Tails From Provence

Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime – l’Authentic, Caseneuve

There’s a fabulous (and expensive) restaurant in Caseneuve called Le Sanglier Paresseux – The Lazy Boar. Friends of ours heard that the owner had opened a second, bistro-style (read : cheaper!) restaurant in Caseneuve. Ooh, how about giving it the TFIL treatment? I suggested.

Great! said my friend, Leah. Leah is a semi-retired journalist/travel writer. She keeps a blog, too. Have a look – it’s called Tales and Travel, and she has some really good recipes as well as travelling tales to tell.

So Leah and her other half BB picked us up and off we went. Caseneuve is yet another ancient, stone, hill-top village, with superb views from three sides looking towards Saignon, Apt or les Monts de Vaucluse. Unfortunately. our destination turned out to be in a modern building, just on the outskirts of the fourth, boring side. We had a view across the road to a warehouse.

A third friend, Lynn, joined us and Madame la proprietaire brought the board listing the Formule du jour, the special all-in set menu.

What was this?? Starter, main course, dessert, coffee AND 25cl of wine for €13.90? A bargain, but would it live up to expectations?

We were all boring and ordered the same starter – Panacotta Faisselle de Chèvre au jambon. I mentioned faisselle a couple of weeks ago, when we were at Les Coupoles in St Michel l’Obervatoire. It’s a sort of cream cheese, but very light, almost like set yoghurt in texture. So this was panacotta made from faisselle which came from goat’s milk.

The jambon (ham) was finally chopped and mixed through it and it was served with a green salad. Yeah. It was good – not mind-blowing, but good.

Our wine arrived, too – a half litre each of white and rosè. Here is a photo of a glass of each, set against a backdrop of the LSH’s very classy Californian wine label shirt. How he gets away with wearing that in France, I will never know…

I opted for the blanquette de veau. Cringe. Sorry. This is the second time recently that I’ve ordered veal out… I think I will just have to accept that I am a hypocrite. I won’t buy it in a supermarket but I’ll eat it in a restaurant…

It was top class. Tender but not dry. Nice and tasty, served with a lovely creamy sauce, rice and ratatouille.

Leah, Lynn and BB all went for the coquelet de Caseneuve. Lynn and Leah were taking their rôle as restaurant reviewers very seriously now, and started a serious discussion on the merits of the ratatouille and the rice. The verdict was that it was well all cooked, well presented simple French country food.

The LSH had a craving for hamburger.

Why, LSH, why? You want hamburger, you go to McDonalds!

Anyhow, his burger was good. Cooked medium rare – gasp! Health & Safety has not yet hit France…

Portion sizes were good – not huge, like last week in Le Gargantua. We all had room for dessert. Four of us went for Creme Caramel and the LSH went for Diplomat Creme Anglais, just because we were all wondering what it was. “I bet it’ll be a kind of bread pudding,” he said.

He was right! It was good, too, nice and mushy, with lots of raisins through it.

The Creme Caramel was disappointing. I reckon it came in a packet and the chef just had to rip foil off the top and spray it with chantilly cream.

So overall, what did we think? Leah hit the nail on the head. “Would you go back there?” she asked. Truthfully, although there wasn’t much wrong with our meal, I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat there again. If I was in the area and it was lunchtime, sure, I’d pop in and know I’d get a good, basic food at a great price.

Star Rating (out of 5) :

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

Rip-Off France?

I love it here. I especially loved the off-season, when it was quiet and sleepy and there were no tourists around. The roads were less busy, everyone was more relaxed, the markets were less frantic. Once summer really arrived, though, we noticed a big change – bumper to bumper campervans on the roads, everyone is a bit hassled and the markets are just insane.

We had already noticed that if we ate or drank in popular touristy areas, like Cassis or Gordes or Nice, it was invariably more expensive, but we were still smugly priding ourselves on having chosen to live in the cheap end of the Luberon.

Then, suddenly, we were charged €2.70 for a beer at our local, Le Café du Cours. €2.70? we asked. We paid €2.50 last week!

Oh, explained the waitress. In the summer there’s a 20 cent surcharge for drinking on the terrace.

Ohhh..ka-a-a-y… fair enough. The terrace is across the road from the café and the staff are whizzing back and forth all day, laden with trays of drinks, dodging the traffic as they go. They deserve danger money, if not a contribution towards shoe wear & tear. We’ll accept a Drinking-on-the-Terrace Tax.

Then there was Brazil Day in Le Petit Village.

It started with the “Mojitos.”

The LSH arrived at our table with three shots of rum, one each for me, Sara and Mrs London.

“That was fifteen euro,” he whispered to me.

A bit steep, we agreed.

Then I sent him off for 7Up to attempt to sweeten and dilute the rum.

“€2.50,” he announced when he came back.

€2.50??? For a plastic tumbler full of 7Up? A can costs 50 cents in the supermarket!

A while later, Sara needed more 7Up and headed off to the bar.

She was charged €2.70 for the same plastic tumbler but she noticed that it wasn’t even 7Up – it came out of a big bottle of generic supermarket white lemonade.

€2.50 per tumbler was one hell of a mark-up on a €1.00 bottle of fizz, but why was I charged €2.70 when Martine’s LSH was charged €2.50, she wondered. Do I look scruffy? Is this a Dirt Tax? Or did the barmaid fancy the LSH – did he get TaxBack? Or do they have a surcharge for women customers – a Woman Tax? Maybe because of Eve and the apple and the Garden of Eden and all that – that would make it a Sin Tax. Her husband Gregory was dispatched to the bar to find out.

