Dinner by Michelin: Gill

07 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, France, Normandy

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I’m delighted to welcome a guest blogger to chaumierelesiris today. You may remember that we have been sampling the Michelin restaurants of Upper Normandy. We recently shared a meal with my parents at Gill in Rouen, and I asked my mother–a veteran of many of France’s top restaurants–to review the evening.

Gill is the flagship restaurant of chef Giles Tournadre, the most famous of Normandy’s many famous chefs. Tournadre has held two Michelin stars here since 1990. In recent years has has added to his empire a less formal annexe and a bistro in Rouen, as well as a restaurant in Japan. Has he over-extended the brand, or is the quality still there two decades on? Let’s find out.

* * * * *

Those who use the Michelin red guide have an expectation that the food, service and environment of the hotel or restaurant will be as determined by its star rating and location. Extremely rarely have my husband and I been disappointed over the forty five years we have used the guides.

Gill, in the lovely city of Rouen, Normandy, is no exception. The food was delicious. My duck was sweet and so fresh, prepared in three ways, and the dessert, Millefeuille a La Minute, was a delicious contrast of textures. Others enjoyed the day’s starter, traditional escargots with garlic sauce, as well as sea bass pan-fried in cider, served with potato and onion marmalade and creamy Calvados foam, and a meringue cake desert filled with red fruit and basil sorbet.

Each course was beautifully presented, with “decoration” that enhanced the flavors of the preparation. Often the delicate placing of a small herb looked as if tweezers had been employed. There is a challenge to a home cook!

Gill has a lovely setting across the street from the Seine. Its building, however, is not particularly attractive. The interior is simply decorated with a monotone scheme, only occasionally interrupted by a small punch of strong color. Floral decoration is limited. The chairs are very comfortable.

The service is excellent. The chef went out of his way to prepare for me a simple seared foie gras rather than insisting that I try the foie gras dish that was on his menu. Whether trying to find a reservation which in our case was under a different name from the one we gave to the hostess, to advising about the menu, to crumbing the table, the staff managed everything perfectly.

There is no valet parking. The Friday night we dined, an opera was in production just down the road, and we struggled to find a spot to park the car in central Rouen (an underground municipal car park was the answer). That aside, Gill is a two starred Michelin restaurant and that says a lot. We look forward to our next meal there.

Former Apple Product Manager’s Record-Breaking Trek Across The English Channel With Sir Richard Branson

06 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France

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sport

We drive past Wimereux on the way to Les Iris from Calais. I’ve always had an idea that I’d like to try kite-surfing. Now I know where to do it.

Tour de France 2012: Abbeville to Rouen

03 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy

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cycling, sport, Tour de France

On 4 July stage 4 of the 2012 Tour de France passes through our favourite parts of Normandy, taking the cyclists 214 km from Abbeville to Rouen. They will go through the charming seaside village of Varengeville-sur-Mer, home to a wonderful English-style house and garden, Les Bois des Moutiers. They will proceed along the Alabaster coast with its quaint villages and pebble beaches, turning inland just before they reach the cliffs made famous by Monet and other artists at Étretat. Then south to the banks of the Seine at Caudebec-en-Caux, and instead of crossing the magnificent Pont de Brotonne, they will head east along the north bank of the Seine through the Boucles de la Seine national park. They will pass the abbey town of St Wandrille and ride towards the famous ruins at Jumièges. They end the day in the medieval city of Rouen.

It’s a route I would love to cycle, but maybe not all in a day.

Here are some pictures of places along or near their route through Upper Normandy, starting with the cliffs at Etretat.

The abbey at Jumieges.

Varengeville-sur-Mer

Vieux-Port, a village along the south bank of the Seine

Norman pony, Boucles de la Seine national park

An English Garden in Normandy

28 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy, Property in France, Things to do

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architecture, France, Gardens, Gertrude Jekyll, Les Bois des Moutiers, Lutyens, Normandy, Varengeville

This is a month for visiting gardens. After showers in April and May, Normandy in June is in greenish bloom. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the most famous garden in Normandy. Shortly after, I visited another, less famous but equally wonderful garden–let’s call it the most famous English garden in Normandy.

The house and garden Les Bois Des Moutiers were created from 1898 onwards by the Mallet family, who hired the then young English Arts & Crafts era architect Edwin Lutyens and the wonderfully named and widely influential garden designer Gertrude Jekyll.

Gertrude Jekyll is famous for creating gardens that feel like series of outside rooms. Each one has its own scheme of colour, scent, and seating.

Look at this amazing wisteria, trained to grow as a tree. The gardens, with their hedges and bushes and secret paths, create a wonderful natural playground for children.

