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.

CHÂTEAU L'HOSPITALET

CHÂTEAU L'HOSPITALET - Route de Narbonne Plage, 11100 Narbonne

Château L’Hospitalet is a very good restaurant with a nice environment but it is also something much more than that. Starting with the restaurant; it is a very popular lunch for business people in the area but also somewhere to go when you are on a vacation trip. The food is quite good at a fairly good prize. The wine you get is of their own production, which means that it is among the best you can get. The owner Gérard Bertrand has been elected the European Wine Producer of the year by The Wine Enthusiast.

At least before, you were offered free tasting of wine with your meal, but I think they had to stop that as it was abused, mostly by foreign tourists, that caused a number of accidents on the winding roads in the La Clape mountains.

This place is a very good place to go for a half days trip or maybe if you are not from the neighborhood, for a week-end. They have a splendid hotel, several gift shops an enormous wine shop, often high quality art exhibitions and music evenings with jazz in the summer.

This place is however, above all, a place to go for wine lovers. The selection of wine is enormous and represents a large number of appellations of Languedoc. The price range is from a few euros per bottle up to prestigious wines for 40 euros and up per bottle. If you eat in the restaurant you get a small discount in the wine shop.

Revisited May 2015: We have not been here for some time for other than buying wine. The food has changes from very traditional French food in a gourmet version into something much more posh. It looks very much like the food in top gourmet-restaurants – small portions, a lot of purées and fancy names, but it lacks the intense tastes that make up for quantity in the modern French gourmet kitchen. Even for me who is a very small eater, it was a little too little. I had one of my favorites – wing of ray – which was good but a third of what you mostly get in other restaurants. The price 29 euros for a three course lunch would have been OK if the food have had a taste that lived up to the looks of it and maybe a little more generous portions.

WEB: http://www.chateau-lhospitalet.com/restaurant-bar-lounge.html

LATEST VISIT: May 2015

NUMBER OF VISITS: >10

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: -

LA TABLE DE FONTFROIDE ♥

LA TABLE DE FONTFROIDE - Abbaye de Fontfroide, 11100 Narbonne

La Table de Fontfroide is located in the ancient Abbaye de Fonfroide. They say the have served food to travelers since the end of the 11th century. It might  be a surprise to get inside the restaurant as the entrance looks quite anonymous and the sign Restaurant -Snack, does not promise any culinary experiences.

Well inside however an absolutely fabulous room opens up - high ceilings and beautifully renovated. The excellent food is prepared by the young chef Yohan Renard. The service is absolutely perfect, professional and very friendly. They serve both set menus and a la carte. The food is traditional southern French cuisine of highest quality. We have never been disappointed in all the visits we have made to this restaurant. When we at one occasions had some comments on the food we were well compensated and the chef took great interest in our opinions.

The restaurant serve only wine of the Abbey´s own production and it is excellent. A choice you have is to include wines on the menus. In those cases you get wines that match every dish in generous glasses. After your meal you can take a lovely walk in the fantastic nature, have a guided tour of the abbey, visit the shop or buy some bottles of wine in the wine shop.

Revisited regularly at least once a month on our own or with friends: This is the place we go to most often and we love it. The staff and the chef know us by now and Johan always comes out and chat with us if he has the time. When it comes to time it is quite impressing that one chef, one sous-chef and two young people with no experience in the kitchen can cook for a packed restaurant. When we were there last week it was two coach-loads of people plus a lot of ordinary lunch eaters and despite of the stress, the food and service was absolutely perfect in every detail. On our visit today it was packed as usual. We got a new favorite – it was pigeon baked into a “mille-feuille” with a fantastic sauce on wine. The week before I had their set lunch-menu fish dish as my favorite. It is a cod prepared as “morue”. It reminds of the Portugese bacalao, but I loved this as much as I hate the Portugese dish. It is served with a very fluffy sabayon flavored with horse-radish, which suits my Swedish task perfectly.

Revisited October 2013: They have changed their menu, which always is nice. As always the food was excellent and the service very nice. I always try the odd things so I had duck hart for starter, which was delicious, very tender and tasty. My main was cheek of pork made a la boeuf bourguignon with mushrooms. The others had fish which they were very happy with.

Revisited March 2014: As always very good. Some dishes are changed since last year.

Revisited April 2014: An unforgettable birthday - the chef designed a special birthday-menu for me. Even our French friends who are very picky and are old restaurateurs were absolutely astonished by the quality of the meal.

Revisited June 2014: This time we celebrated an 80th birthday. The new menu was very good and it was a very nice experience as usual. One of us had the "baron d'agneu" and was not as happy as the rest of us who had the fish-dish. The new "d'amuse-bouches" on octopus was really good.

Revisited August 2014: For the first time we were sitting outside, which was lovely. The restaurant was as always packed. We had a la carte this time to get the fantastic dish with tagliatelle and scallops in a fantastic sauce. It costs a little more but when the weather is nice and in good company...

Revisited March 2015: My birthday and fantastic reception as always. They have new menus and everything we tried were delicious.

Revisted March 2015: Another birthday and a specially made lunch of four+ dishes. If you have not had their ravioli with scallops and morels, you have to go back and try it. 

Revisited May 2015: The verdict from our Swedish friend was - "One of the best meals they ever have had".

Revisited July 2015: It was the first day with the new lunch menu, which always is a little special. We tried most of it between the four of us, but not the fish-dish - we'll have that next time. It was delicious - we could not really agree who made the best choices, but we were all happy.

Revisited though 2016: It is getting even better. Now they change menu every week.

Revisited several times 2017: Splendid.

Revisited 2018: It pays to be a regular customer. When we visited the restaurant in the summer for a birthday with Norwegian friends they told us that we should not order from the menu as the chef had composed a special meal for us. Do I have to say it was fantastic.
When we just dropped in on a chance the other day we got the last table and ordered the lunch of the day. To our surprise the waiter came with an extra dish that is our favorite with the compliments from the chef. 

Revisited January-March 2019: We have now had two birthday lunches this year at the restaurant and the chef has composed a special menu for us. It has been absolutely fabulous.

WEB: http://www.fontfroide.com/abbaye_de_fontfroide_-_restaurant_la_table_de_fontfroide.htm
LATEST VISIT: March 2019
NUMBER OF VISITS: >40

Reasons for the ♥:
What can I say? Affordable gourmet food with the same quality every time. How it is possible to do that with hundreds of eating guests at the same time I can not understand. A real favorite near us there we feel like honored guests every time.