There's no way to delicately put this: I wish I could make sweet, passionate, tender love to this…read morewhole restaurant, its food, its chef, its wait staff, even its unpretentious and perfect decor. It was that good of a dining experience.
I went with my family (there are six of us) and my father had reserved the private dining room, which has its own private sitting room where we ate hors d'oeuvres and sipped on champagne before our meal (all the while thinking "I could get used to this way too easily"). The decor of both rooms is French Country chic (not even sure if that's a real decor type, but think wood, leather, soft lights, pale flowers, lots of whites/creams) and radiated warmth and under-stated luxury. Our sommelier was fabulous and joked around with us a bit. He brought us menus with our champagne and hors d'oeuvres (which were mussels in a light broth, samosas, and a delicious seafood mixture with a roasted red pepper coulis). Our menus were simple and contained a list of proteins that we could order for different courses. The men's menus had prices, the women's did not. My feminist side initially fumed a bit ("that is quite a chauvinistic, sexist move Le Beaulieu!") but part of me could appreciate the extremely classy move. The chef then came to chat with us and helped us basically create our meals from the proteins on the menus. We told him what we were in the mood for, he suggested ways he could cook it, we went back and forth for a while, then he created an individual menu for each one of us. He did not take notes. That man is a god.
Up until this point I felt like I was in one of those movies where a normal girl discovers that she's actually queen of a country and she must adapt to a fabulous life of luxury and being waited on 24/7. Again, one gets used to this very easily. And then the food. Oh my god the food. The protein choices change regularly so I won't get your hopes up by describing every detail of my delicious food and then getting you excited about ordering it, because it will probably be different by the time you get there. My different dishes contained some of the following: fois gras, prawns, lobster, more lobster, truffle risotto, I think more lobster, and butter. Every bite was delicious- textures, flavors, temperatures.. everything was spot on. For dessert we each had nine bite-size cakes, cookies, fruits, tarts... that were good but unfortunately not up to the amazingness of the rest of the meal. Even though I'm a dessert gal, I didn't even care. That's how good my lobster and risotto had been. The chef came to our table a few times to ask about the food and we had two servers in addition to the sommelier waiting on us. We did not have to wait long between each course and felt very satisfied with the amount of food.
Although I did not dine in the main dining room with the commonfolk (ha, I kid), I know that the chef goes to every single table and takes everyone's orders there as well. I should also add that we all speak fluent French, as it is our first language. I definitely recommend it for a special night out if you're ever in Le Mans.
