Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Au Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs – A restaurant in Blois

When driving up from the middle of France back to Paris, we stopped for the night in the cute city of Blois. Blois is on the side of the Loire river and it has a well renovated castle in its center. After visiting the castle we had dinner at the "Rendez-vous des Pêcheurs" (the meeting place of the fishermen) a restaurant we found through the Guide Michelin. For those of you who did not know, the guide Michelin was made by the Michelin tire company to encourage driving in French families.

Well, the Rendez-vous Pêcheurs certainly deserves its ranking of "a very good table." The meal started out with a pre-appetizer of carrot mousse over mushroom flan. It was served hot in a little white coffee cup and it was delicious. Maybe I will try to re-create it one day.
For my appetizer, I ordered the Lobster broth. It was flavorful, but not too strong, and it came with large chunks of tasty lobster in it. It also had pieces of chicken in it, which I found to be a bit out of place. But overall it was quite good.

My parents both had the special appetizer: zucchini flowers stuffed with crayfish. This dish was very flavorful and delicious.
For my main entrée, I had the pigeonneau. Yes, yes, I know, the restaurant is named after fishermen, but pigeonneau is too good to pass up. The pigeonneau was cooked at 55 degrees celsius for 2 hours in a vaccum, and it came with a pice of seared foie gras and a little molded mound of soft browned cabbage. The fowl was perfectly cooked, brown on the outside but pink on the inside, and the foie gras was of course delicious.

My mother got the bass with sweetbreads and my father got the St. Pierre (a type of fish) with parsley sauce. 
Then came the pre-dessert: passion fruit purée with meringue. It was bit too sour for my tastes.

And then dessert! My brother and I both got the raspberry millefeuille (millefeuille means "a thousand leaves" in french because of the many layers). It was good but very sweet.
My mother got Fraise melba (strawberries with vanilla ice cream and sorbet with slivered almonds,
My father got a strange dessert based on potatoes. The bottom layer is an olive cake, and the top layer is a potato cake that had a texture similar to cheesecake. On the side are sweet fried potato slices and blackberry sorbet. It was strange but strangely good.

2 comments:

Toutizes said...

Hmmm, that was GOOD dinner!

Agnes said...

Mais il y a des patates au lard dans cette surprise glacee!