Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime – Le Station, Forcalquier

Last October, I found myself in Forcalquier on market day with Granny, who was visiting at the time. When we’d had enough of wandering around the market, we sat down for a cup of coffee in front of this of a brasserie/bar called Le Station.

It was approaching one o’ clock – lunchtime, and as we all know by now, lunchtime is sacred in France (sorry if you’re new and you didn’t know, but at least you know now). We observed with interest as hordes and hordes of people from all walks of life trooped through the door and disappeared somewhere in the interior. The food there must be good if so many people eat there, we agreed, and it’s been on my list of places to visit ever since. Finally, on Monday, nearly six months later, the LSH and I (and our friend JP) managed to be in Forcalquier at lunchtime again, so in we went to check it out for TFIL.

Ok so we stumbled badly at the first hurdle. We have RULES for TFIL – here they are :

Hmm, the plat du jour was tripe à la Provençale. It sounded just offal to me (!), and the LSH wasn’t tempted either so we ducked out on rule no.1 and just ate off the menu.

We all ordered Charcuterie (cold meat platter) for our entrée. Yeah, it was fine. Yeah, I’ve had better.

Then for our main course, JP and I ordered Chicken Escalopes and the LSH ordered Lasagne.

chicken escalope

Lasagne

Yeah, they were fine too. Frozen chips, gloopy sauce on the chicken escalope, fairly ordinary lasagne. Perfectly edible, but not nearly special enough to explain the vast hordes of lunch-eaters the Granny and I witnessed. Mind you, there weren’t that many there this week…. just saying, y’know…

Value wise, it was ok. For three of us, it came to €50, including wine for all of us and two coffees. Not phenomenal value, but ok.

Would I recommend Le Station? Well, no, to be honest, I wouldn’t. It’s not a bad restaurant by any means, but you’ll find much better in the area if you try. That said, maybe we just hit it on a bad day…

Service : ✮✮✮✮✮
Food : ✮✮✮
Value : ✮✮✮
Ambiance : ✮✮✮