Mon Oncle le Vigneron

You know what they say: don't judge a restaurant by its façade. I say that, anyway. And Mon Oncle le Vigneron, where we dined last Friday night, proves the validity of my invented saying.

We first wandered into Mon Oncle le Vigneron (which translates to "My uncle, the vintner") while on a search for quality duck rillettes, which we ended up buying there. They also clearly served food, and we were intrigued by the set-up of the place: You can actually watch the owners/cooks at work in the kitchen, which is cordoned off by a glass partition but otherwise shares the same space as the dining/store area.

Not quite a restaurant, not quite a store, Mon Oncle le Vigneron is what you'd call a cave à vin or a table d'hôte. It only has seating for about 20, and on any given night, it serves the exact same thing to everyone. No choice. So it'd better be good. And it was. Especially since a lot of what they serve is what they sell - artisan-produced "produits de terroir" from the southwest regions of France.

A funny thing about serving the exact same thing to everyone: no matter how good the food is, you also have to like it/want to eat it. When booking our reservation, I made the mistake of saying "no" when Madame asked if there were any dietary restrictions she needed to know about. I didn't really consider the possibility (make that probability, given that we're in France) that two out of the three courses we'd be served would derive from pork. Luckily we stopped in a few hours before dinner to check out what was on the menu, I realized my error, and upset Madame by informing her that at least two out of the four of us couldn't quite stomach pork sausage and pork tenderloin. (She was upset because they had already bought all the ingredients based on the number of reservations they had taken.) Ever the gracious hostess, she suggested they whip together vegetarian alternatives. Crisis averted.

And so it was that our first appetizer came to be goat cheese topped with red pepper, olive oil, and spices. True to the original menu, the second appetizer was a plank topped with Basque charcuterie, with some goose rillettes on the side. Food doesn't get a whole lot simpler than this, and it doesn't get a whole lot better, either.

For the main dish, Maggie and I enjoyed a tasty cochon aux pruneaux (literally pig with prunes, it reminded us of tajine, which would never be made with pork) while Becky and Gladis received a "Basque omelette." We're not exactly sure what made it Basque (maybe the fact that it wasn't cooked to dryness like most omelettes?) but whatever it was, it was delicious.


In this next shot - of the palatte-cleansing, classic simple salad we enjoyed between the main dish and dessert - you can just make out the the shelves full of honeys, rillettes, olive oils, wines, and other products sold at Mon Oncle le Vigneron. We cannot stress enough how excellent it all is. If you can, go buy something off those shelves, now.

Finally, the dessert. There was a plate of brébis (sheep) cheese served without bread, our instructions being to spread out-of-control black cherry jam on each slice; a caramel flan; a chestnut "cream" with a dollop of crême fraîche; and the only bitter taste of the evening, a "no pets allowed" curtain (!) inconveniently placed right next to our table. (This is offered in place of Gladis's un-photographed dessert, which was yoghurt covered with honey that actually tasted like the field of flowers the bees had raided before producing the golden stuff).

All of this almost proved too much to handle, except we couldn't help but finish everything, because how could we waste such delightful food? And that, of course, is a philosophy that gets you in trouble, especially on number four of five consecutive gastronomically-rich evening meals at Parisian restaurants. Oh well, we all have to make sacrifices here and there.