France

Look at the blue is the meaning of “mirazur” which is the name of a 3 Michelin starred restaurant at Menton, on the French Italian Border. Its location, perched on the cliffs above the town, gives a beautiful day time view of the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea seen through enormous picture windows which make the wall on one side of the dining room. At night the blue is replaced by the darkness of the night, pierced by the twinkling lights of Menton town and harbour below. After my second visit I’m coming to the conclusion that the view is perhaps this restaurant’s greatest asset.

Of the chef, Mirazur’s website says:

Through his personal interpretations of ingredients and flavour combinations, Mauro Colagreco has forged a style of his own.
He has absorbed his Italian-Argentinian cultural heritage and that of the chefs with whom he trained, and now follows his intuition as he draws on the local culture on both sides of the border.

Inspired by the sea, the mountains and the fruit and vegetables grown in his own gardens, Mauro invents colourful, pictorial dishes that play with textures and bold contrasts.

Let’s keep that in mind as we review my experience of dining at Mirazur last Thursday evening as part of a party of three, to celebrate a birthday. Let’s also keep in mind that as well as holding the highest accodale of the Michelin Red Guide (3 stars), Mirazur has frequently been at the top of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list and in the penultimate list in 2019, it was ranked as the best in the world.

The welcome at Mirazur, if you’re driving comes in two stages. First the car park guy welcomes you and takes your name and your car keys, then you go down the path to the reception desk where someone else takes your name and flicks through the reservation system before asking to take coats and telling you how welcome you are. At this level and price point I think they could at least have pretended to have known we were coming. It would have been even better if they had known that this wasn’t the first visit. ‘Welcome back gentlemen’ would’ve started things off very well. This ‘being known’ is the reason I go back to a very small number of places time and time again. It moves the whole experience away from being a commercial transaction to that of an act of hospitality.

We were seated at a table where my view was of the black night outside the windows which were acting like mirrors. My two companions were able to enjoy the view of the twinkling lights down below. The sommelier arrived and took our order for water and a glass of Champagne. When the water and Champagne arrived further tumblers were placed before us with just a finger of water in each. This was a flavoured (ginger extracrin this case) water. I could neither smell nor taste anything, but I was suffering from a blocked nose. One of my fellow diners could detect a mild ginger taste and the other thought he could smell it.

After a while ‘one of the maître d’s‘ (sic) came to tell us how things would work. We’d chosen to come on a ‘roots’ day as opposed to a flowers or leaves day (all determined by the phases of the moon!) and therefore the menu (9 courses) would be based on roots from the restaurants many gardens adjacent to or not too far from Mirazur. We’d be starting with a selection of what were described as Tapas. Nothing to complain about there. All were very morish and some were really delicious, such as the cheese and onion tartlet with its crispy top and the black squid-ink tuile. The dessicated salsify wrapped around with Lardo di Colonata and sprinkled with bee pollen was spectular.

Tapas, perhaps better described as amuses-bouches.

Next up was a round of bread made according to a recipe of the Chef’s grandmother. It was accompanied by olive oil flavoured with ginger and a printed copy of Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Bread

Gossamer thin slices of mild radishes served with a fish carpaccio was refreshing and a suitably light way to start the menu proper.

I recently had dinner with family and friends as part of wedding celebration in the UK. Some people had soup containing Kohlrabi, which the Egyptian waiter described as a ‘German spice’. Well I don’t think that’s quite correct but it is sometimes know as German Cabbage. At Mirazur it was used to contain a fragrant broth of seafood and root vegetables

A rare species of beetroot was up next, served with a cream sauce and French Caviar. The beetroot takes two years to mature and is dug up at the end of the first season to spend some time above ground before being replanted to grow a little more. This allegedly gives it a sweeter flavour without the typical earth taste of this particular root crop. Personally I like the earthiness of traditional beet but I have to say that this particular version was pretty delicious too.

The intesene jam-like flavour of sweet potato which accompanied a piece of squid was an interesting combination. My suspicions were though, that the squid was more chewy than it should have been and I think the quantity of sweet potato overwhelmed the delicacy of the squid.

