LE TRIANON

Gregoire invited us to have dinner with him at a very special restaurant in Saumur. We were not sure what to expect. We had seen the restaurant from the outside many times as we passed through that part of Saumur. It always looked as if it was closed.
Gregoire lives outside Fontevraud so he came by our house to pick us up. We went in the Visa since Gregoire had taken out the back seats of his Twingo to make it more sporty.
When we got to the restaurant it was pretty deserted. There was a young couple with a small child. The owner, M. Jacques greeted us at the bar. Gregoire had explained to us that the restaurant had been opened by M. Jacques mother in the 30’s and when she died he had taken it over. Very little had changed since the 30’s when it was the hippist place in Saumur.
Gregoire told us that there was no menu – we would eat whatever M. Jacques had cooked for that day. The surly waitress brought a bottle of vin ordinaire and a pichet of tapwater to the table. She followed that with platters of radishes, plates of melon, a bowl of boiled potatoes in a mustard sauce, beet salad, some kind of headcheese, a platter of cold cuts, and lots of crusty bread. She wouldn’t take a plate away until we had finished everything on it.
The second course was a dish of hard boiled eggs in a red sauce. It seemed like a strange offering but it turned out to be delicious. The sauce was a little like enchilada sauce. M. Jacques, who is in his late 80’s came out to tell us that the main course would be steak frites – a slice of fried beef with a platter of homemade fries. We were completely stuffed but we had to finish everything so we got stuck in to the mound of fries. A second bottle of the cheap red wine helped everything go down smoothly.
The cheese course was a single wedge of supermarket brie. We also had some weak (instant) coffee and icecream cones from the freezer.
The bill came to 42 euros and even though it doesn’t sound like it when I list the componants it was one of the best meals we’ve ever had.