France 6

Week 6 in France saw us leave La Sabot & our friends Dominique & Arne, we were very sad to leave, we had such a wonderful time with them and would have happily stayed the rest of our time in France there. The opportunity to drive north to Montbard & spend some time in our friend’s house there was too good to miss. Rob & Denise are good friends from Gove who have owned the house in Montbard for about 15 years, Montbard is near Dijon, right next to the Bourgogne (Burgundy) wine district, just south of Chablis and Champagne so its a pretty compelling area for wine and food!

We wanted to get to Montbard before Rob & Denise left so that set the timing somewhat and we drove up, past Lyon and then across to a beautiful town, Cluny, that René-Claude had recommended we stop in. We had a wander around, found a great wine shop to buy some wine to take with us and then a lovely little restaurant for lunch. We just had the Plat de Jour (dish of the day.) A delicious entree of grains & fruits presented like a tartare, pork escalope with green pepper cream sauce, red potato mash & green salad. Dessert was a pear and almond tart.

We jumped back in the car and passed thru some more pretty towns and villages before arriving late afternoon in Montbard. We quickly settled in with Rob & Denise and they took us to some of their favourite restaurants and gave us lots of tips about what to do, where to go, and how to live in a French town! Friday became quite a tricky day as we had planned to go to the Montbard market early in the morning and then drive over to Dijon for the market there and to have some lunch and a bit of a quick look around with Rob & Denise again giving us tips. The problem was that Kai was due in on the train just after lunch, he had long planned a surprise visit to see his mum, and so I needed to get back in time to sneak out and pick him up from the train station.

It was quite funny as we spent all morning & most of our time in Dijon hurrying around, telling Sal that Rob had to get back before 1:30 to pick a parcel up from the post office before it shut, then Kai let me know he had been delayed and wouldnt be in until after 4pm so we went from hurrying madly to then telling Sal we had found out the post office didnt shut after all so we could now have a leisurely lunch in Dijon before making our way home! Everyone was in on the surprise visit, Dominique & Arne, Rob & Denise, me, Danni…everyone except Sal! I think we did pretty well to keep her completely in the dark, especially as she kept pushing me to drive over to Germany to see Kai & Danni!!

 

A couple of days after Kai arrived we put Rob & Denise on the train to Paris for their flight back to Australia and now we are just enjoying the local area and spending time with Kai before he heads off to Germany to do Oktoberfest again. We did a day trip up to Les Riceys which is the Southern most Champagne appellation, we visited the Marquis de Pomereuil Champagne Co-op, a co-op of the smaller vineyards in Les Riceys. We had a delicious lunch in Châtillon-sur-Seine at Restaurant L’ Evidence.

In Châtillon-sur-Seine we also visited the museum which features an incredible array of relics mainly from the ancient Roman site at the village of Vix a few kilometres away. Vix was settled by the Romans about 500BC and the most famous find was the grave of what is known as the Vix Princess, she was a young woman buried in a huge burial chamber with many artefacts, her body rested in a coffin on a cart with the wheels removed, lots of jewellery and also the Vix Kraten, a massive bronze wine container, the largest metal artefact found in western antiquity.

Here are some more images of Montbard, food, beer and Kai’s visit!

…and more of the same!!

Last night we had one of our culinary highlights of the trip, maybe one of the culinary highlights of our life! We booked into a tiny restaurant in the heart of Montbard, Le Petit Chez Soi, which we were told is a tapas and wine bar. It is literally tiny, has only a few tables, as an example it already had the “Complet” sign on the door when it opened at 7pm – us and another table of 6 was all he would serve! He runs it totally on his own, all the waiting and all the cooking! Its not so much a tapas bar as a set menu of 3 tapas, one main, fromage & a dessert. It also has a small a la carte menu. He selects all the wines and they were amazing wines! We started with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Spain which was perfect for the 3 tapas dishes, then he opened a 2004 Tempranillo from Spain, another incredible wine! For the desserts he opened a Brachetto D’Acqui from Italy, a bubbly red.

The food was next level, a charcuterie of superb meats on baguette with a dob of some delicious fruit preserve, mussels done 2 ways and a potato, cheese dish that was exquisite. Kai & Sal had the steak for mains, with a delicious sauce, perfectly dressed salad and a little potato gratin with a bit of fried courgette, I had the prawns, grilled with salade and courgette. The dessert was a plate with some sort of rich chocolate and nut slice, soft meringue, sorbet and crème fraîche.

It was truly a memorable and intimate meal, surrounded by dozens of amazing wines, art work and beautiful music from his curated playlist. It was also insanely cheap, the whole meal for 3 including the 3 bottles of wine, came to €75! As you might imagine, we tipped him generously and booked again for next Wednesday!!

So, Kai is off tomorrow, he has a bus from Dijon to Munich so we will take him over in the morning and spend the day exploring Dijon some more. The weather is still amazing really, its definitely got a bit cooler, but most days are sunny and mid 20’s so we cant complain!