This being the depths of the low season, the two top restaurants on my wish list were closed for the month. Thus any report on a return to Les Terraillers in Biot, which was my first ever fine dining experience in France many years ago, will have to wait until I am here in a month other than November. La Colombe D'Or, tipped in most guidebooks as the best restaurant in St. Paul, was shuttered tightly, as were many other spots throughout town. The result: Unusually, both of the restaurants described here have been validated by return visits. With so little open, we didn't have much choice!
Interestingly, our top restaurant pick also comes tops on the Trip Advisor site, even though we didn't check that out in advance. What we DID do was ask all the local shop keepers what they thought was the best restaurant in town, and they all steered us towards Le Tilleul. We were skeptical, at first. Though the menu looked great, the place itself has the vibe of a cheap 1970s cafe, with lots of chrome, exposed work surfaces and refrigeration of key supplies carried into the dining room. The diners were very casual and there were lots of kids. Not promising, and not in line with the prices on the menu. Turns out there's an upstairs, decked out with fine linens, good glasses, and black and white photos of stars who've visited town. (Insist on sitting up here, unless it's good weather and you're able to head for their patio on the town's ramparts.) An all-together more quiet and sophisticated setting for a restaurant that can compare to any fine meal in Paris.
There are artists in the kitchen here. It's the kind of restaurant in which you feel compelled to take photos of your food, because it's so damned beautiful. Fortunately it's not just a show, it all tastes fantastic as well. Over our two visits here, memorable dishes included: duck rossini ... a beautifully moist duck breast stuffed with foie gras, served on a spider's web pattern of light and dark sauces; squash soup ... unctuous with cream, served in a monumental wine glass topped with foie gras foam; a foie gras starter served on a plate precisely divided into four quadrants, one for the meat, another for your toasted brioche and two more squares for your artfully placed accompaniments (are you noting a theme here?); a gooey-on-the-inside, cooked outside chocolate fondant served with a glass of passion fruit sorbet beside precise dots of chocolate sauce each dotted with a red currant. We had a delightful time with the wine list, filled with both local options and French classics. The Crozes-Hermitage we had on our last night (Clos des Grives 2008) was some of the best red any of us had quaffed in quite a while.Best of all, the service was informal and friendly. Despite the multiple-star look and taste of the food, it was delivered by young men from the town who chatted and served to the standard of a beloved local favourite. That, I think, is what gives Le Tilleul it's charm. It might be Trip Advisor's top pick in a town overrun by tourists, but it still feels like a local discovery unsullied by outsiders.
Our second pick is Restaurant de la Fontaine, which benefits from a prize location in the centre of the village. Follow the lane up the hill from the main gate, emerge into a triangular courtyard dominated by a fountain and look up. There you'll see the restaurant's patio dining area looking over the fountain and the quaint village-scape. Food here is just as classically French as at Le Tilleul, but a bit more rustic. Consequently, about 25 per cent cheaper ... although the service seems to reduce with the prices. It appears to be a family run place and the matriarch was a dour and businesslike figure on both visits, finally unloosening late on our second meal once we'd drank much of her wine and were holding lengthy conversations in French. Not rude, but certainly brisk.If it's a nice day and you're eating outside, you won't notice. The courtyard is a sun trap, with the stone buildings around blocking wind and concentrating heat. Lunch here on a sunny, mid-November day could have been a good July in England. Salads and rose matched the weather, and I was served a nicoise that was hearty, beautiful and tasty. A fine combination, but
all too rare these days as chefs try to give this classic dish the gourmet treatment.I was delighted to see wines from the Domaine des Quatre Vents in Cassis, a brand to which I'd grown attached years ago when I worked with Gemplus in Marseilles. (The only clients to ever send ME a Christmas present in my years in consultancy, I'll never forget the kindness of the case of this wine they sent to London to remind me of sunnier days on their turf.) Almost a decade on, Quatre Vents pink stuff is still a delicious embodiment of summer in a glass. We wound up the lunch by sharing a slice of pungent yet sweet tarte au citron, completely banishing the spectre of the oncoming winter.
The atmosphere indoors, where we retreated for dinner the next night, wasn't nearly as charming. It's a small place with a quirky mix of modern art that ranges from stuff inspired by graffitti to a tee shirt hanging on the wall emblazoned with "fuck the recession". It felt more like a college bar than a French bistro in one of the most charming villages on the Med. We never, however, got foie gras ravioli in a cream sauce at Dave's Italian Kitchen (my staple restaurant at Northwestern). That was a dish that left me pondering whether or not the merger of Italian and French could ... if you could handle the fat content ... be the perfection of all things culinary.
Despite the quiet, closed-for-the-holidays nature of November here, we figure we got lucky. Both restaurants stood up to a return visit and had menus that could have even carried us for one or two more meals. In a place that could so easily be a tourist trap, that's a triumph.
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