“Oh,” said the young lady serving behind the counter, “I thought she was a tourist! Here, you can have the twenty cents back!”

A Tourist Tax! But of course! Silly us – we never thought of that one… I don’t think anyone even thought of that one back in the good old days of Rip-Off Ireland.

Then it was time for lunch. Remember this from my last post?

Two sausages and a small plate of chips.

Gregory went to the huge barbecue where, strangely, there was no queue of people waiting for food. We should have been warned…

“It’ll be about five euros,” he had told us. “Maybe six.”

It was ten euro! TEN! For two chipolatas (small sausages) and thirty chips (I counted them).

TEN! I’m still recovering from the shock of it.

We spent some time speculating as to the breakdown of the meal. Maybe it was one euro per sausage, which would make the chips come out at a little over 26 cents each. Or maybe it was two euro per sausage, which would make it just twenty cents per chip. Whichever it was, I made damn sure I didn’t leave anything behind.

The little tubs of mayonnaise and ketchup were great value though. They were free. Or maybe they felt they had ripped off their customers enough already, charging them the Captive Audience Tax.

********

There’s an eatery very close to us. We’ve had some really good meals there, the staff are friendly and know us by now. The LSH spotted this on the door :

These are just the starters, but you can see that some items are the same price, such as smoked salmon, foie gras and snails. Then some items are a little more expensive :

Roasted Peppers – €1.50
Ham – €1.00
Egg Mayonnaise – €1.50
Green Salad – 0.50

with the seafood salad coming in at a whopping €3.00 extra if you want to eat it in English.

They seem to have invented a Random Translation Tax.

Needless to say, we always eat the French food, not the English food.

We’ve become accustomed to Provence prices. The LSH was in Ireland last week for his mother’s birthday and was shocked to see a main course (an 8oz steak) for €27 – more than twice what we paid for a three course meal with wine and coffee two weeks ago! The fact is, you can eat very well and very cheaply in Provence, but shop around and read the small print. In French if at all possible.

Brazil Day in Le Petit Village

Have you heard of a place called Le Petit Village? It’s a strange, magical place, somewhere near the Luberon, but it’s really hard to find. My friend Sara Louise used to live there so she knows how to get there. She also knows all about Brazil Day and told us we can’t miss it!

Every village in the region has a jour de fête, when the whole village becomes a party venue for 24 hours. Mostly there’s stuff like traditional music, maybe a talent show or concert, a big meal served in the village square and a mini-funfair with roundabouts and games for little kids.

Well, the young people of Le Petit Village decided that this kind of stuff didn’t really interest them, but instead of lounging around in the background on the jour de fête, swilling beer and smoking endless cigarettes while grumbling about how boring it all is, they decided to do something about it. What do we like? they asked themselves. Well, we like football on the beach, they replied (even though the nearest beach is an hour away). And beach volleyball. And salsa music. And drinking (goes without saying, really). But, fair play to them, they organised a beach and football and volleyball and music and so Brazil Day in Le Petit Village was born.

Sara told us how to find the LPV, so we followed her instructions (ruby slippers, tapping heels, spinning circles while singing Le Marseillaise backwards etc) and whoosh! there we were. The rest of the fête was happening in the square in front of the Mairie, but Brazil Day takes over the entire main street (which isn’t very big. There is a reason this place is called Le Petit Village).

Footballers were showing off their skills on the “beach,” in front of a crowd of admirers…

people were wearing brightly coloured clothes…

or Brazilian football shirts…

or flowers in their hair

all adding to the festive air.

Sara had promised us cocktails, LPV style.

This was the first attempt :

Yeah. It was vodka and coke. But there’s an umbrella in it – that makes it a cocktail, right?

The LSH had Mojitos on the brain so he went foraging and liberated some mint from a garden. Then he got a dash of lemon syrup from the bar and bought three shots of rum – one for me, one for Sara and one for her cousin, Mrs London. I did some mixing and stirring and some tasting and adjusting. Needs some 7up, I said, so the LSH headed back to the bar and returned with a tumbler of 7up. Thanks to the 7up, the concoction in my glass was now drinkable, but you still couldn’t call it a Mojito (and it didn’t even have an umbrella).

Lunch! we said, it’s time for lunch!

Sara’s husband Gregory went off to the barbecue and came back with this :

Ok, we said, it’s not as good as even the most basic Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime food we’ve had, but hey, sausages and chips are ok. Then Gregory told us what they cost. There’s a whole blog post in that (it’ll be along right after this one), but whatever you think we spent on two sausages and a small plate of chips, you’re probably wrong.

The LSH and I had to dash off and do some stuff for the afternoon, but we promised to return for the fireworks display that night. We arrived at about nine, quickly found our friends and then, when the church bell chimed, we all made our way to a grassy field near the carpark, where the fire truck was already waiting, in a nod (more of a Gallic shrug actually) towards Health and Safety.

Where will they be letting off the fireworks, I asked.

Here, I was told.

Ah no, surely not. Maybe the’ll let them off from lower down, near the car park, or from the top of the hill behind us?

No, here, Sara insisted.

Then it started. Twenty metres in front of us, shooting straight up over our heads. The noise was deafening, and the fireworks were so close that we had to lie on our backs to see them. Families with small kids ducked and dived their way away from the front of the crowd to the back, where they’d be somewhat safer. And then it started raining down little particles of spent firework, some of which were still glowing, all over the crowd.

Of course, how silly of me. Health and safety in France is an oxymoron.