La Maison Caignac
Eating Out |
Eating out The cuisine of the area reflects the two staples, namely that of the local (Castelnaudary or Toulouse) white bean stew - cassoulet, or the variations of duck – magret, confit or foie. The salade of the region is almost a meal in itself and, as in most French restaurants, children are well catered for with a menu enfant at a less than €12. With half a dozen exceptions you’ll eat well (in the exceptions you’ll eat splendidly) with a friendly ambiance and probably get out for under €30 a head for four courses excluding drinks. Local wines on the list are usually not more than €14. Booking is advisable – usually on the day. Most restaurants are closed Sunday evenings and Monday – check the websites or phone. Within 15 minutes’ driving Maryse’s bar across the road is really basic but they’ll rustle up steak ‘n’ chips, duck ‘n’ chips, tapas and pizzas, salads and an ice cream. The staff are really friendly and well disposed to house guests and most people use it for an apèro or a digestif. The Auberge du Pastel in Nailloux is one of the nearer restaurants. It’s actually an hotel on the left hand side as you enter Nailloux from Gardouch. A large dining area, brightly lit and used for wedding receptions. Tel: 05 61 81 46 61 www.hotel-restaurant-pastel.com Three hundred metres before the Pastel is the Ferme de Champreux outside Nailloux. Turn left where it’s signed and go down to the lake. Friendly, three separate dining areas (300+ for weddings and New Year!) plus an outside terrace. Duck, duck and steak. Madame is nice and well disposed to Caignac guests with the odd extra portion of foie. Tel: 05 61 81 33 13 www.fermedechampreux.com In Villefranche (in the market square behind the cathedral) try the Auberge la Pradelle. You can eat in or outside at the edge of the square (and watch the boules). Some seafood as an alternative to duck with a more varied menu. You can usually get in without booking. Tel: 05 62 16 12 95 30 metres away is a super Pizzeria (La Passeggiata). Huge pizzas and good pasta dishes. Good for children. Chef and his wife are competition dancers in their spare time and there are the photos to prove it! Busy, bustling and popular with the young – you’ll be in and out in 40 minutes. Open Tuesday to Saturday, lunch and dinner. 05 62 71 29 28 www.passeggiata.skyrock.com A good local cuisine (but a lousy ambience) is La Marotte in Gardouch. M. Rechard is backstage with Norah Batty out front. She needs careful handling – it is rumoured that she lost her old man a Michelin knife and fork because she was so grumpy to the Inspector on his last visit but that’s maybe apocryphal. It always looks shut but they open by demand ( and buy accordingly) so always telephone or pop in earlier in the day. The food is excellent with menus from €25-€45. It’s 40 metres from a very lively ‘Sports Bar’ where most of les jeunes tend to meet for a beer. Parking in the Mairie opposite. Tel: 05 61 27 19 46 A ‘cut above’ is the Ferme O Délices on the Route de Calmont (turn right after the bridge at Mazeres). Situated on a farm and bird reserve (Domaine des Oiseaux!) 400m after the A66 underpass it has pleasant views of the lake and a colony of thirty-odd cranes in their large nests on poles. Wednesday to Sunday lunch within the season. As of January 2010 this is our undoubted favourite. New women owners, one of whom has excellent English. Tel: 05 61 60 65 30 www.fermeodelices.com For an unsophisticated local nosebag try Les Marroniers in St Michel de Lanes. It’s ten minutes away and is good if you’ve got under tens in tow and don’t need the big eating experience. The food is simple and well prepared – eat inside or out and you can have a pre dinner beer at the bar with the rest of the locals. €20-€35 a head. We watched the Tour de France swoosh past here in 2004. Pleasant and casual. Tel: 04 68 60 34 08 If you head the 7kms south to Mazeres you’ve got Le Paradis du Pape. Turn left just before the bridge and it’s 1km on the right. Lovely gardens (eat in or out) but we haven’t been there for several years. Tel: 05 61 69 39 40 Also in Mazeres, (turn right just before the bridge) is L’auberge de l’Hers (you turn left at the same crossroads for Le Paradis du Pape). Monsieur