Horsing around in France

Times of TW

Horsing around in France – by Kent Barker

We are sipping wine with an excellent meal in a restaurant in rural France and get to discussing why the English can’t do food this well. After another glass or two, we decide that we could really clean up if we opened a truly excellent French Bistro in, say, Tunbridge Wells.

“Yes”, says my partner, “but there are already restaurants offering French cuisine.  What would make us special?”

“Well,” I reply gesticulating expansively, “we need a USP”.

“A USB?” she queries, “what, to plug into the computer?”

“No, silly, a USP  – a unique selling point.  Something that would make us stand out from the crowd.”

“OK, well let’s restrict ourselves to just one type of meat and do it in lots of different ways, each one bursting with flavour and herbs and garlic.”

Later, wandering through the market, we come across a Boucherie with various joints of succulent red meat lined up.  We choose two thin steaks.

After cooking them rare with new potatoes and French beans we agree that this is the very heaven that we must import to the South of England. After a couple more verres du vin we fall to discussing names for our restaurant. My suggestions are quickly side-stepped.  But I’m finding hers a bit bizarre.  I mean who’s ever heard of a Bistro called Dobbin?  Or Shergar or Seabiscuit come to that?

Then she has a eureka moment and leaps into the air shouting “Je l’ai”, by which I think she means “I’ve got it”.

“Yes?”

“Well it’s obvious, it just has to be GiGi.” 

“Erm, GiGi?   Why?

“Well obviously because of the name itself, but also because the film starred Maurice. Maurice Cheval-ier!”

To be honest, I don’t really get it, but it’s not a bad name so I keep quiet and start considering the staff. After all, the chef must be French.

“We’ll advertise for a Chef de Cheval out here,” she says.

Perhaps I misheard, or perhaps my French isn’t quite up to it … but why, I queried, would we want a cook that specialises in Hare? Aren’t we serving Beef?

“No you fool, cheval, not cheveux.   And anyway cheveux is hair - like on your head. Not a hare as in big bunny. That’s un Lièvre. Cheval is a horse. That’s what you’ve just eaten. That’s why GiGi is so perfect for the name. D'oh”

I decide it’s best to say nothing.  But I have to admit the steaks were delicious – though I’m not sure if Tunbridge Wells is ready for a horsemeat restaurant - yet.

If we can’t import Gallic gastronomy to the UK, then perhaps the only answer is to export ourselves to France.  So we look estate agent’s windows. There are certainly bargains to be had.  House prices have been coming down over the past few years – a concept pretty much unheard of in Britain. But this means that you can’t rely on your holiday home being any type of investment – except perhaps a bad one!

The trouble also is that, while you can buy something habitable in a tiny remote village for fifty or sixty thousand euros, why would you want to be in a remote village?  Anything near the sea or a river tends to be a lot more expensive. 

The house we were renting in Fanjeaux near Carcassonne was on the market for a very reasonable €80,000 – about £56,000. It had two bedrooms and a huge attic with roof lights that could easily be made into further accommodation.  I’m sure the plumbing could have ben sorted so that water in the sink did, eventually, flow away and the bath and WC basin didn’t flow directly onto the floor.  No, the real problem was that there were times when we thought the entire village population (about 600 souls) had been abducted by aliens so quiet was it. The noisiest activity seemed to be compline at the local Dominican lodgings.

Then, on our last night, they were setting up for a pre-Bastille day village meal.  Trestle tables were erected under the trees, vast paella pans were brought out and a small stage set up for the music.  We paid our 14 euros and arrived at the appointed time, 7.30pm, to find the place …. absolutely deserted.  However by around 9.00 people were tricking in.  And then the trickle turned to a flood and by 10.00 its was positively raucous.  The entire village it seemed, along with most the neighbouring ones, were drinking and dancing and singing sentimental French songs in a sort of mass karaoke effort.

The next morning the entire place was again eerily silent.  The aliens had clearly only released the inhabitants for the one evening.  We decided we’d need somewhere just a little livelier – or lively a little more often than once a year.