Without a doubt this next plate of food was the star of the evening. It consisted of a firm and meaty slice of cep (porcini) mushroom with Jerusalem artichoke puree and white truffle from Alba. The jus was fantastically intense and packed with that illusive umami flavour. All of this was preceded by ‘ordinary bread’, as described by the waiter, and the most delicious carrot butter, presented in the form a carrot.

A dish, entitled, Dark Side of the Moon, came next. It was a piece of poached John Dory, covered in a squid ink sabayon and served with squid ink cracker all with a gentle background of liquorice. Dramatic to look at, there was, in my opinion, too much sabayon, which became a little cloying and the fish wasn’t quite as well cooked as it ought to have been. It was slightly tough and certainly didn’t fall apart as I pushed my fork into it. The flavours though were good.

It pains me to have to write now about the next course. This was billed as duck breast from Challons with red onion from the garden and a confit duck leg sandwich. Let’s start with the good news. The duck sandwich was succulent, full of flavour and a delight to eat. Less spectacular were the red onions, which were, how can I say it, just like eating red onions. Nothing special there. The main event, the duck breast itself, was beyond poor. Firstly all three plates of it were cold, and I mean cold, not just warm as might be expected in a restaurant rather than a farmyard kitchen. Personally I was prepared to roll with that but the texture of the duck was really awful (the result of the ghastly sous-vide method of cooking) and horror of horrors, the skin was inedible. My guess is that the skin had been coated in lovely aromatic things and then fried to give it colour and flavour before being placed in the water bath. On serving, therefore, the skin was soft and gelatinous, very difficult to cut and almost impossible to chew. We then did something I’ve never done before and which ought to be a no-no in a 3 start restaurant, we sent the duck back. The restaurant manager offered with reasonable good grace to have new portions cooked for us. They came very quickly and they were hot but the presentation of the meat and particularly the skin, was exactly the same. Indeed he told us he’d asked the chef to prepare it exactly they same way. We were told that the chef was waiting in the kitchen to know if this time it was to our liking. Conversations ensued during which it became perfectly clear that serving duck skin in the way we’d received it was entirely the point. There was, in the contention of the chef, as articulated by his manager, nothing wrong except that it wasn’t to our taste. Interesting! I’ve eaten my fair share of duck in my life in all sort of different styles of restaurants and cultures as well as at home. Crispy skin is the holy grail of duck cooking surely? Who wants to eat something with the texture of silicone sheeting?

The idea that our preferences were the problem and not the cooking quickly spread and the maitre d’ came to apologise that we hadn’t enjoyed the great duck dish, as did one of the other waiters and the chap who waved us off in the car park later. I find all of this baffling. Having googled ‘Mirazur, duck, skin’ I see that I’m not alone in my dislike of duck cooked in such a way and wonder why Chef Colagreco insists on doing it. We need a campaign to ban the cooking of meat in a water-bath. After a lot of consideration I’ve concluded it’s a waste of decent meat.

After such an experience and an already significant amount of food, the appetite disappears and so it was with a slight heavy heart that we turned to the pre-dessert of green apple granita with wasabi, yoghurt and pistacchio, which in fact turned out to be very refreshing. This was followed by a pudding of purple potato with coffee and honey. It was innovative, with the coffee flavour being dominant and just a background hint of the earthy potato taste.

Coffee and petit-fours rounded things off and while they were nice in themselves the bitter taste of the duck experience had unfortunately left us all very disappointed.

Whilst no longer the best in the world, Mirazur continues to hold the coveted 3 stars. I wonder how long that can continue.

France is a big country with significant regional differences so it is of course almost impossible to generalise about food. In my experience however, as the quality of restaurants in the rest of Europe has risen significantly over the past 20 years or so, France has remained where it always was. Choices, unnecessarily complicated by fixed price menus as well as a ‘carte’ (usually including the same things at a slightly higher price) seldom fail to include Terrine, Tete de Veau, Magret de Canard and everything served with limp leaves, albeit dressed with a fine vinaigrette.

