Lunch dominated our day today. We went to a little restaurant named Le Bistrot du Paradou on the recommendation of our friend Mary Thomas, who was here last year. Housed in the town of Le Paradou, this little restaurant is a local legend and has been since it opened in 1984. The current chef/owner has been in place for the last couple of years.
The special thing about this restaurant is that it only has a single menu each day, which is what everyone gets with no options or alternatives. There's a single price for the menu and it includes a bottle of wine. There actually is a choice on the menu, and that's dessert, There are about 8 different house-prepared desserts and then a variety of ice creams and sorbets. More on that later.
Today's menu was a first course of sliced and roasted eggplant with a diced prepared tomato, the main course of roasted rabbit with house-made pappardelle and a roasted tomato, a cheese course and dessert. I was concerned when I heard about the rabbit, as it's not Jan's favorite normally but she has had it and enjoyed it in the past.
Every one of the courses was fabulous. Jan really liked the rabbit, as did I. The olive oils on the table were locally made and tremendous. The cheese course was a tray of about 10-12 cheeses that the waiters move from one table to another as you're ready for the course, and you take what you want with the tray staying on your table for 10-15 minutes. You'll never see this in the U.S.
Dessert was a real rock star. Jan had the chocolate tart and was literally speechless with how good it was. I had the rum baba, which was already pretty well soaked with rum until the waiter dropped off a bottle of rum to the table, which allows you to add your own rum.
Oh, Jan wants me to note that she had lunch with her two favorite Johns. You'll know what this means after you check the photos.
After our 2+ hour lunch, we headed to the city of Nimes too view the museum of Beaux-Arts. It's a small museum with some cool stuff. There's a Roman mosaic in the floor that was discovered in the 1800s and dates from approximately 100 AD. There is also a small collection of renaissance-era paintings from Italian, French, and Nordic artists. It was generally a good museum, especially the Italian section.
Nimes has a couple of very cool Roman monuments, a huge arena and a "chateau" that's a monument to a goddess. Try as hard as I could, we couldn't get near either of them because the town is prepping for a wide-ranging carnival that has them closing and rerouting a lot of streets. We finally bailed out and headed home.
Today's photos are located here.
Lunch sounds fabulous! And it was nice to think of you in Nimes at the museum where I had been about 6 weeks ago. Fun that we are overlapping cities; I also liked Aix-en-Provence and recognized some places from John's (excellent) photos.
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