Wined, dined and rested.

During our two weeks of sunshine in Brittany, we explored this place called “De Porc en Port”, a name based on the fact that you pronounce neither of the final letters of Porc or of Port so the two words end up sounding the same. I wonder if this word game occurred to someone first, followed by the idea that “oh yes, then we could produce a menu based entirely around seafood and pork; wow, what an exciting idea!”

Thus, in the pretty little village of Locquénolé – which like much of this part of Brittany must be heaving with tourists in the season and therefore probably not so pretty – was born this restaurant that we visited in early March. All the reviews suggested that it was very hard to get a booking here, but again that must refer to the tourist season and we had no trouble. Fortunately this time we were not the only diners.

Locquénolé is on the western bank of the estuary known as the Bay of Morlaix that has Roscoff at is northern end and Morlaix at its southern end. It has tiny winding streets heading down to the water and pretty cottages that were undoubtedly farmers’ and fishermen’s cottages in an earlier age. This restaurant is down near the estuary in a little square dominated by a huge oak tree with a label claiming it is l’arbre de la liberté, the only remaining tree in France documented as having been planted right after the French Revolution to celebrate “freedom”.

The restaurant is appealing from the outside, with its white walls and blue shutters, and pleasantly clean and bright on the inside. It’s owned by Christophe Guihot, who previously ran a well-known brasserie in Morlaix, and when he was younger worked with the Roux brothers in London, amongst other places. He created this restaurant on the ground floor of his and his wife’s house, and has chosen to make his restaurant as sustainable as possible, getting his restaurant certified by the French organisation “Écotable” which keeps a register of sustainable businesses based on criteria ranging from how local the ingredients are to how ecological the cleaning régime is.

The interior is welcoming and bright, with exposed stone walls and big windows opening on to the ancient tree and an even more ancient church, much of which dates from the 10^th century, and in the distance the sparkling waters of the Bay of Morlaix.

We were cheerfully shown to a table in this pleasant room with a quiet buzz of appreciative conversation from the other diners, and chose from a simple but unusual menu offering delights including oysters, charcuterie, scallops and sausages. I opted for the menu of the day , starting with bacon and lentil salad and then pork “piccata” – in other words, thin slices of meat in a sharp sauce.

One of our starters was the scallops with sesame seeds to start with, with the omnipresent Roscoff onions – what a great combination of flavours. You could almost hear the onions whispering sweet nothings to the scallops, and the scallops blushing prettily and murmuring breathily “too kind, too kind”.

The lentil and bacon salad worked well, and the piccata was very good too – not many sweet nothings going on here, in fact I’m sure I heard the potatoes growling “who put the damn vegetables there?”.

As we left after a really very good meal, the door closing behind us and cutting off the sound of all the chatting food, we decided that (a) this was a lovely, relaxed place to eat in a beautiful setting and we would like to return, and (b) we never, ever wanted to visit in tourist season, which in Brittany is April to September.