting as it was a bit heavy on the parsley and pesto flavor but overall I was really happy with the dish. It came with a side of fries which was great because this dish alone won't get you very full. Everyone else's food, which ranged from salads to burgers, looked great too and everyone was really happy with their food. They have a cute fountain outside where they keep giant bottles of rose chilled in buckets, which is a nice touch when it's 100 degrees outside.
This was a perfect easy introduction back into French food and if you ever find yourself in the town of Orange, this is a great place to enjoy a casual lunch overlooking the Roman Theatre.
Coteaux & Fourchettes 3340 Route de Carpentras Croisemement de la Courançonne (D8/D975), 84290 CAIRANNE, France 4.5 Forks
This was the main event of the trip - Kevin's actual 40th birthday. Matt had spent a good amount of time looking for a place that wasn't too far from our house, could accommodate 16 people and was also a great restaurant. Despite it being wine country, it's hard to find something that will hit all of these requirements but we finally settled on this place.
I will say food wise it's not necessarily 4.5 forks (it's closer to a 4 or 4.25) but the overall ambience and presentation of everything gave it a few notches up. The view is the lovely - it's completely surrounded by vineyards and they gave us a giant table underneath a beautiful pergola. Since there were so many of us, the menu was already set in advance. It was 10 courses (really 11 because there were 2 desserts) and each was paired with a wine. I won't go into each dish in detail but the meal went like this (1) amuse bouche of olives, mini roquefort popovers and a salmon mousse bellini; (2) cold broccoli gazpacho with blue potato chips; (3) beet sorbet with poached lobster in a cold zucchini soup; (4) beef carpaccio with cauliflower gratin inside, topped with shaved parm; (5) duck froie gras, apricot jam and pink salt; (6) raspberry champagne; (7) pigeon with ratatouille; (8) lamb with English peas and gravy; (9) cheese plate; (10) cherry tiramisu; (11) chocolate mouse with strawberry filling and raspberry sorbet.
As you can see, it's a LOT of food. In generally everything was tasty and well done with the beef carpaccio and pigeon being my two favorites. I could have done without the lamb, not because it wasn't good but because I was so full at that point and it was hard to really enjoy such a heavy dish at the end. The cheese plate was also quite aggressive as there were 6 pieces and some of them were super super stinky, even for me. Lately having 2 desserts was also too much - one is more than enough. The wine pairings were all great although to be honest at this point, I can't remember any of them but the very nice sommelier came out and explained all of them to us. The pacing of it could have been a bit quicker although to be fair, she had no idea she was serving 15 alcoholics who needed a full glass every 10 mins. The chef came out afterwards which was a nice touch. You could tell he was very tired but proud of the meal. The restaurant was nice to let us just be loud selves (we did try to keep ourselves in check as much as possible) and stay at the restaurant until it pretty much closed down.
Matt had mentioned that only a few restaurants even bothered to get back to him and another place gave us kind of a lame menu but we were going to go with it because we didn't seem to have much of a choice being so far away. I'm glad this came through because if nothing else, it was a lovely way to get out of the house and be surrounded by beauty. The total bill wasn't too bad - it was around 150 euros per person. If you are looking to do a set menu, I'd recommend working with the chef to pair it down a bit from what we got but overall, it was a really special moment and great place to celebrate a 40th!
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