Tails From Provence

Thank Friday it’s Lunchtime – Saigon Wok, Cavaillon

Last Saturday, I had to collect the LSH from Marseille Airport. It had snowed overnight, leaving the road over the Luberon covered with a layer of packed, frozen snow. By the time I left, the snowplough hadn’t passed yet, and I crawled carefully along. I was confident that by the time I got to Manosque, it would be slightly warmer, with less snow, as Manosque is usually a few degrees warmer than our side of the Luberon. I was wrong. Not only was Manosque covered in snow, but the Autoroute was also snow-covered and treacherous. At least the snowploughs were in action there, clearing one lane on each carraigeway, so I trundled along in a long line of traffic, presumably with a snowplough at the head of the line. Traffic in the opposite driection was desperately slow, even at a standstill in some places, so when I finally met up with the LSH in a completely unsnowy Marseille, we decided to go home via the Western end of the Luberon – a long detour, but we decided to have lunch along the way and do our TFIL meal a day late.

Just as we passed through Cavaillon, I spotted this.

All-you-can-eat Chinese, basically.

We can’t lose, we said, and in we went.

You don’t often see very overweight French people, but there were quite a few in this place – it’s obviously a popular choice for those with – eh – large appetites.

It’s a gigantic hall of a restaurant, with the buffets laid out in the middle. There was one with bits and pieces you could ask the Wok chef to cook, one with starters, one with mains and one with desserts. We stuck the the stuff that was already cooked, to keep it simple, and we hit the starter buffet – nems (spring rolls), chicken things, fried vegetable things, prawn things and some other seafood things (that I stayed away from), with an array of salads and sauces to accompany them.

I could have just kept eating the starters until I exploded, but after one revisit, I moved on to the mains, in the interests of research, y’know. There were Brochets à Poulet (chicken skewers), Thai Beef, Pork Caramel, Moules au sauce Chilli (chilli mussels, a weird combination, neither of us tried that) and Poulet au Gingembre (Ginger Chicken). These were fine, but less awesome than the starters, with the exception of the Brochets à Poulet which were the best I’d ever had. It’s possible that they were laced with MSG, but I reckoned that if it triggered a migraine, it would have been worth it.

By the way, if you really love spicy food, you’d be better off getting something cooked by the Wok Chef – the French don’t really do “Hot” and we find that Chinese restaurants here cater to the French palate, with Thai and Chilli dishes tasting a bit bland.

Desserts were a bit lacklustre by comparison with the first two courses; there was Dame Blanche, a soft meringue sort of thing, crème caramel and fresh fruit.

Value for money? At €12.90 per head during the week, it’s brilliant value. If there’s something you don’t like, you can just go back to the buffet and get something else. They put the price up at the weekend, so it cost us €14.90 per head, with a pichet of wine bringing the total up to €32.50. If you’re a big eater and find the portion sizes disappointing during your Provençal visit, it’s definitely worth calling in here.

Comfort wise, yeah, it’s a big barn of a place with no ambiance whatsoever. We were seated beside the door and were chilled everytime someone came in or out, despite the electric heater placed nearby. The toilets were surprisingly minimalist for such a large restaurant, too – just one cubicle each for Dames and Hommes. I bet the queues are not too nice when it’s busy in the summer.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the service. I know it was self service, but they brought wine to our table (when asked) and cleared plates. However, they also left us hovering in the doorway looking bewildered for quite a while when we arrived. My advice is to march in confidently and just grab a table if that happens.

Here’s the ratings. I know it doesn’t look great with the one star for Service and two stars for Ambiance, but that’s just the kind of place it is. I’d happily go back again.

Service : ✮

Food : ✮✮✮

Value : ✮✮✮✮✮

Ambiance : ✮✮

Not so bad, then!

I didn’t like to say it – I was embarrassed for her.

But Cookie, despite making great strides recently off-leash, learning to come when called and learning to stay focussed on us, was VERY, VERY naughty. Twice.

