La Fontaine aux Perles
- Restaurants
- / Classic
- Created on Friday, 20 November 2009 23:00
- Published on Friday, 20 November 2009 23:00
- Written by Richard Hesse
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La Fontaine aux Perles near Rennes has a Michelin star and an Olde Worlde atmosphere. |
Like Georgia, beans have, er, been on my mind this last week or so. Beans on toast is a breakfast favorite, and the posher newspapers have run more than a few recipes recently for posh beans on toast, most recently last Saturday’s Financial Times. This prompted me to head off to an Italian cooperative in my neighborhood last week on a quest for canned borlotti and/or cannellini beans. The little store on the Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière is truly Italian, right down to the incompressible minimum 10 minutes’ serving time accorded each customer (I was fourth in line; do the math). That’s why there’s a chair in the shop. Anyway, as this was a jaunt, I cut home along the Rue des Petites Ecuries, where one of the city’s best live music clubs, the New Morning, stands.
It was just 6pm and the streets were singing: kids were letting off steam and moms with shopping bags were gossiping in doorways. Happy hour was in full swing. I felt I had strayed onto the set of a Cartier-Bresson or Doisneau photo from the 1950s, all of which induced a mellow mood that had me staring affectionately at a restaurant with very nice wood paneling inside, looking altogether cozy and friendly. The menu had a lot of chicken and beef and whatnot on it, so I thought I’d give it a try – perhaps it might be one of those lovely neighborhood eating places oozing with human warmth and lots of simple, hearty fare.
Well, I’m sorry to report that, while the oddly named Palais des Mèdes was interesting (the waitress continued a noisy running argument with her father each time she went into the kitchen), the dining experience was underwhelming, to put it mildly. But it wasn’t a problem, because pretention was a million light years away. Not a place to rave about here, though.
So, apart from a return visit to Ratatouille with friends (excellent value for money and a warm welcome for Bertie the gastrohound, who was given a drink before we were), that means that I don’t have a good/new restaurant in Paris to report on this week, so I shall have to fall back on a provincial one.
Brittany has more than its fair share of excellent restaurants and, if you’re willing to hire a taxi, you can find a few of these in Rennes. I recently ate Sunday lunch at the suburban La Fontaine aux Perles and was blown away by the amazing quality and freshness of the food.
Of course, a provincial restaurant with a Michelin star brings out the Parisian snob in me. Here again, it was like being caught in a scene from another era, with an Olde Worlde formality among the staff and a certain stiffness about everything: the starched tablecloths, the demeanor of the Sunday lunchers and the way I was told to eat the two delicious amuses-bouches in a certain order.
Urban creep has surrounded what was once an isolated pottery with what the architects demurely call a zone pavillonaire – a phrase that translates into small-town awfulness. But, hey, the food’s the thing.
A four-decker starter of mercifully reasonable portions of foie gras, veal sweetbreads, abalone with a concentrated reduction of tomato and red pepper, and a white fish with fresh white beans was placed before my companion, and a concoction of the freshest-tasting fresh crab and the thinnest slivers of raw scallops in front of me. The presentation of the dishes was, as befits, faultless, and we definitely felt like better people after downing them.
Next I ordered a galette de blanc de barbue au tartare d’andouille, which was a sort of flan with perfectly cooked brill sitting on a bed of local chitterling sausage, which had been magicked into a creamy, piggy mixture that paired soooo well with the fish and was blissful in texture. The other main dish was fillet of John Dory, with a mango sauce. Cooked to perfection, the fish could probably have done without the chunks of mango in the sauce – a smooth sauce would have been better, but that’s a very minor carp (sorry).
There were cheeses from Bordier, of Saint Malo, whose butter tends to grace the tables of any Paris restaurant that prides itself on its products, but we eschewed them in favor of a rice pudding with a good dollop of salted butter caramel sauce – another specialty of this part of France. Sighs of satisfaction all round.
As we left, we were asked to wait – and wait we obediently did – so that chef Rachel Gesbert (who also took lunchers’ orders, rather too loudly for our comfort) could come out to shake our hands. An odd move to close off a superb meal, but then, there are those who say that Brittany is a world of its own.
La Fontaine aux Perles: Manoir de la Poterie, 96, rue de la Poterie, 35200 Rennes. Tel.: 02 99 53 90 90. Closed Sunday evening and Monday. Fixed-priced menus: €36, €48, €62, and €78 (tasting menu). A la carte: around €70.
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