Seemed like a Hole-in-the Wall but featured Premium Wines and Good Traditional Food…read more
We drove into several villages on the road to Narbonne looking for a café that would serve us a late lunch. My wife saw a non-descript café with a trio of guys smoking outside with an "ouvert" sign. Parking was a challenge but, when we walked a block up to the café,
The proprietor greeted us with a smile and guided us through his bar room, down a step, and into a simple, nicely decorated dinning room with a display of relatively expensive wines and blackboards with wines organized by "color" with their prices per bottle and per glass and per pitcher.
The luncheon patrons had already left; the only others were a Spanish family with children who were obviously observing their late lunch tradition. There was a salad bar of 8 different salads; four were with mayonnaise and the others were with tomato-based dressings. The 6 small portions that I served myself were very good - served slightly chilled.
The proprietor offered us several choices for lunch. We each chose the same dish - sausage stuffed baby squid in tomato sauce.
We knew the dish from other meals including a take-out from our village butcher. It's one of my favorite local dishes. I've never had it outside this region of France. The particular version was better than most that I have had because the sausage was a bit more spicy than the others and I found that very appealing. We drank a small pitcher of rose with sparkly water and declined some very nice-looking desserts. The bill was 36 euros.
[ NOTE: There is no web page for this restaurant and no web-based review of it -- this is the first review and it's on Yelp. There are two other Le Continental entities in this town; one is a business and the other is a hotel.]