Wined, dined and rested.

Spoiler – vegetarians and vegans, look away now.

We were staying in a beautiful place in Burgundy, in a tiny village just 10 minutes from Charolles, after which Charolais cattle are named. Now I am not the most enthusiastic steak eater, I was scarred by a childhood in which steak, when it was very occasionally eaten in a restaurant, was overcooked and chewy. Yuk, give me a nice ratatouille any day.

So there we were surrounded by future steaks (ahem) grazing happily in their free range, rolling green meadows. And even I thought it would be interesting to have a Charolais steak in the little town of Charolles, even though I normally let the meat-eaters get on with it. Charolles does seem to be a town with a great many restaurants, all presumably selling steak in various forms, but I chose one that looked roughly mid-range, no Michelin stars or TV chefs, and internet reviews seemed OK.

(Yes, I do consult internet reviews but you have to learn to ignore the ranting ones that say things like “what a rubbish fish restaurant, my steak was disgusting, oh and the town it’s in has an open prison round the corner” or “absolutely loved this place, the chips were better than MacDonalds’ and the coca cola was the right temperature”.)

So having opted for “le Charolles”, we got there and admired its pretty location on a bend of the river Arconce.

Perhaps we should have paid more attention to the fact that the willows were weeping, and not just cooed and said “how pretty, reminds me of Cambridge”.

Then as we went round the front of the building the sun was setting on the side of the round tower named after Charles the Reckless (and STILL we didn’t appreciate the signs we were being given), one of the early dukes of Burgundy.

We were hungry and ready for our steak. We sat down and wondered about having a starter, because after all it was really the steak we were after – and in France steak is cooked PROPERLY, gently kissing the hot pan on each side then dancing on to your plate, still deep red in the middle.

However we did decide to have something first, two of us opting for jambon persillé, a kind of parsley-rich terrine of ham (the English description does not do this delicious dish justice), and one of us opting for a gazpacho of garden peas with a scoop of sweet red pepper sorbet.

Golly wow. We were impressed, all thoughts of weeping and being reckless now very far indeed from our minds. The jambon persillé was superb, the dressing splurged alongside it adding a suspicion of curry to the fine and intensely-flavoured ham…..

And the gazpacho of peas with shrimps LOOKED dramatic with its lovely light green set off by the vibrant red of the sorbet….

…. and the flavours and textures were excellent, matching each other and complementing each other perfectly.

This was a good sign, as was the very good Mâcon wine we chose. To be fair, there was little choice of wine in our price bracket; two of the three under-€30 wines had run out, but Mâcon still counts as a Burgundy wine and it was in fact delicious.

We were in a good place, temperamentally speaking, gueule well and truly amused and ready for the Main Event. We had all asked for our entrecôte to be “saignante”, a smidgeon more cooked than “bleu” (that’s when the animal is still mooing as it hits your plate) and what you could call “rare” in the UK, although persuading English cooks to produce a truly “rare” steak is a challenge.

So that is what we were served. There just might be a chance that this steak could have been saignant inside, although given its thin depth we were immediately worried. I deferred to the steak experts, who said that the thicker part did have a mouthful or two of rare meat, but overall this was a disappointing and overcooked steak.

Now were I a braver person I might just have sent it back, but I felt on the back foot being English (would they take any notice of an English person on this matter? Doubtful), rather ignorant on the subject of steak generally, and it also seemed to me that you can send back an undercooked steak to be cooked a little more, but you can’t un-cook something so it would be a terrible waste. I’m just making excuses of course, I wasn’t brave enough to send it back and that’s an end to it. A French person would have demanded a new, properly cooked, steak, would probably have raised their voice if refused it, and would not have rested until it had arrived. Sigh. I’m just an English wimp.

It doesn’t stop me blogging about it though…..

We decided to have a pudding, this was our ‘treat’ meal after all, but I’m afraid that was disappointing too. The crème brûlée had barely any crunch – you know, that delicious moment when you hit the top with the edge of your spoon and it cracks open – and the apricots roasted in thyme were bordering on sour and you couldn’t taste any thyme.

So absolutely the full, 100% thumbs up for the starters, but that wasn’t enough to compensate for the disappointment of the rest of the meal. I don’t often talk about the meals that haven’t been up to scratch, life is too short, but this just left us feeing slightly cheated of what was meant to be our exciting “eating Charolais steak in Charolles” experience!

Me, I’m off for some ratatouille now…..