You can hike around the extensive land behind the property, and there are wonderful views. The house can be visited by private appointment only. And should you love it enough, ask about buying it as the family are seeking to sell to the right, suitably considerate, buyer. Price on application only.

The property is situated in the charming Varengeville-sur-Mer, which is south of Dieppe on the Normandy coast and just over an hour, cross-country, from Les Iris. Hike up the road outside the property to the church at the top for a spectacular view of the sea.

Awards Season

18 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France

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blogs, Versatile Blogger Award

Solaner has very kindly nominated chaumierelesiris for the Versatile Blogger Award. This is a kind of chain-letter award, where bloggers nominate other bloggers, following the award rules:

Thank the person who gave you this award.
Include a link to their blog.
Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award
Tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

I’ve been meaning for a while to create a list of some of the France-related blogs I keep an eye on, and this has provided a reason to do just that.

My French Country Home–Exactly what it says on the tin. Life in a French country home, with a focus on interior design and shopping at brocantes. Opportunities to buy from the owner’s shabby chic boutique or even go brocante shopping with her. Warning: jealousy-inducing lifestyle alert.

Paris Déjà Vu–An American writer on parenting and shopping in Paris

The French Market Maven–if you’re not close enough to shop in these markets, second best is to browse through mouth-watering pictures of market offerings around France

French Mamma–All you ever wanted to know about having a baby in French. Except, finding a partner. For which, there’s…

BritChickParis—Blogs at the Huffington Post UK about the highs and lows of Parisian life

My French Heaven–Professional hotelier Stéphane blogs eloquently on the subject of French body & soul food. An inspiration.

Hip Paris–Do not even think about visiting Paris without getting the inside scoop here first. With brilliant illustrations by Baudade.

Living the Sweet Life in Paris–The blog we all want to write and the food we all want to eat, from David Lebovitz. The Paris Pastry app is tempting.

A Woman’s Paris–On French style and taste.

From Koegas to Paris–A South African family relocates to France

Buxton’s Blog–British travel writer and wine critic Nigel Buxton replublishes “work which I think deserves a second lease of life”. He’s right: it does.

The Displaced Nation–Not just about France, but a vibrant collaborative blog written by and for global voyagers.

Free Range Kids–Also not about France, but an attitude I find it easier to adopt when in France.

Chez Loulou–A woman whose goal is to taste every cheese in France. Respect.

Lunch in Paris–The novelist continues life in Provence.

Hidden in France–Lovely French design ideas.

And last rule – here are 7 things about me – on a Norman theme

1. I love that in Normandy the weather never lasts very long. You get a week’s worth of weather in a day so you can never, ever make plans based on the weather.

2. Whatever the weather, the sky is large and the light is beautiful.

3. I would like to read Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past in French (now known in English as In Search Of Lost Time – thanks MomVee!), while sitting on the Deauville beachfront.

4. It’s so hard to get things done in France. Like having wifi installed. Or arranging home improvements. So I hardly do anything when there. It’s so relaxing.

5. Another thing I love: in Normandy, you get places faster than the satnav predicts.

6. Creme d’Isigny. With anything. Or straight out of the pot.

7. Waking to the sound of the village church bells. At 7 am. Even after 7 bottles of wine with friends around the table the night before.

The most famous garden in Normandy

13 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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Art, Flowers, Gardens, Giverny, Monet, Normandy, paintings

Giverny–where Claude Monet lived and painted for 43 years–is certainly the most famous garden in Normandy, perhaps in all of Europe or even the world. It was here that he created the water garden with its iconic Japanese bridge that he painted over and over and which hangs, in reproduction, on a million institutional walls.

A visit to Giverny, however, doesn’t start with the lily pond, but with the rather fabulous–and previously unknown to me–Clos Normand, his magnificent wildflower garden.

The garden, which fronts his house, is laid out in corridors of colour: one purple, one yellow, one pink. Flowers and rose arches rise on either side. Even though it’s crowded – on a midweek afternoon during school season we waited 20 minutes for our tickets – you can lose yourself wandering through the fragrant lanes.

We visited in early June, and the flower garden was bursting with colour, all poppies and peonies and hollyhocks and irises.

All those poppies recall the Monet print that hung in my childhood nursery, the one of a girl and her mother walking through a poppy field, the girl wearing a boater not unlike my school uniform hat, and the mother wearing a scarf and carrying a parasol.

The gardeners were busy at work, tending to all that wildness.

