Back to Bordeaux

I was back in Bordeaux early last month, this time with Blai as we were there for his work. There wasn’t much sightseeing as we both saw the city without each other but instead lots of general strolling and, of course, eating. Friends and family came along too and we were often a small group, always a challenge for me as the restaurant responsibility tends to fall on me! Luckily, Bordeaux has numerous fantastic restaurants and we visited quite a few of them. For a group of 4 or more, I would definitely recommend booking, even if it’s an hour ahead; we were turned away from a couple spots when we hadn’t made reservations.

There was an outstanding first meal on our first night at the Corsican Le Petit Mignon with pumpkin soup with a crusted soft boiled egg…

…and my favourite salade de gesiers (confited duck gizzards).

Then a fabulous faux filet with a Corsican wine sauce …

…followed by their chocolate cake (more like a ridiculous rich chocolate torte)…

and a bavarois de poire.

We liked it so much we returned another day for lunch. There’s a good value lunch menu with dishes like this tender grilled cuttlefish with vegetables.

Le Petit Mignon
33 Rue Saint-Rémi
33000 Bordeaux, France

For more classic Bordelais dishes, we went to La Table Bordelais, a very friendly spot with a set lunch that’s available all week. There was another salade de gesiers…

…and another steak, but this time with a sauce bordelaise.

And a confit de canard! Oh yes, and those potatoes – fabulous.

Blai and I shared this simple tarte aux poires but another dessert option was coffee with that classic Bordeaux pastry – the canelé!

La Table Bordelais
10 Rue Piliers de Tutelle
33000 Bordeaux, France

There was one evening where we came out of a concert and it was absolutely pouring down. Hungry and wet, we stepped next door to Le Régent, an old style brasserie on Place Gambetta. Many of us were coming in like drowned rats and somehow there was room for all. Portions were big here!

We shared half a roast chicken…

… and a brandade de cabillaud (made with fresh cod and not dried salted cod). The food was simple but it was all well prepared and hit the spot. They do pizzas too and those appeared to be very popular with locals.

Le Régent
46 Place Gambetta
33000 Bordeaux, France

There was another visit to Le Scopitone where we all opted for the excellent value prix fixe. There was a lamb spring roll to start…

… as well as an excellent cream of turnip soup (I’m growing turnips for the first time this year and I hope to recreate this!).

There was a fish fillet (I can’t remember the type of fish but I recall it’s one not familiar to these shores) cooked very simply but beautifully with tomatoes and capers.

There was an emincé de boeuf as well, with a sauce bordelaise, and it’s where I realised that no, emincé isn’t a mince but thin slices of meat. In this case, these were thin slices of a very rare piece of beef that would be boot leather if cooked any other way!

Desserts were simple but excellent: tarte tatin…

… and an outstanding mango cheesecake.

Le Scopitone
5 Rue de la Vieille Tour
33000 Bordeaux, France

For me, one particular highlight was a lunch at Le Cagette, a beautifully light and airy restaurant. They too had a set lunch with plenty of choices. Watercress soup to start (this was an eye opener for me as I’m only familiar with Chinese pork and watercress soup)…

or a beetroot and orange salad (yeah, this wasn’t mine…I’m still not a fan of beetroot).

For mains, a mushroom risotto…

… or my favourite, an excellent slice of meatloaf with the most impossibly airy mashed potatoes.

Tarte tatin here too! Not sure if you can tell but dessert portions were ridiculously generous.

La Cagette
8 Place du Palais
33000 Bordeaux, France

One more, one more! I became a temporary regular at the Patisserie Artisanale Gaston Bordeaux, which I can highly recommend. Their viennoiserie is outstanding: all the usuals plus combinations like pistachio and raspberry or vanilla and apple. I tried many of them but my favourite is always the croissant. I never got to try their pastries (as they were laid out after breakfast time) but they looked fantastic too.

Patisserie Artisanale Gaston Bordeaux
34 Rue du Dr Charles Nancel Penard
33000 Bordeaux, France

We fell in love with Bordeaux and I sure wouldn’t mind returning again!

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Eating in Bordeaux

After a couple days at home after Stockholm, it was back in the air and over to Bordeaux for another work do. I landed in the evening and immediately set out in search of dinner – a friend from Bordeaux recommended Le Scopitone and it was there I headed. I was very taken with the little retro restaurant!

