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La
Recreation |
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(tel 05.65.22.88.08; March–Sept daily except
Wed & Thurs, Oct–Feb open Fri eve to Sun lunch)
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This is probably our
favourite restaurant. It’s in the village
of Les Arques (about 10 minutes drive from Les Pradies) and is famous for
having a book written about it (From here you can’t see Paris, |
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La
Terasse (tel 05.65.36.44.12;
open lunchtimes daily, sometimes shut for the whole of September for family
holidays) This is a locally well
know restaurant where tables for Sunday lunch are booked for weeks in
advance. The menu is fixed price, last
year it was around €22 for 6 courses and a free flowing carafe of wine during
the week and €27 to allow for an additional fish course on Sundays. It is located opposite the gardening
brocante in Grezels which is about 15 minutes drive on the other side of the
river. The restaurant is run by an
older French couple, she is in the kitchen and he is the sole waiter). If you really want to endear yourself to
him and bring a rare smile to a slightly taciturn face, pour some wine into
your soup bowl when you have finished and drink the dregs!! The cheeseboard here is particularly good although
we’ve found it best not to polish off the lot! You definitely need to book well in advance
here and, as far as I am aware, the owners do not speak English. |
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Aux Dodus
D’audhuy |
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This is at Duravel, just
the other side of Puy l’Eveque. Again,
you can eat out in the courtyard of this chambres d’hotes from a limited but
excellent menu. The restaurant was
closed last year due to ill health (we though one of our family was going to
revolt when he couldn’t have his birthday dinner there) but I believe it is
now open again. The wine is excellent
and the vin de table is provided by our estate agent who lives with her
husband next door! We found this place
by accident some years ago and drove in during the middle of the week and
were able to reserve a large table for the same Saturday night. They do have a website but it seems to
crash internet explorer so I haven’t linked it here. |
(05.65.36.44.12)
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(05.65.36.22.27)
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Definitely posh nosh
with it’s Michelin star and famous customers!
We took my mother here for her birthday and it was near perfect (apart
from a slight Basil Fawlty moment when they owner almost slapped the
sommelier around the head for attempting to fill up the wine glass of the
designated driver for a second time!).
We were there in November so sat inside rather than outside on their
terrace. The sommelier was, as is
often the case in |
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Chez Jeanne Another one which has
had a book written about it which accompanies a film of the same name – ‘My
Lunch with Madam Murat’, Mary Moody.
It can be found very close in Pomarede and, for lunch, you need to
book at least the day before. There is
only a fixed price meal (€13 for 5 courses and wine in 2009) and a la carte
in the evening and their speciality is pique et mique. It’s about as rural French as you can get
and has been owned by the same family for five generation since 1904. Madam Murat still works there. |
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Another favourite of
ours which has rather erratic opening hours.
We have found the best thing seems to be to aim to come here and
divert to the Hostellerie Goujounac if “madam” has decided not to open on
that day!! It’s a nice working
restaurant whose lunchtime customers are a mix of workmen and families
generally. Their menu is definitely
biased towards duck. In fact, that’s
all there is really! The standard
lunchtime €20 menu is soup, duck rillettes, mushroom (cep) omelette, a choice
of duck thigh, confit or breast
(magret), cheese and pudding (the icecreams are lovely and diverse in flavour
and the charlotte russe is one of the nicest things I have ever tasted!). The wine is reliable and very free flowing
and even the largest appetites will be hard pushed to eat supper after a
lunch here. We allow a good three
hours to eat when we’re here. No
English spoken and best to turn up at |
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La
Palomberie (05 65 36 20 51) This
is in Anglars Juillac on the other side of the river. We’ve been here quite a few times for it’s €11
lunch. It’s a very local restaurant
which and the owners are from |
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We have a particular attachment
to this restaurant as it’s the one we ate in the night before we completed on
the purchase of Les Pradies and it was the first week they were open. The couple who run it are lovely, the wife
runs the kitchen and the husband waits and rules the open fire upon which the
meat is cooked. We don’t even mind
that when we took our parents back, he almost cried when my mum asked for
sweet wine with her main course! The
food isn’t exceptional but the atmosphere more than makes up for that. Particularly nice though, was the rabbit
and prune dish. |
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We’ve been there a
number of times, each in a large group.
The bistro is part of the hotel.
The staff are friendly and very accommodating to non French speakers and
the food is reliably good (boudin and apples were lovely) but there isn’t a
particularly memorable atmosphere. A
number of times, we have been with a vegetarian and while I can’t remember
what they ate, I’m fairly sure none of the staff either laughed or asked her
to leave and that she ate more than salad (it’s not much fun being a
vegetarian in south west France!).
There is a restaurant here too which we have never tried but which
overlooks puy l’Eveque and the |
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Le
Vidal (05 65 30 66 00) We have slightly mixed
feelings about this restaurant (which takes up on of the squares in Prayssac
and is part of the main hotel). We had
lunch here on a weekday in between wine tastings which left us with only 2 hours
to eat (vive La Vie Francaise!).
