The restorants in Provins are divided like the city, between the upper and lower. And the first one includes most of the pretty tables. There are of course some exceptions that you will find throughout my blog.
La table Saint-Jean offers a pretty menu of traditional and well-crafted dishes.
Snails, sweetbreads, calf's head follow each other on the menu without any weariness. Here, there is no adaptation to the trend but to the true, the simple, the tasty. And generous.
Honor to the local with the doughnuts of Brie de Meaux. Even if they are not really doughnuts but rather a mix between croquettes and cromesquis. To make a piece of Brie in breadcrumbs and frying pan simple.
The accompanying small white glazed onions should have been warm rather than cold. It's just a detail, but it's a little bit of a waste on a nice plate.
Classic and excellent mix of land and sea with crayfish salad with foie gras well seasoned with balsamic vinegar.
We go up a notch with a puff pastry of sweet bread topped with a morel sauce. The puff pastry consists mainly of a plate of a few centimeters placed on the plate. Why not brush it with egg yolk before cooking to give it a beautiful shine that would only enhance the plate? Mystery. It's easy and it's a base.
The dull square immediately encourages less appetite. The main thing is that sweetbreads are very well prepared and cooked. The sauce is perfect.
The masterpiece is the calf's head. Served generously, you can feel that the cooking broth has received all the attention it deserves with a good bouquet garni. Gribiche sauce has the advantage of being very well made and served in generous quantities. It is not a thimble that accompanies the calf's head but a beautiful and large ramekin.
We are finally exonerated of the guilt of having to ask for more in the middle of a meal, to wait for the goodwill of the service.
The hard-boiled egg brings it back to the plate. Dried tomatoes may seem an incongruity in this ultra-traditional dish but the taste combination is far from negative. So why not?
There is no brain, but the chef is ready to order some if you give him enough notice. Only happiness!
If scallops are very well cooked, they lack a bit of an enticing presentation. And mashed potatoes have never been my favorite accompaniment.
The service is smiling and efficient.
The black spot will remain the bread, calamitous. And this is all the more embarrassing with foie gras. I think I'll go around the bakeries in Provins to find a good one. But it seems to be no easy task. Several restaurants in the city seem to be facing the same problem.
Similarly, the potatoes of the duck confit are far from being browned enough. Pretty soft. It's a shame when you know how much attention the chef puts on other dishes.
To come back to the above-mentioned habits, the eternal salad bed that can handle almost any starter and main course (even under the snail pot!) deserves to be abandoned for a more original training.
These few small shortcomings should not make you forget that this address must be one of your privileged ones if you visit the medieval city one of these days.
Nice wine list with among other things a Burgundy appellation that I did not know, Epineuil, which in addition to being delicious, is offered at a very honest price, less than 30 euros.
We won't miss an Aloxe-Corton 2014 at 63 euros eithe read more