The first time was when I went for a walk in the woods above Reillanne – a familiar spot, one of my favourites. I kept her on the leash until we got to the top and started to walk along the top of the ridge, then I let her loose and started throwing the ball. She was good. She was focussed on the ball and the treats that I gave her in exchange for the ball every time. Then I got a text from the LSH. Not an ordinary text, a Viber text, so it meant I had to go through a couple of extra steps to read it on my iPhone. I took my mind off the dog while I pulled up the text, and WHAM! she was gone. Not completely disappeared, never to be seen again sort of gone. No, it was more a WHEE I’m free and I’m going to rampage through the woods, keeping an eye on you all the time but you’re not going to catch me sort of gone.

I tried hiding from her, which used to work a treat with our Beardies years ago. When she eventually found me, crouching behind a bush, she cocked an ear my way Oh there you are and galumphed merrily past me.

I tried feeding Cinnamon treats – jealousy has worked in the past, but not that day.

I tried throwing the ball, literally under her nose. She couldn’t have cared less, didn’t even look at it.

I tried sitting down, hoping that she would come close and start sniffing at stuff nearby. She seemed to feel that my staying still gave her license to roam further afield and completely disappeared into the woods, so deep that I could no longer hear her bell jingling.

At that stage, I thought the best thing to do was turn around and make my way back to the jeep, calling from time to time. Eventually, she burst out of the trees far, far behind me on the trail and headed off IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. I called, and she did a 180° turn and tore down the trail towards me, side-stepping neatly as she neared me and running past the proffered treat in my hand.

Eventually, by making a huge fuss of Cinny and stuffing her with treats, I managed to persuade Cookie to come close enough to grab her. I made a fuss of her, although I wanted to throttle her, and she went back on the leash again.

A couple of days later, the LSH took her to the Watermeadows for a run. I warned him. He said he’d leave her off anyway.

He unclipped the leash and she was gone like a snot from a sneeze. The good thing about the Watermeadows, though, is that you can see where she is, most of the time. She ran enormous loops, keeping the LSH roughly in the middle of her loops, but refused to come anywhere near him, not interested in the ball, not interested in treats.

Being better at throwing than me, he managed to throw a few treats right under her nose and got her attention that way. He caught her in the end, but the two incidents gave us a fright and is making us rethink whether we’ll ever be able to trust her 100%.

I went for a walk in the Watermeadows this morning with Gilla and Poppie. This time, I reverted to our original policy of tying a long, light cord onto Cookie’s harness.

I threw the ball, she tore after it, snatched it from under Poppie’s nose and came galumphing past me, with her naughty can’t catch me expression on her face. I could, though. I grabbed the trailing end of the cord and pulled her up short, and she came straight back to me, all happy and tail-waggy.

And that was the end of it. We had a lovely walk. Poppie and Cookie chased the ball and brought it back every time and got loads of treats. Cinnamon chased moles (unsuccessfully). They explored by the river and in the woods. And Cookie kept coming back.

Maybe there’s hope for her after all if we give it enough time.

Finally, good news on the Cinnamon front. The vet rang this morning to say that her lumps are a benign kind of sebaceous gland tumour and are nothing to worry about. Phew.

And REALLY finally, thanks everyone who voted for me in the ESMA awards – I didn’t come anywhere (sniff!) but it was a huge honour just to be nominated.

Maybe I might share the Gobsmacked Face with you if I have enough glasses of wine some night.

Forget the Oscars…

…it’s ESMA week!

The full schedule is available here on the ESMA news page but the Best Newcomer will be announced today! It won’t be me, Dear Murray is my Hot Tip for this category, but if by some miracle it is me, you’ll get to see my Gobsmacked Face, which I pull in my “acceptance speech” video. They might give me the award just so they have a reason to air that video…

It’s all kicking off today at 2pm GMT and should be fun to watch. Good luck to all the finalists. Yeah, even the others in the Best Newcomer category.