Blancis smiley, his wife is usually out front (and behind if you were to notice!) and is good value and well disposed to Caignacians. The menu has fish on it and there’s a cosy dining room or a terrace overlooking the river and its noisy frogs. Rivet rivet. This is our default option – 15 minutes away and a really cosy place in winter. The house salade with foie, lardons and cured duck breast is the starter of choice. Or the seafood in puff pastry. Or the plate of three variations of foie…. Avoid the puddings though – the synthetic cream comes out of an aerosol. Otherwise we like this one. Tel: 05 61 69 45 22 www.restaurant-restaurants-salle-seminaire-auberge.aubergedelhers.fr Our 1-2-3 of the nearer restaurants is Ferme o Délices, La Marotte and L’Auberge de l’Hers but the better food places, as everywhere, don’t necessarily give you the best overall experience. Between 15 and 50 minutes’ drive time Well worth the trip and blessed/cursed with a Michelin star is the Auberge du Poids Public (Yes! The public weighbridge) in St. Felix de Lauragais. Pricey but in my view worth it – for that special occasion. Wonderful aspect overlooking the other side of the A61 valley and the Black Mountain it has a traditional fine dining menu. €35 to €75 without booze. Booking essential at most times of the year – especially summer. Tel: 05 62 18 85 00 Probably our favourite ‘within 30 minutes’ or so restaurant is La Table de Merville (05 62 71 24 25) at Castanet Tolosan on the N113 just before Toulouse. Lovely food in a smallish twelve table room with a smaller room off it. Claudia and Thierry are welcoming hosts and there are half a dozen tables for outside dining under the trees in the Summer. Menus from €24 a head with some non standard dishes. Lovely presentation. Our side of Toulouse also is the wonderful Le Mas de Dardagna. Set up in 2005 by a (then) 24 year old chef (ex Poids Publique) and his brother it offers lunch at €22 and a set dinner (no choice but it’s all wonderful) for €48. It’s five minutes from the A61 tollbooth - just off the RN113 at Rangueil which is the Hospital and University suburb. Foodies ‘r’ Us! Tel: 05 61 14 09 80 www.masdedardagna.com Nearer to us and on the N113 en route to Toulouse is L’escarbille. Situated on the left 8kms straight through Gardouch in Montgiscard this place gives you good value/family type fare. Big wood pizza oven with grilled meats au feu du bois and a nice and friendly atmosphere. Tel: 05 61 81 90 52 North east of Toulouse (take the N88) is the Michelin starred O Saveurs at Rouffiac Tolosan. Formal (don’t ship up in jeans) it has three wonderful menus and the usual a la carte. Deep pockets required – not much change from €60 a head without booze. Worth it though. 05 34 27 10 11 It takes 45 minutes to go south east to Mirepoix but it’s well worth the drive. One of the better of several restaurants is Les Remparts on the road that surrounds the medieval centre. We celebrated a ‘big one’ here a couple of years ago and took over the downstairs room – six courses in five hours. I think we’d done a bottle each by the main course…Mind you we were staying overnight in an hotel within staggering distance. Two dining rooms of 30+, food beautifully presented and three choices of foie. €21-€45 sans le vin. Tel: 05 61 68 12 15 www.hotelremparts.com Probably the best restaurant in Mirepoix is the recently Michelin starred Le Ciel d’Or at the Relais Royal hotel ( 05 61 60 19 19). We haven’t been but some friends have and they say it’s quiet and reverential and French dining at its best. Must try it in 2011. www.relaisroyal.com/restaurant If you’re in Mirepoix (for the Monday morning market, for example) there are several other restaurants and plenty of coffee and patisserie places around the square. It’s a touristy place but well worth the visit. Just off (on the left) the road from Castelnaudary to Revel, so about 50 minutes away, is the Chateau de la Pomarede at Pomarede. Lovely old chateau with a fine high timbered dining room. A tad pretentious (the chef gained the Michelin star at L’Auberge du Poids Public and peddles his own cookbook) though the food is good and the experience special. There are lovely rooms upstairs if you’ve drunk too much. Tel: 04 68 60 49 