I was brought a little tapenade on toast to nibble on whilst I perused the menu. There’s a fantastic set menu deal that changes daily but I went a la carte to get the fish I desired. Service was lovely – one waitress offered me a local newspaper to read while I waited for my meal (I was by myself) though perhaps the grisly front page news of a found body wasn’t so meal appropriate. Anyway, great service!

I started with a brilliant tarte fine with grilled vegetables…brilliant because it was an unexpected large pile of those grilled vegetables and salad and a soft boiled egg on a little sliver of pastry. Yes, take my word for it – there was a bit of pastry under that salad and I loved it all.

My main course was monkfish with morels, all with a rich cream sauce and an equally rich slice of potato gratin. Oh, and more roast vegetables. The food here was excellent and the portion sizes massive!

Le Scopitone
5 Rue Vieille Tour
Bordeaux

After dinner, I strolled around the city centre and it is exceptionally beautiful down by the water and here at the Bourse and the Miroir d’Eau!

I was wandering around Bordeaux on another day when I came across this adorable Uighur restaurant – Route de la Soie. It was exactly what I felt like that afternoon and settled in for a plateful of polo, here served with the salad of the day and some yogurt. Polo was their pilau rice, very similar to an Uzbek plov, made with lamb and lots of grated carrots. The salad was mainly cold glass noodles with carrots and cucumbers in a moreish garlicky dressing.

This place is brilliant if you’re looking for a little something different!

Route de la Soie
48 Rue des Faures
Bordeaux

I didn’t have much time to see lots of sights but did have time for another bit of a stroll through the city.

I loved the quays area and found myself back there again, this time during the day. This time, I could see that the Miroir didn’t just fill up with water but could also release a spray that made everything look all moody and fantastic.

On my last evening, a group of us headed back to the centre of the city and randomly chose a restaurant with a very Bordelaise menu – this turned out to be Père Chabrot, a relatively new restaurant located in an old wine cellar. My starter of salade de gésiers was delicious – the confit duck gizzards were wonderfully tender and the entire salad was enlivened with a raspberry vinaigrette.

My faux filet avec sauce Bordelaise was cooked perfectly à point. Good stuff – I was a little surprised that despite its proximity to water, the cuisine of Bordeaux is mainly defined by meat. I loved the sauce Bordelaise, made with red wine and marrow.

The accompanying fries were excellent and there were enough for the whole table!

Not bad!

Père Chabrot
30 Rue Saint-Rémi
Bordeaux

And, of course, one couldn’t leave without trying Bordeaux’s most famous pastry: the canelé. The place to get them is Baillardran, and there are quite a few branches scattered around Bordeaux and at the airport too. It was at the airport that I picked up a few to take home.

They’re apparently not everyone’s cup of tea and I originally thought they perhaps weren’t mine. I realised that I liked them when I tried the original size (as pictured above) – these were custardy and vanillaey and with a lovely chewy crust. You don’t get the nice contrasts with the smaller sizes. Go big with canelés!

It’s a great city to visit for a couple of days and there’s certainly some good eating there. If you’re a fan of wine, well, the recently opened Cité du Vin is surely up your street (not so for me as I cannot drink wine – a bit of a shame in Bordeaux!). All my photos from this short trip to Bordeaux can be found in this album.

 

La Régalade Conservatoire, Paris

We spent our wedding anniversary in Paris! Yeah, it sounds romantic but I forgot about it until late in the day – haha! Luckily, I had planned ahead and already booked a table for dinner at La Régalade Conservatoire, the third and newest location of La Régalade under chef Bruno Doucet. TimeOut Paris even called it one of the most romantic restaurants in Paris; I was sold.

We arrived to a warm welcome with excellent service throughout the entire meal. There’s a menu for dinner – 3 courses for €37, with supplements for some of the specials of the day.

We started with a huge (and delicious) pork terrine that was plonked onto our table. We were to help ourselves to as much as we desired.

There was some excellent bread to go alongside…

…and a crock of equally excellent cornichons. It’s too easy to fill up on all of this but we did have to keep room for the dishes we actually ordered!

Starters. Makis de maquereau, concombre et poivron, mayonnaise citron vert et avocat. This was a refreshing salad with rolls of mackerel and cucumber.

Risotto crémeux à l’encre de seiche, gambas rôties à l’ail, émulsion de vache qui rit. Rice, seafood, garlic – what’s not to like?