There are of course exceptions and it is possible to find truly delicious food at all price points and in this post I want to highlight a couple from my recent visit to the Indre department in Central France. Each of these establishments offers something bit different, either in terms of the menus themselves or the style of service and I’d be happy to revisit any of them again.

Le Lissier was Hobson’s choice on a wet and cold day spent visiting Aubusson, home of the historic and famous tapestry industry. There was nothing inviting on the outside of the restaurant and had it been a drier and warmer day we may well have searched further afield for somewhere to eat. Inside, the place resembled a bar/cafe that we are used to in Italy more than a restaurant.

The layout was simple, the atmosphere informal. Top of the compliments list for Le Lissier must be the relaxed and friendly welcome by a guy who turned out to be Australian. Despite the place rapidly filling up with diners he took time to chat with us and told how a Tasmanian ended up in the middle of France while he guided us to select a very acceptable bottle of wine. The menu included two particular specialities, Fish and Chips (and they really were proper fish and chips) and a couple of choices of Burgers as well, of course, as the ubiquitous Magret de Canard! Everything was superbly delicious, without pretension and tasting exactly as it was meant to taste. Chefs who can prepare such simple dishes to this standard need an award system all of their own! If you’re ever in Aubusson you must check this place out.

From previous visits to Le Blanc I already knew that it would be difficult to find anywhere to eat and this was especially true over a public holiday (La Toussaint). In fact so desperate was I to eat on a previous visit here that I had to make do with a kebab van in a carpark – and very nice it was too! This time, lunch was found in what looked like a tiny little pizza place (complete with a wood-fired pizza oven) called Pizza Bella In fact it turned out to be quite a large establishment beyond the small shop front and offered menus that went far beyond pizzas and included tartiflette, steaks, fish, kebabs. Service was friendly and the atmosphere warm and festive owing the large number of customers who filled the place with their conversation. We came back again for lighter meal the same evening, and not only because there weren’t many other options.

In Bourges, at a fairly smart looking place, listed on TripAdvisor as ‘fine dining’ and called Le Bourbonnoux there was some pretty awful food which I’ll just post here for you to contemplate. It really was very unpleasant and as I hinted above is more what I have come to expect in many French towns, sadly.

The bread and wine were quite decent and the style of the restaurant raised one’s expectations but the food left a lot to be desired . The picture second from the right, above, is of leaks stuffed with what seemed to be nothing more than chopped egg. The leaks were so stringy they were almost impossible to cut, the egg was tasteless and the whole thing was waterlogged. The beige splurge down the middle of the plate was beyond either comprehension or description. The plate on the right was the cheese dish. Supposedly it was whipped goats cheese with parsley. The acidity of the dish was so high it was almost impossible to eat.

By way of a complete contrast was a restaurant recommended by the owners of the Gite, The Barn at Vijon, where we stayed. The restaurant in question was part of Hotel called La Bonne Auberge Although there are the usual suite of menus (a pet hate) they contain dishes, the descriptions of which excite interest and get the gastric juices flowing. Chef Sylvain Lanusse presents clean elegant plates of modern food with enough flair to make you want to dive in! The restaurant has gained the accolade of a Michelin plate and is well worth a visit. And guess what? I had the most delicious Magret de Canard here which was beautifully cooked to point of being soft and full of flavour.

On the opposite side of the River Saone to the city of Macon, in the Commune of Saint-Laurent-sur-Saone, is the aptly named L’autre rive (the other bank) also with a Michelin Red Guide listing. Its a stylish restaurant with views across the river to Macon and serves gorgeously presented, sophisticated interpretations of the best of French cuisine. Despite this it won’t break the bank and was cheaper than many other places of indeterminate quality we came across during the 7 days in France. The Poulet de Bresse (that Rolls Royce of products) was particularly splendid! Not for nothing has the Bresse Chicken been described as,”the queen of poultry, the poultry of kings”.