this post is filed under Cuisine - French, Location - France
On the Tuesday of our trip, we made a completely failed mission to l'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. We were hoping to stop by on our way to Cavaillon's lavender fields. It turns out that for some reason, it's really hard to find lunch on l'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue on a Tuesday. The Michelin one star we wanted to go to happened to be closed on Tuesdays, and we ended up walking all around town looking for a place to eat. We ended up settling for a really bad tourist meal.
For dinner, we again wanted to go to Bistrot du Paradou, but it was full. Instead, we checked out La Petite France, a one star place just a couple of minutes away. The restaurant is off the side of the main road going through Maussane and Paradou. We ate inside a little graveled terrace, and throughout the night unfortunately got attacked by mosquitos again. The waittress was kind enough to offer some spray, but it was too little too late. So while the mosquitos feasted on us, we ate the following. La Petite France offers a simple set menu with limited options each night. You get a choice between 2 apps and 2 mains, and you also get cheese and dessert. The price for this - 25 euros! This was probably the biggest steal of the trip.
olive biscuits
After we sat, we were brought these beautiful olive biscuits/pastries. They were hot and wonderfully flaky, with a pronounced olive flavor. I think I downed like five or six of these - they were addictive.
salade of girolles
For my app I chose this simple salad of girolle mushrooms (the other option was a marinated mackerel - it was just okay). The tender, juicy mushrooms were the perfect complement for the simple, lightly-dressed salad. I loved this.
roasted lamb shoulder
For my main, I went with this roasted lamb shoulder, as opposed to the fish. I don't think I'd ever tried lamb shoulder before so I was quite interested. As you can see, it's a nice fatty cut. Somehow it reminded me of roast pork, but with the taste of lamb, if that makes any sense. The three scoops of olive oil mashed potatoes were extremely olive oily and very tasty. I cleaned up this plate...
cheeses
I wish I'd written down which cheeses these are, but I forgot. I remember the blue cheese being surprisingly mild and quite good, though I'm generally not a huge fan of blue cheese.
assiette gourmande
The meal also came with this very ample dessert plate. If I remember correctly, the stuff is: a strawberry cream puff, pistachio ice cream (I think I'm wrong on that one), some kind of chocolate/apricot crumble, and a chocolate hazelnut cake. They were all quite nice, though I remember the apricot thing being a bit too sweet. I liked having a sample of different stuff though.
butter cookies and truffles
Finally, with our coffee came these little cookies and truffles. They actually may have been shortbread cookies - they were certainly rich enough. As for truffles, they weren't Maison du Chocolat, but it's tough to go wrong. All in all, a wonderful meal, and for 25 euros an absolute steal. The next day was pretty awesome, so stay tuned...
Hi Arthur,
A very nice and interesting report, I look forward to reading more about the rest of your trip to France. I have a small question. Do you or your relative drink any wine with these meals? If you / they do, it might be interesting to tell us about any good meal / wine combination.
Pierre
Ottawa, Canada
posted by Pierre on August 18, 2005 07:26 PM
Much to my regret, the only other drinker than myself is my mother, Arthur's grandma. I have been able to get Arthur and his cousin to at least taste the wines we were having. I hope he will expand his culinery pursuit over time to include appreciation of fine wines. I was quite satisfied that by the end of the trip, everyone was having a Kir Royale as aperitif and making an effort to sample the wines I ordered.
We had many very good wines on the trip. Unfortunately since I did not keep a record and Arthur's focus was on food, we could not provide an accurate record of our pairing of food and wines. I only remember some of the fancier and more memorable ones. For example, in the small village restaurant in Maillane, I found a '96 Rayas Chateanuef du Pape for a fraction of what you have to pay in the US. It was wonderful and my mother loved it. While we were in Provence, we pretty much stuck with Rhones. But because of the much lower prices, I picked mostly relatively expensive wines. We had a '88 JL Chave Hermitage at Oustau de Baumaniere, again at a fraction of what one has to pay in the US (though still not cheap). I'll try to recall the wines and tie them to the restaurant reviews. At La Petite France for instance I only remember we had a white, a Puligny Montrachet, but not the vintage or the maker. Next time I'll make sure Arthur takes picture of the wines too.
posted by Raphael on August 18, 2005 08:15 PM
Hi Pierre, thanks for visiting the site! I guess my dad basically answered the question. I'm the first to admit I don't know a thing about wine. I'll let him comment on the stuff he remembers.
posted by Arthur on August 19, 2005 08:44 PM
Thank you for the quick response.
Cheers!posted by Pierre on August 22, 2005 08:48 PM