Restaurants

La Recreation

 (tel 05.65.22.88.08; March–Sept daily except Wed & Thurs, Oct–Feb open Fri eve to Sun lunch)

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, Michael Sanders).  It’s particularly lovely in summer when you can sit outside in the playground under the wisteria and chestnut trees.  They have a set menu which in 2008 was €32 and particular favourites have been lobster ravioli (their signature dish), foie gras and scallops in bacon.  It’s a nice setting to acquaint yourself with the local drink, Fenelon, which is a combination of Cahors wine, walnut liqueur and crème de cassis.  I was really rather touched when they caught wind of it being my birthday last year and my pudding arrived with a candle embedded in it!  You definitely need to book here well in advance, particularly during the summer months, but, as Noelle speaks English better than several English people we know, giving them a call to reserve a table isn’t a problem.

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.

Le Gindreau

(05.65.36.22.27)

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 France, able to make some excellent recommendations for a variety of tastes and they have a huge and wide ranging list of Cahors wine so if that’s your thing, this is an excellent place to try some of the less rustic Cahors wine.  In fact, this is where we treated ourselves to a bottle of Prince Probus (the wine after which our dog is named!!).  The food was without fault but, if you are a pudding person, this is your place – they are enormous, gooey and fantastical.  While not by any means cheap, nor is it as outrageously expensive as you would necessarily imagine.  We had the three course menu (their lowest level at around €52) and after a tasting soup, amuse bouche, cheese and petit four had been added to our choices, we were grateful that the restaurant is on a hill and we could roll to the car as walking was proving difficult!  We’ve not tried it, but they do a pretty impressive truffle and foie gras menu in season (November through to February as a rough guide).  Thoroughly recommended – haven’t the faintest idea if they speak English although I suspect that their international reputation requires them to.  We pre-book a reasonable time in advance.  It’s in St Medard which is towards Cahors.

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.

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 12ish if you haven’t reserved because, as secrets go, it’s not that well kept and fills up fast.

La Poule au Pot

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 its €11 lunch.  It’s a very local restaurant which and the owners are from Alsace which is reflected in the menu (the soup and starter quite often include sauerkraut).  Basic but very good value and you won’t leave hungry (or sober if you aren’t driving!).  If you desperately want somewhere to have a cigarette after your lunch, this is one of the few places which ignore France’s no smoking laws.  They only speak very basic English but are very friendly so I’m sure they will help you muddle through.

La Medievale      

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.

Brasserie at Le Bellevue

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 Lot.

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.

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

Auberge de Vert

Hostellerie Goujounac

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. 

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!

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!!)

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 Europe so the wine is quite distinctive).  It’s very reasonable priced and again, was recommended in Decanter magazine.

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).

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! 

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.

Prayssac Courtyard

La Truffiere

This is on the main road through Puy L’Eveque and it is where we found ourselves watching England during World Cup 2006.  The French were even cheering England.  This is a nice local bar.