7 Days in the South of France - Part 2 2.5 - 4 Forks Visited 7/19-7/20/2017

Le Crillon 15 place Crillon, 84000 Avignon, France   2.5 Forks

Another French bistro, another order of beef tartare please!  Only unfortunately, I wasn't a fan of this one at all.  We had taken a lovely 1/2 day tour of Avignon, which is the closest big town from where we were staying.  There is an interesting papal palace and a few other cute sights around the city that made it worth a day trip.  We ended our tour in the middle of town where there were several traditional looking outdoor French cafes.  Since there were so many of us, we ended up picking Le Crillon since it could seats us outside and it had some semblance of an outdoor misting system since it was pretty hot outside.  It honestly looked exactly like the two other cafes right next to each other and all of them looked like they catered to the busy tourist crowds with roughly the same kind of menu.  

As expected the menu is typical French cafe food and since we were still binging on cheese and other heavy foods at the house, I went with the healthier meal of beef tartare again.  Sadly this one was not as good as the other one A la Maison.  Right off the bat you could see that the consistency of it was more on the mushy side.  I like my tartare to be more chopped or cubed in texture but this one just reminded me more of ground beef, which one I associated it with that, was a real turn off to me.  Plus it was missing the all important raw yolk!!  Who serves a beef tartare without the egg?!?  The overall flavor was kind of bland and boring as well.  Luckily it was served with fries and a salad that helped to fill my appetite.  

Given the craziness of the trip,  none of us really took the time to research where to eat after our tour so maybe this could have been avoided if we had planned in advance.  But it's really hard to plan with so many people involved and so many last minute changes.  While I didn't think my meal was awful, I was definitely not impressed by it, especially given how local of a dish it is.  

Nez   Place du Rouvis, 84190 Gigondas, France    4 Forks

If you ever have the chance to go to the South of France, I'm begging you to spend some time in Gigondas.  It is seriously the cutest town I've ever seen.  It's a tiny wine city that oozes charm.  One of the people there had mentioned that there are more wine stores and restaurants than there are people there.  It's like Napa or Sonoma but way cuter with their stone houses and blue shutters.  We had the great pleasure of getting a private wine cellar tour which was super fun.  Luckily the guide had asked us if we had any lunch plans and we stupidly said we'll just figure it out when we're done with our tour.  She looked at us like we were completely insane.  Apparently every place here is packed all the time, so you have to make a reservation.  The first place we wanted to try was all full, but their sister wine bar called Nez was free so we snagged a reservation there. 

I should caveat that it's really less of a restaurant but more of a wine bar that happens to serve some food.  The menu is tiny, so be prepared to only choose from 1-2 options.  Aside from that, the outdoor atmosphere is lovely.  It's a great place to relax and enjoy some wine and take in the sights.  They start you off with some small appetizers - one was a tabouleh plate, another was pig snout salad (it was very good and crunchy) and then a small serving of cheese.  It was a good light starter to the meal.  For my main I got the special of the day which was lemon risotto with chanterelle mushroom. Amazing!  It had an excellent consistency - firm but with a hint of softness to it.  It was very heavy on the lemon flavor - it almost tasted like they zested an entire lemon but that didn't really bother me too much.  The mushrooms were fabulous and a nice salty combination with the risotto.  It was definitely a heavy dish but not so heavy that you felt gross afterwards. It was also plated beautifully which was expected in such a lovely city.  

Although tiny, I was simply enamored with this city.  It screams cute European feel - it's almost a page out of Beauty and the Beast.    Obviously if you want to eat at some of the larger restaurants in town, its crucial to make a reservation in advance, although I have read that some places aren't even open for lunch.  While I thoroughly enjoyed my experience here, I will say that the limited menu was a bit of a turn off in the beginning but it all worked itself out.  Besides, if you can't find anything you like to eat you can always just order wine and cheese all day and still be a happy camper too. 

7 Days in the South of France - Part 1 4-4.5 Forks 7/18/2017

A la Maison  4 place des Cordeliers, 84100 Orange, France        4 Forks

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!