Unfortunately, their oven broke just after we had started our meal
which resulted in an array of unexpected dishes not necessarily arriving in
the expected order or at the same time to the other people in our party of
8! To be fair to them, they did cope –
just but our time constraints meant that the latter part of the meal was
spent trying to chivvy them along. We
would go back to give them another chance but without an afternoon
appointment and maybe on market day (Friday) when they serves Moules
Frites. We think the set price meal
was around €20. |
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This was the first
restaurant we went to after we bought Les Pradies and we went for a birthday
meal. The food is of a very good standard
and the vegetables are picked as they are cooked from their large
garden. The dining room is very large
which does make you feel like you are rattling around on your own if it isn’t
busy. They have a balcony overlooking
their garden which, if it’s quiet you can ask to eat on (although you might
need to take the table out there yourself!).
The owner is lovely albeit a little eccentric (she had been keeping a
postcard in German for 3 years and asked me to translate as we left which
would be more understandable if I was German rather than English!). It’s located in Rostassac |
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This is a good back up
for the Poule au Pot. The food is nice
and it has a number of reasonable priced set menus. The outside terrace is pretty but the only
downside is that, although the village is very quaint, the main road from
Bergerac and Cahors go through it so there can be some heavy traffic. |
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The following are
other local eateries but not ones we’ve tried: La Vigne Haute
in Castelfranc.
We’ve heard mixed reviews but it’s on our list of places to try so
nothing too off putting! It now has an
open grill and specialises in grilled meat. Hostellerie
Clau del Loup(Anglars Juillac, 05 65 36 76 20). This is an upper end hotel restaurant with
a nice outside eating area and which does a sensible set price lunch Takeaway
Pizza (can’t remember the name!) in Prayssac – reliable we understand and
frequented by Ken Hom and his boyfriend! |
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Vineyards and wineshops
These are just
our favourites, there are hundreds of others in all price ranges. The chap who wrote “From here you can’t see
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Chateau La Croisille is
our favourite, not least because when we did our tasting there, they had a
litter of spaniel puppies whose kennel were made out of old wine
barrels! They don’t really speak English
here but are very accommodating and the wine is lovely. We buy their boxes and also the cuvee
chateau bottles. The divin wine that
they produce was recommended by Decanter magazine and consequently has all
been sold although they do sell their current year’s vintage en primeur at a
very reasonable price (and with the advantage that you would need to go back
to collect it the next year!!) |
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La Pineraie is most definitely
family run and the wine is of a more rustic style than the others. We bought some of the 2003 (this was the
year of the heatwave in |
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Chateau Chambert is
the most international of the vineyards we have visited and their tour is the
most comprehensive. The wine is of an
excellent quality but the price reflects that. They do sell a really nice sweet red wine
called Rogomme which is fab with puddings (I’ve also seen these for sale in
the indoor section of Cahors market). |
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Clos de Chene (05 65 36 50 09) We have tried several times over
5 years to visit this vineyard in Duravel but it has always been shut. However, when our French neighbours came
for “un apero”, they brought a bottle of this with them and it was
exceptional. It think it was a 2003 so
you might want to persevere where we have failed! |
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Atrium. This is a large, plush wine merchant on the
N20 in Cahors. It is owned by Georges
Vigouroux who is one of the primary producers in the area but they sell a large
range of Cahors and other wine at a reasonable price. They do a huge amount en vrac starting at
about €1.20 a litre. We have bought their boxes which are
reliable and buy our failsafe wine here when we are in a rush (Pigmentum for
red/rose and Tariquet for white). I
think everyone there speaks English too. |
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Bars
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Prayssac
Courtyard |
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La
Truffiere This
is on the main road through Puy L’Eveque and it is where we found ourselves
watching |
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Rather than reinvent
the wheel, we though it would be better to search out some websites done by
people who are far better at this lark than us:
Below is just some of the markets in the area**.
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Useful Shops
Bakeries can be found in Castelfranc
(travel along the road from Les Junies to Castelfrance and when you reach the
main road, turn right and it’s 50m distant on the right hand side), on the
market square in Prayssac and a further one the behind the Vidal Hotel. There is an exceptional bakery in La Bastide
de Vert which is open 7 days a week.
People travel quite a distance for their Pain Levain.
Prayssac is
closest for a choice of food shops – it has a fishmonger and butcher. It also has a small general store on the
market square and a large, Carrefour supermarket on the outskirts towards Puy
L’Eveque and a decent sized Intermarche on the road opposite the church which
runs past the car park where the post office
is situated. Both supermarkets have
reasonably priced petrol stations. There is also a couple of pharmacies,
one on the market square and the other on the main road near the supermarket. There is a tabac opposite the market square
too.
There are two doctors’
surgeries in prayssac, neither of which we can comment on as we have had no
need to use them. In contrast, there is
a vet’s practice on the corner of a turning
off the main road out of Prayssac towards Castelfranc which we have used and
can recommend (we normally book an appointment when we arrive just to be sure
but you could leave it until closer your departure if you feel brave!).