If the flower garden offered more than I expected, then the water garden was slightly underwhelming. The two gardens are intersected by a busy road, and there is noise from the traffic on the road. And to be fair the day was grey, the light flat. The pond is really very small, and not as lovely as it is painted in oil and hanging on the walls of the world’s great museums. It reminded me of visiting the most famous gardens in Japan. Like this one they were perfect on a small scale, and elbow to elbow as crowds of tourists sought just the right picture for their holiday blog.

Monet’s house is worth a look. It has been renovated recently, and rooms on both floors are open for viewing. The bedroom overlooks the gardens. The painter’s bed is curiously small for two people, and the ensuite bathroom is luxurious. What is known as the yellow kitchen is in fact a dining room with a large table, with a smart blue kitchen beyond it. It seems that the Monet family enjoyed their entertaining–and who wouldn’t, in such a spot?

The children brought along The Magical Garden of Claude Monet, which takes a child and a dog on a tour of house and gardens. They enjoyed discovering the places shown in the book – especially Monet’s boat.

There are a number of official and unofficial websites dedicated to Giverny, of which we found the best for visitor information to be the Claude Monet Foundation website.

Le Havre in Rain and Sun

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Food, France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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architecture, Art, Auguste Perret, Easter bells, Eglise Saint-Joseph du Havre, Food, Le Havre, Market, Musée Malraux, Oscar Neimeyer volcano, Renoir, sardines

Le Havre probably isn’t top of your list of things to do in Normandy. It certainly wasn’t top of mine–even though it’s on the Unesco World Heritage list. For me, Le Havre has always been a ferry port on the way to somewhere nicer, famous for having been bombed to bits by both sides during World War II.

But my ever adventurous husband kept encouraging me to go. He wanted to know where all the boats that pass by the end of our garden were coming from; and he was interested in seeing the largest container port, and second busiest overall port, in France. So we left behind the bucolic blossomy Easter week countryside and drove off in search of urban grit.

We arrived in a shower of rain, found parking, and ran into the nearest shelter, a large concrete doorway. I stumbled in, looked up, and then had one of those blinking-into-the-gloom moments that you get in the great medieval cathedrals like Notre Dame, Salisbury or Reims. Except here I was in a dramatic modernist space, the Eglise Saint-Joseph du Havre, made entirely from reinforced concrete. Built in the 1950s, the cathedral was designed by Auguste Perret, the architect who led the reconstruction of Le Havre after the war. It’s quite hard to describe the effect of stepping into this cathedral, and pictures don’t do it justice. The concrete is hard and cold and ugly, and yet the overall effect is uplifting and awe-inspiring. If you do one thing in Le Havre, go there.

The rain stopped, the sun came out (every day in Normandy contains about 7 days of weather in other places) and we headed towards the port, stopping along the way at the covered market for sandwiches and where we admired the traditional Easter bells and other chocolate on display.

Dotted around the port are some interesting sculptures, and this unusual Oscar Neimeyer designed volcano, which houses a cultural centre.

Oscar Niemeyer Volcano in the rain, Le Havre

Then on to the Musée Malraux, known as MuMa, and its excellent collection of impressionist art in another modernist space that’s more attractive inside than out.

Musee des Beaux-Arts Andre Malraux Le Havre

There are works by Boudin, Monet, Dufy, and many of the impressionists; I particularly liked the several portraits by Renoir, as well as the way the museum windows let the changing Normandy light right inside.

Along the seafront from the museum, boats were being taken out of dry dock by men with a small crane. We walked out along the long pier. Retired couples out for a stroll greeted us warmly, and a class of small student sailboats bobbed about at the end of the pier. Looking back was a rather lovely view of the port, smart new apartments, and the Perret cathedral tower.

Le Havre harbour and Auguste Perret tower

Do look out for the seafront shop, La Belle-Iloise, which has walls and walls of these brightly coloured tins of sardines. What wonderful gifts.

Le Havre seems to me something like a beautiful easter egg hidden in an old bag, full of delightful surprises that it’s worth taking the time to savour.

An Abbey in April

29 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy, Things to do

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Abbey, Benedictines, cycling, France, Jumieges, Le Bec-Hellouin, most beautiful villages in France, Norman Conquest, Normandy, Tooting Bec

We are lucky enough to live near three of Normandy’s important abbeys: the great ruins at Jumièges, and the Benedictine abbeys at St-Wandrille and Notre-Dame in Le Bec-Hellouin. This last is famous not only for its abbey and monastic community but for its situation in one of the most beautiful villages of France.

We set out to visit Le Bec-Hellouin on the kind of drizzly grey April day that tries to make everything look depressed but just can’t seem to manage to wipe away the green blossominess of a Normandy April.

