Your diarist and Madame are embarking on a grande extravaganza of reminiscence, a veritable smorgasbord of food and friends, a truly memorable experience of fellowship and food. So, Dear Reader, forget such bourgeois concepts like "diet" or "sobriety". Sit back and Enjoy, ENJOY.
Having left Paris gare Montparnesse for Angouleme at the civilised hour of 10:07am we arrive on time at 12:29pm having travelled at up to 320kmh on the very fast train network, known simply as the TGV, a shortening of "Train a Grande Vitesse". For your edification you may be surprised to learn that this translates literally as "Train, Very Fast". So much for French grand imagination in naming this superb train system.
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| Angouleme viewed from the River Charente |
Angouleme, built on a rock plateau partially surrounded by and overlooking a loop of the Charente river, is famous for its International Comic Book Festival and a classic car race, Le Circuit des Ramparts. Here's a thrilling video of practice laps around the city ramparts. For you true petrol heads, you seekers for the true feel for Angouleme, for the smell of adrenaline and the heady aroma of exhaust gases SNIFF here.
Before picking up our hire car Val and I repair to our favourite Angouleme cafe, Le Chat Noir, for a glass of vin blanc followed by a cafe creme. This happy Chat sits on a plaza adjacent to the city's fabulous covered market. A rainy day view from the happy Chat across to the market is shown below.
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| Flowers outside the market on a better day! |
Time is flying, so lets hit the road again. We depart Angouleme and head South on the D674 to Montmoreau, our old "home town" back when we lived for a year in the Charente. Its a lovely drive and although its raining today we will just pretend that it really is une belle journee, a beautiful day. (Humour your diarist please, dear reader, and just accept my occasional pretentious drop into French....I just can't help myself.)
On the way South we keep our eye open for a small sign on the right pointing down a country lane that says simply "FRITERIE". Ahh, here's the sign so we pull a right and proceed for a few kilometres. In a lush field in the middle of nowhere sits an old blue truck, fitted out as a diner, tyres dead flat and long since settled into the grass. When we first saw it several years ago, the scene was just too cute to pass by.
True to our gastronomic extravaganza theme for this simple tale of roads well traveled, we call in at Francois' Friterie for refreshments. Well, it may be Guillaume's or even Pierre's friterie or George's but definitely not Bridget's or Eloise's. Monsieur, the owner, a very cheerful old friterian and barista, is artfully turned out in a crumpled white(?) singlet, old blue pants, designer stubble and sporting an unlit gitane carefully poised on the lower lip.
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| La Friterie on the earlier occasion we visited with good friends Noel and Kaye. Noel can't help but feed frites to the chooks |
The very clean counter is adorned end to end with hand written posters offering all manner of refreshment. I chose frites, Val, crepes with sugar and lemon sauce and two espressos. The chips are fresh fried, crisp on the outside, firmly soft inside and hot; delicious. The crepes are perfect and the short blacks equally good. A la perfection dans un paddock!
Press on to Passirac, a typical small Charente commune, 257 souls, with it's own mayor and home to our delightful British friends, Barbara and Peter with whom we will spend the next week or so. Barbara, a fine cook, has prepared a traditional Charentaise cassoulet for dinner, invited other good friends, Pam and Ian (who we will meet again in this tale). We settle down to a delicious meal, lively conversation and, naturellement, copious wine with everyone getting nicely nicely.
Lesson Time or "Would You believe": In 2015 there were 36,681 communes in France. A commune is the lowest administrative division in France. The average area is just 14.88 sqkm with an average population of 380 souls. Each one has/had a church. Each has a council chamber (le marie), an elected council and a mayor. Passirac is thus a smaller commune than most. Getting married? To be legal, a secular marriage ceremony MUST first take place in the marie, in a room open to the public. This may be followed by a traditional religious service.
Video Time: Hit Passirac to view a rather wobbly drone's eye view of the village. Barb and Pete's home is on the top
left outskirts to the left of the church.
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| Barb and Peter's garden |
On the cassoulet, let me quote Barbara: "The cassoulet ia a very versatile dish. The one I did had chicken pieces, smoked sausage, haricots blanc, onions and garlic with stock to bind it all together. Brown the chook and the sausage with onions and garlic, add the beans and stock and simmer until everything is tender. You can add a bit of white wine if you feel like it (but only if the cook has left any in the bottle....editors addition).
