Wined, dined and rested.

It was one of those weekends that is known gleefully in France as a “black” weekend – on the last weekend in July it is traditional for everyone to get in to their car, make their way to the nearest motorway and sit in their car in long traffic jams and/or gently drive their cars into other people’s cars so as to create extra jams on France’s otherwise excellent motorway network. This essentially French leisure activity is managed by a special department of the French government called Bison Futé, which exists to let drivers know which are the best days for them to head out to a motorway to have the most intense fun.

At risk of appearing ungrateful for this carefully choreographed entertainment, we often choose precisely those days to travel on roads that are not motorways, and this was one of those days. We bowled along nearly empty main roads travelling from Burgundy to the Cévennes, until our stomachs told us it was time for lunch so we headed into the nearest town, which was Montbrison (to the west of Lyon and a little further south). It’s a pretty town, famous for having been the headquarters of the Counts of Forez, but for us it was important because , well because it was lunchtime…..

We parked near an interesting-looking bistro called Le Café Comptoir so we headed in and were greeted by a smiling lady who took us to a shady table on the terrace and showed us the menu. This all looked promising.

We chose our food and looked around.  I had thought the red awning reminded me of something, and the menu seemed to have a Lyonnais leaning (we all need a bit of Lyonnais leaning in our lives), so I had a quick look to see if Google knew of this place; in its inimitable and hilarious way Google did a quick translation in the background and informed me that this place was like a Lyon cork. It always makes me smile that much of the time you can only understand Google’s translations if you understand the original language anyway, and on this occasion I was able to spot the mis-translation of “bouchon” as cork. It DOES mean cork, but it is also the name for a particular kind of bistro in the city of Lyon. The “bouchon” in this sense traditionally has a red awning, a blackboard instead of menus (implying freshness of ever-changing ingredients) and  features what we might think of as “typically French” dishes. Do you see the dish “tablier de sapeur” on that blackboard? Wonderful name, Google would have translated it as “fireman’s apron”  – it’s actually a slab of tripe.  We didn’t choose that one.

I had a quick look around inside the restaurant, whose décor was as classy and Lyon-cork-ish as its menu. The bar area is dressed up like a boucherie…

… and whose interior dining room just looks like one’s idea of “typical French restaurant”, which interestingly coincides with the décor of a traditional bouchon in Lyon…

One of my travelling companions loves foie gras so the poêlé (sautéed) version of that was a good choice for her; she was worried it wouldn’t be enough so I suggested adding a plate of chips and because it was lunchtime she wanted a glass of beer too so I ended up with this lovely photo of a combination of ingredients that I suspect wouldn’t be possible in most other countries because you’d be run out of town…..

Oddly, perhaps, in France you can combine such things as long as you still respect and enjoy the food.  My friend did both of these things with gusto.

I chose chef’s version of a Caesar salad because I just love bistro salads and didn’t want too much at lunch. Mmmm, that plan went a bit wrong, as I was served the largest platter of salad I’ve ever seen as a dish for one person…..

… but it was truly delicious, albeit a rather loose interpretation of a Ceasar salad. The morsels of chicken seemed to have been breaded, and instead there were no croutons (an improvement, in my opinion) and the umami kick of anchovies was represented by something I couldn’t identify but serving a similar purpose in the amazing, taste-bud-tingling dressing.

The third member of our party chose herb ravioli in a Montbrison cheese sauce, whose photo doesn’t do justice to the delicious tang of that lightly blue cheese which was unknown to us until this moment.

The ravioli was really there, I suspect, as a vehicle for the AOC Fourme de Montbrison cheese, a cow’s milk cheese that is described as “doux”, meaning it is gentle on the palate. Part of its production involves it sitting for a while on spruce shelves (there is a lot of spruce in the forests of this region, Forez) where there is a reaction between the cheese and wood which gives the cheese its orange outside.  Cheesemakers of Somerset, are you out there?  Can you make one like this?  You can’t call it Montbrison but it could be “Breezy Mountain”….  Yum in anticipation.

Having said we were all too full for pudding, we immediately then decided to have crème brûlée to finish…. It did make the walk back to the car a bit of a slow waddle, but it was as perfect as a crème brûlée can be.

What a wonderful place this was – the food was beautifully executed, the welcome was warm and the attention to detail superb (at one point Madame came over and asked if we would like to move because of the sun – given that she was managing a full restaurant with two terraces and two waitresses, that was impressive).

I’m always going on about the advantages of road trips – here is a perfect example of one!