Just look at the fabulous colour of that risotto! There was even a bit of dried cuttlefish or something similar on top that had a great salty chewiness. And a foam of vache qui rit cheese? Genius.

Main courses. Veau en deux cuissons, caillette au jus de veau et quasi rôti, légumes verts de printemps. Here we had veal in two styles – a roasted cut akin to a lean loin and a caillette (kind of like a forcemeat ball). It was all gorgeous. This was served with lots of spring vegetables – peas, mangetout, peashoots, onions.

Onglet de bœuf rôti aux cinq baies, carottes et navets nouveaux, champignons de Paris et cresson sauvage. Again, perfectly cooked meat served with lots of fresh vegetables.

Desserts had to be ordered right at the beginning but as the portion sizes had been well thought through, we were feeling very comfortable and were looking forward to our sweets. Soufflé chaud Grand-Marnier seemed to be one of the favourites with our neighbouring tables as everyone seemed to have one. And yes, it was glorious – all hot and fluffy and with a strong hint of Grand Marnier.

Pêche plate du Lot-et-Garonne cuite au four, émulsion de verveine et sorbet pêche. Oh gee, this was swell. What a fabulously gently cooked flat peach, topped with the peachiest of peach sorbets and a hint of lemon verbena.

With our post-dinner teas came warm madeleines, served in the tiniest basket you ever did see. Teas were from Le Palais des Thés in Paris – and they were fantastic.

Portion sizes were very well thought out and we only realised afterwards that there were no extra carbohydrates on the plates – there was only bread on the side. And there were plenty of vegetables too – and we loved it all. It’s definitely a lovely restaurant to spend a special occasion (or even a not very special one!).

La Régalade Conservatoire
9 Rue du Conservatoire
75009 Paris
France

 

The Salon de Thé at Jacques Genin, Paris

We stopped for tea that first afternoon after our time in the Musée Picasso in the 3eme and as we were nearby, I dragged Blai to Jacques Genin’s shop. The one on rue de Turenne has a small salon de thé where you can taste his famous chocolates and caramels as well as pastries. His other shop on the other side of the river is just that – a shop.

We settled into a sofa in the lovely air conditioned room. There’s a menu but the waitress also rattled off the various flavours and other pastries also available (and I believe they are made in the laboratory upstairs). We chose a chocolate millefeille that would be put together a la minute. This was one excellent millefeuille.

Coffee for me and a citron pressé for Blai. The chocolates they provided with the drinks were utterly amazing. Seriously, just get them.

We bought a couple of his caramels to takeaway (look at the cute little bags they have for small numbers of sweets) and ate them about an hour later. By that time, they’d softened in the heat in my bag to possibly a perfect texture – they were utterly luscious.

I only wish I could have brought back more but the very hot weather prevented all of that. Here’s a good tip: this salon de thé is open on Sundays.

Jacques Genin
133 rue de Turenne
Paris
France

 

Breizh Café, Paris

We finally made it to Breizh Cafe on this Paris trip; this restaurant specialises in the galettes and crepes from Brittany and is probably on everyone’s list of places to eat in Paris. I’d recommend getting there soon after their opening time for lunch if you’re trying to get a table without a reservation; and even if you have a reservation, don’t be surprised if you’re seated in their shop next door (it’s perfectly normal though we saw some tourists leave in a huff when presented with that option). We got there about 15 minutes after they opened and got a prime table on the sidewalk; soon after, the entire restaurant was full.

It took us a while to choose the fillings for our savoury buckwheat galettes – everything on the menu looked incredible. I knew that everything would be good – the restaurant is known for the quality of the ingredients it uses. A Galette Bretonne was filled with creamy mushrooms with cheese and smoked ham and the buckwheat galette was fabulous, all flavourful and crisp at the corners. (A neighbouring couple who left their “galette crusts” made me quite upset.)

A Galette Artichaut was the classic complète – ham, cheese and egg – with the addition of artichoke hearts. Perfect.

Of course, we couldn’t leave without a sweet crepe. After a long deliberation, we finally decided to split a Crepe Quimperone – a crepe filled with apple puree, drizzled with the cafe’s salted caramel sauce and topped with vanilla ice cream. Yes, it was as incredible as it sounds.

I see now why there’s always a crowd here! We’ll be back.

Breizh Cafe
109 rue Vieille du Temple
75005 Paris
France