And now for something truly French. Le Poirier Restaurant, Bardenac. Back in that wonderful day when living at Le Petit Maine, in Le Department de la Charente so many, nay, ALL, acquaintances and friends said: "You must, simply must experience Le Poirier." We did: c'est magnifique 😋😍
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| Le Poirier....a simple restaurant in a simple village!! |
This time around we are about to experience a veritable virtual feast in the pleasant company of good local friends Jenny and Mick. Le Poirier has been run by the same family for several generations, serving traditional rural French food over many courses and with bottomless red wine.
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| Le Poirier's charcuterie board |
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| Happy company inside Le Poirier. Val, in red, is at the back, the birthday party table on the left. Three other rooms are also happily packed. |
The restaurant is packed. The atmosphere is perfect, packed rooms, French families, a continuous babble of French with laughter and fun. There is no menu, no choice, we just accept the succession of dishes that comes out of the kitchen (no tripe, I fervently pray). True to reputation, vin rouge is indeed bottomless. No stress, we simply go with the slow pleasant afternoon, singing along when "happy birthday" en francais breaks out from the table on the left.
Le menu: Aperitif + potage + charcuterie + poisson + tournedos + salade + fromage + dessert + cafe + vin
for E22.50 per personne
And now for something truly different: Lunch with friends....again.
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| Ian and your Diarist in typical pose. The beer is actually Ian's, not mine. |
Pam and Ian live in the tiny village (well aren't they all tiny???) of Brossac not too far from Passirac (Barb and Peter), Bardenac (the restaurant), Chatignac (Mick and Jenny), and Juignac (our former village).
The astute reader may sense a certain pattern in these village names. Let me explain. The suffix "-ac" comes from "-acum" which was part of the Gaulish language, a Celtic language spoken in much of what is now France before Big Julie and his Roman legions happened along. Well, "-acum" has the meaning of "place associated with". In about the 3rd century AD it was commonly added to the name of the local rural landlord. Now, isn't that just fascinating. When next of an evening in front of the fire when you imbibe a fine cognac perhaps you should raise a glass to old Cog, with thanks.
Back to Ian and Pam and his absolutely fabulous man-cave, his cellar abounding in all manner of liquid delights deriving from le raisin et le houblon, commonly known to us as the grape and the hop.
We are invited to a late afternoon dinner with six other friends including our mates Pete and Barb. The feast begins with drinks on the deck beside the pool. That astute reader will have noted the plural usage. Let your diarist assure you that this is not used inappropriately. After a suitable time networking on the deck we adjourn to the Cellar where the table is set.
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| Pam, our hostess is top of table, Pete is beside Val and Barb is on right, second person |
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| Life of the party. Can't remember his name, but obviously enjoying himself |
The plat de jour is gammon, egg and pineapple slice, served with a basket of chips. You may think
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| Gammon, egg, pineapple, frites and a glass of red |
During our time living in La Charente we had a whirlwind of perfectly wonderful experiences. These included meeting many friends and enjoying many culinary delights.
One of the most memorable was being invited by Pete and Barb to the "Banquet des Chasseurs" presented by the Passirac Societe de Chasse. the Hunters Club. Its a super long lunch feast starting at 12:00 noon and finally complete by 7:00 pm. Yes, seven hours, not kidding! One menu highlight of many: slabs of roasted sanglier served with cognac. That's wild boar, shoot by Passirac chasseurs.
In contrast, another memorable meal was a simple plate of a dozen oysters, a bun, butter, lemon and a good size plastic glass of vin ordinaire served on the concrete apron of an oysterman's bay-side operation. Packed out it was. Eight euros for a dozen huge oysters etc...refill of the vin ordinaire just 50 cents. Our lodging for the night was quite close.
Dear Reader...you can explore all these and many more adventures that Val and I experienced in my book "Postcards from The Charente" available from Amazon at:
Kindle just $4.05 and paperback at $20.20, I suppose add postage
Our Farewell
Val and I have loved the make believe and the reminiscence of a trip that never was, and have loved to take you along with us on the journey.💗😉😉
Au Revoir
We leave you with a marvelously heroic rendition of La Marsellaise by Mireille Mathieu. Take it to the end (4 minutes) its well worth the time. Bugger the neighbours: Volume on high
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