LA CAMBUSE DU SAUNIER ♥

LA CAMBUSE DU SAUNIER – Salin de l’île St-Martin, route de l’Ayrolle, 11430 Gruissan

This is quite a different restaurant – well worth a visit. It is located at the salt production site in Gruissan. The view over the saltines is magnificent, especially in the beautiful weather we had.

They serve mainly fish and sea-food in a very simple setting, which are designed to look even more like sheds, which is quite charming. You sit on simple benches at very rough wooden tables. At every place there are a plate, glasses and cutlery wrapped in a kitchen towel like a bundle. You set your table yourself by using the towel as a small table cloth. You can choose to sit inside a glassed space, outside in shade or at the water on a jetty.

Their specialty is raw sea-food – mussels, clams and oysters but also shrimps and sea-snails. They also have number of warm dishes, mainly from the sea. A few of us had sea-food for starter and I had tiny small clams (tellines) cooked in butter with parsley and garlic, which were fantastic. All sea-food was also of high quality. My salt-baked whole fish was absolutely delicious. The desert of the house was also really good. The only dish that did not lived up to expectation was the salt baked duck breast. The plates were roasting hot, the meat was over-cooked and the vegetable dish was cold. They said they should take it away from the menu and they did not charge for it. This day they only served wine by carafe – no bottles. The wine was from the local wine yard – Cave de Gruissan – which is quite good.

If the food was of top quality the service was almost the opposite. The young waiter was trying to charm the ladies but it would have been better that he had done his job in a professional way. Misunderstanding of orders (majority of us were French) and long waiting. Half the party had finished the starters when the rest got theirs. We had to wait forever for the desert which was strange as the restaurant was more or less empty at that time.

In a building nearby there is a shop with very interesting local products – salt in all forms, marmalade, honey, chocolate, very good wine from the region and much more. This place is well worth a visit in the summer.

Revisited July 2014: First time we were here was on the very first opening day and there were a few flaws. This time everything was perfect. There are few places one can get fish and sea-food like here. Still my favourite is for starters is "cassoulet du telline", which is so tasty. Of course i had to have salt baked fish and our friend Anette had oysters as usual. This day the view was fantastic over "des salines" where the water was absolutely rose, tinted by the salt. This is a very attractive summer restaurant which is open all week in the summer and as long as they have customers in the day.

Revisited May 2015: As always the food was delicious and the environment fabulous, especially in nice weather. Our Swedish guests thought it was the top experience of the week. The combination of the rustic design of the restaurant and the very high quality food with a no-nonsense style is something extra.

Revisted May 2016: It is hard to get a table here nowadays - it has become very popular. I however dropped in on my own and managed to get a table a while ago. The week after i reserved a table for me and my wife. We had their specialty  - salt-baked whole fresh lobster. Do I have to say it was really good?

Webb: http://www.lesalindegruissan.fr/fr/restaurant
Latest visit: May 2017
Number of visits: >10

Reasons for the ♥:
Sea-food of all kinds, natural and cooked. This is the place. Nice busy place and a very special rustic design in the middle of a salt production facility. You will remember this place and its food.

L'AIR MARINE

L'AIR MARINE -  Boulevard de la Méditerranée, 11100 Narbonne Plage

Along the promenade in Narbonne Plage there are a number of summer restaurants that are open all day, which is convenient if you like something to eat while you enjoy the beach. These restaurants are however closed in low season and the food is of more standard quality.

There is only one gourmet restaurant that is open all year around at Narbonne Plage. The name is L’Air Marin and is of top quality. It is a typical fish and seafood restaurant, but they serve meat as well. The restaurant has its own fish and sea-food shop so the quality is super.  It was our first visit and we were very impressed by the job of the chef Armand Blot.

The restaurant has two departments, one inside and one outside covered area and the fish shop is just beside the restaurant so one can see all the delicatessen on display. The restaurant is not in direct connection with the beach, but a little walk away from it in the small and busy main street. People pass through the restaurant area between the outside and the inside area, but that is not disturbing.

As it was a Sunday the lunch menu was not available so we had the least expensive menu for 32 euros, which was a good choice. We both started off with a seafood platter that was delicious. As main dish I got a grilled Durade Languedoc style which I enjoyed enormously. It was a big fish. The waiter asked if he should take the fish off the bone for me, but to do that is a part of the culinary experience as I see it, so I said I’ll manage. It is not the first time, in French restaurants, that they had offered me help or given me instructions how to eat whole fish. When you see people eating fish like it was a steak, cutting it across, you understand the problem. My wife’s Lotte with lemon sauce and vanilla was a dream, she said. I ended my meal with a cafe gourmand and my wife had a chocolate dessert that was very good and not to sweet. They have a good selection of local wines on half liter bottles that are perfect for two. The wine prices are reasonable.

