Le Chai
We are going to eat out tonight at one of our favourite little restaurants. My daughters and their partners are here for a few days, and as a treat I thought a visit to a particularly French restaurant might be in order. We don't go out to eat very often, because I like cooking, and I sometimes think that unless the food is very good, I could have produced the same thing for less than half the price at home.
This little restaurant called "Le Chai"is just that, little!, it's probably not much bigger than our front room and very intimate, we know the husband and wife that run it and cook the food, not the 2 star Michelin prices as the restaurant in Tremolat, but the ambiance is homely. The word Chai is French for a kind of old wine cellar, which is what the building used to be, the barrels were stored in this cellar, before being transported down river by "gabare" , a big wooden sailboat, to Bordeaux for transportation onward to foreign climes. That was obviously before they built the dams across the river to control the flow to prevent flooding.
Last time we visited was about a month ago when our niece and future husband were staying with us. The restaurant is situated in a small village alongside the confluence of the two rivers La Dordogne and La Vezere, it's designated as one of the beautiful villages in France and is built typically on the side of a vertical hillside.
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| Le Chai, Limeuil in the Dordogne |
That's the Chai restaurant, pretty don't you think ? The sit down and eat bit is the small part on the downstairs right side, the left side is the kitchen, as you sit waiting you can see the guy preparing your meal.
Mc. dogburger and co. ( let's go out there people and supersize as many people as we can!) haven't arrived here YET !
Whilst I was down in the village, I took the opportunity to take a few more photos of the place, hope you like them, but first things first, to carry on with the story.
About a month ago,we had booked a table inside for five people at 8 o'clock, the weather people, although it had been a warm gorgeous day had forecast extreme winds and thunder and lightning and rain at about that time. Everyone (about 8 people) were sitting outside when we arrived and as it was too warm inside we did the same, well, for about ten minutes until, IT arrived, at which point chaos reigned as everything had to be brought in, but not before all the table cloths took off with everything on them. Organised chaos ensued !
Once inside, power cut, couldn't see a single thing, but luckily the chef had fired up the generator and in five minutes after having lit all the candles the lights came on, and when they did, the room began to fill with Mayfly (like little moths that come out of the water once a year for a quick bonk). You could not see from one end of the room to the other. We obviously had the only light in the village and that's what attracted them, soooooooooooo off with the lights, open the main door and on with the exterior light at which point they all disappeared outside, it looked like a snowstorm, after which all calmed down, but I'm sure that the Dutch people who were there were extremely perplexed by the whole procedure.
The power, by the way, came back on at our house about midday the following day. We will have to see what our visit tonight brings.
Here's some photos of Limeuil. There is an American (I think) company called "Backroads" who organise bike tours around our area and I often see groups of the older generation on their bikes, stopped here for a bit of a rest and refreshment before tackling the two huge hills before their overnight stop at the "Vieux Logis", a Michelin starred hotel in Tremolat !!
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| Vezere bridge on left, Dordogne bridge on right. |