69 If you’re in the area… If you’re in Ax-les-Thermes for the skiing or for the walking/spa stuff in summer or going to/from Andorra – it’s on that road, pop into L’Orry le Saquet. Michelin starred it’s wonderful value – we stayed overnight to cut some travel to the slopes and had dinner bed and breakfast for €90. It was a wonderful dinner but the rooms were, err, French. Tel: 05 61 64 31 30 Just off the D623 about 10kms from Fanjeaux heading for Limoux in the village of Brugairolles is the Domaine Gayda. Unique in that it is primarily a vineyard (04 68 31 64 14) an excellent day out would be to have a tasting session followed by a meal. www.gaydavineyards.com Toulouse has it all and we’ve barely started. Even the rugby stadium has a noted (Michel Sarran) restaurant – he has two stars at his eponymous place at 21 Bd A Duportal (05 61 12 32 32). Stade Toulousain (the name of Toulouse’s rugby team) has the aforementioned La Brasserie du Stade and is particularly lively at lunchtime – a blokey sort of place with Toulouse’s great and good doing power lunches with (usually) the players in from training, a WAG or two and a couple of aged ex-Internationals who are given beer to meet ‘n’ greet. Evenings are quieter but worth sticking your nose outside into the 21,000 stadium if you want to soak up some atmosphere. Off the ring road in the north west quadrant. 05 34 42 24 20 We’d go back to Les Jardins de L’Opera – adjacent to the Hotel de l’Opera in the main square (05 61 23 07 76) and the Bistrot Criée (by the canal, big on fish, Ha ha!) and the Caves du Marechal (all downtown) where I leant back in my chair and fell off a raised dias onto some other diners….that brought the Valentine’s Day house down. Duh! Les Anglais… Carcassonne. Although it’s only 45-50 minutes away we’ve only had quick snacks/coffees whilst visiting the market, a superb city centre grocer/deli and, of course, taking in the old city. One place we have been to five or six times now is the Auberge du Chateau at www.chateau-de-cavanac.fr on the Limoux road near the golf course on the south east side, 3kms outside the ring road. Wood fire – seafood, slow roast pork, lobster, snails – a set meal for €40 including wine – vin ordinaire in red white and pink from a neighbour’s vineyard. Well worth a visit – we tend to stay over after we’ve left Caignac. Tel: 04 68 60 16 87 Sans doute the best meal that we’ve ever had (see, I keep it until last) in the region is The Auberge du Vieux Puits at Fontjoncouse roughly 100kms from Caignac. It’s located 56 kms to the south and east of Carcassonne – south of the A61 as you head to Narbonne and the Mediterranean; in fact if you were heading to the coast you’d maybe take a detour and do lunch or do as we did, leave Caignac and stay overnight en route to Barcelona. It’s fabulous – a small hotel with 14 modern, minimalist rooms terraced around a pool and is owned and run by Chef Gilles Goujon who has now (2010) picked up his third Michelin star. When we were there he waited on table at breakfast! For €95 a head we got the full Monty – a set meal of eight courses with an amuse bouche presented in the bar with one’s apèro. Check out the local Corbières red – so toothsome that we drove the 10kms to the wine farm the following day to pick up a memento (or two). Try the local Maury also – it’s a Grenache based fortified wine, similar to a Maderia – 04 68 44 07 37 The Michelin should be in the bookcase on the mezzanine level and some restaurant address cards in the kitchen drawers. We look forward to learning of your experiences….. good, bad or indifferent shove it in the Visitors’ Book so that we may all learn from your experiences. Don’t forget also that restaurants change hands/close down/chefs move on so whilst most of the eating places described above are chef owned many of them may have changed since we went to them within the past few years. For the better as for the worse…… Bon appetit!
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Recently renovated and refurbished High standard accommodation Sleeps up to 13 Private heated swimming pool Private tennis court Barbeque and Outside dining Lovely gardens Pool Table, Pin Table, Pub Darts, Table Football Garden Chess Cricket Net Boules Court |