The service was correct, relaxed and very helpful. It was no problem to make small alterations to the menu and to have special demands in some small details. We are looking forward to next visit when we are going to try the normal lunch menu which is very affordable.

The only small complain was the first impression. We had reserved a table on the phone and were given, what I would say, was the least attractive table in the restaurant. It was just inside the entrance, just beside the serving counter and partly in the roasting sun. First we thought it was the last table for two, but when we noticed that couples came after us that had no reservation got much better seating, we were a bit disappointed.

Interesting enough it would be more expensive to eat a three course menu on any of the beach restaurants 100 meters away with a sea view and food that is all right, but not any way near this quality. It is also good to know that it is possible to get a good meal even in the winter when it is so pleasant to take long walks on the almost empty beach.

Revisted July 18 2012: 

Together with friends from Sweden we visited the restaurant to try their set lunch menu. It is starter, main course, cheese, dessert, coffee and a glass of wine for 16 Euros.  The starter was all right. One of us had a sirloin steak for main course which was excellent and the three of us had a gratin on Saint Jaques, which was a disappointment. The number of Saint-Jaques was 3 to 5 in the gratin – the rest was mashed potatoes. The cheese was all right and the cake with figs tasted good, but one of us found, what we thought was, a fish-bone, which put us off a bit. It was actually a straw from the baking brush, but still!

Anyhow, the waiter was very understanding to our complaints and we were offered a glass of champagne (Tattinger) each as compensation.  Even if this visit had a few mishaps we will return to the restaurant, but maybe eat one of the more elaborate menus of maybe just a single course and dessert.

Revisted February 14, 2013 (St Valentin´s day): 
We would have had the St Valentin´s menu, but that was not available at noon so we set tried one of the other menus. For starters I had oysters and my wife had a dish with what they call gravelax. As it is a Swedish dish it is a bit confusing that it is called "gravelax" as the Swedish name is just "gravlax". They also cut it differently - across the fish - not in thin large slices as in Sweden. It was anyhow good as my oysters from Bouzigue were. For main course we both had back of cod with chanterelles. The cod was perfectly cooked, but lacked totally salt, which we use very little of, but still. There was no salt on the table so we had to ask for it. A bigger problem was however that the chantrelles were not properly cleaned. It is very unpleasant to get sand between your teeth every time you take bit of food.
The first time we visited we said the service was correct. The second time we had a very good experience of the younger waiter as we had this time, but the senior waiter have not ever given us a feeling we are appreciated customers. We got the same feeling this time. He is correct but has a very unpleasant and snobbish attitude to his customers. One does not feel welcome. We are getting a bit tired of that attitude.

WEB: http://www.restaurantairmarin.com/
LATEST VISIT: 2013
NUMBER OF VISITS: 3
QUALITY DEVELOPMENT: -

CENTRE DE CONCHYLICULTURE ♥

CENTRE de CONCHYLICULTURE - D627, 11370 Leucate

For lovers of oysters and other seafood this is heaven! There are many places along Golfe de Lyon where you can eat seafood and oysters and many places are both exclusive and expensive, but there is no place like the small sheds along the canal in Port Leucate.  The oysters are not only the most delicious; the setting is also totally fantastic and really no-nonsense. Along the little canal the producers have built very simple sheds were they serve sea-food and nothing but seafood. You can buy wine and bread, but that is all. Some of the small restaurants just have oysters and mussels, but other have, depending on season, all kind of other exclusive sea-food that you have never seen before.
You sit on plastic chairs, you are served on Styrofoam plates and eat on paper plates and everything is just fantastic. We have come to like the restaurant Aquarius that mostly have a good selection, but I am sure that many of the other restaurants in the row are as good. It is fresh, friendly, hectic and not expensive. On sunny week-end the places are packed with people.


WEB: http://www.sudaltim.fr/leucate_aude_centre-ostreicole_panorama-semi-aerien-1.html
LATEST VISIT: October 2014
NUMBER OF VISITS: >10

Reasons for the ♥:
If you like oysters and sea-food - this is the place. Very rustic, very fresh and very busy on sunny days. Not the least posh, but still the place to go.