As is so often the case in Normandy, the history of Bec starts out in France then gets knotted up with England. The abbey was founded in 1034 by a Norman knight, and quickly became an important intellectual centre for the Catholic church. A number of the monks from Bec went on to become Archbishops of Canterbury.

After the Norman Conquest, the abbey was enriched with properties in England. The then village of Tooting Bec belonged, at one point, to the abbey, and was named after it. If you stand in the global-suburban-London bustle outside the Tooting Bec tube station today it’s hard to imagine any kind of connection to this quiet valley in northern France.

The abbey suffered after the Revolution, and only the medieval belltower remains. After the Revolution the abbey was used as a cavalry barracks, and elegant buildings were added in the eighteenth century. In 1948 the abbey was reinstated, and today it hosts an active Benedictine community.

The monks sing vespers most Sunday evenings in the simple chapel. There is an excellent bookshop with Benedictine products including ceramics manufactured by the monks in residence. It’s peaceful yet quietly active place, busy with visitors taking walks through the parkland, groups on spiritual retreat, and the monks in white-hooded robes going about their daily life.

For the best views of the abbey, it’s worth turning left out of the gates and across a little bridge towards the old railway station. Look back to the abbey accross the fields. At the old railway station there’s a cycle path running along the former railway line towards Evreux which seems a wonderful way to visit this countryside.

From Vieux-Port to Aizier

31 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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Aizier, national park, Normandy, Romanesque, Seine, Travel, Walking

Walking is one of our great joys in Normandy. In London, the city buzzes around us all the time. Cars speed up and down our street of terraced Victorian houses, while overhead planes cruise towards Heathrow from dawn into the night. We walk in the city too, but mainly to get somewhere, and in a hurry. It’s a luxury to set off on foot without any particular agenda.

A national park footpath starts just beyond the end of the garden and runs east for a few kilometers along the Seine to Aizier. It’s a great walk for the children, flat, and lined with blackberry bushes, and with neat stepping stones across a vigorous stream. The path ends at a large picnic ground, from where you can turn right into the attractive village of Aizier.

Aizier’s Romanesque church dates from the 11th century. Even older is a mysterious stone with a large round hole in it. Discovered in the 1870s, it is thought to be 4000 years old, and marked the position of a neolithic burial ground.

Around the church there is a short historical walk with archived photographs of the village.

Look at all those people – the policeman, the deliveryman, the baker, the schoolchildren – squinting smartly into the sun in front of the general store. You’d be hard pressed to round up anyone in sleepy Aizier today.

What was once the petrol station is now smartened up and reborn as the swanky La Bonne Auberge

From here, return to Vieux-Port either back along the river or along the road. Better, extend the walk by taking the small road up the hill towards the recently excavated Chapelle Saint-Thomas.

From Normandy to Isère and Chalet Chic

18 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Les Iris, Property in France

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Chalet, Decoration, France, Home, House in France, Reims, Skiing, thatched cottage, Travel

Over the years we’ve opted for the two-day drive from London to the Alps for our annual ski holiday. It’s probably easier to fly or take the ski train, but with young children and the amount of stuff we like to take, it feels easier and cheaper to drive. Driving necessitates an overnight stay and in the past we stopped in Reims where there’s a surprisingly stylish Best Western with family rooms, excellent champagne to be sampled, and, should you fancy a bit of sightseeing, a magnificent cathedral.

This year we took a new route, staying overnight at Les Iris. This raised a few questions. Driving from Normandy to the Alps was a new route; would it take much longer? And with snow and record-breaking low temperatures in France, would our village, in the Seine Valley, be accessible?

Last year, in the heavy snow around Christmas, the villagers were snowed in for five days. The owner of the one 4×4 that made it up the hill out of the village found himself buying in bulk from the bakery and delivering bread each day to the village’s 60 or so residents. This year, in the event, the local famers had cleared the roads of snow and ice, and the driving was straightforward. Despite -15 degree temperatures outside, the cottage was warm: thatch is a natural insulator, and does a wonderful job of keeping the cottage cosy inside. The drive to the Alps was marginally longer overall, but it was worth the extra miles to avoid staying in a hotel. The drive from Normandy to the Alps took 9 hours, including a long lunch break and several service station stops.

We skied this year in Vaujany, a lovely village with excellent access to the Alpe d’Huez ski area. While there, we had a chance to explore some beautiful French properties. We stayed in Chez Nous, a self-catering mini-chalet, that’s part of Chalet La Maitreya. From our floor to ceiling windows there were fantastic views along the valley.

And we enjoyed many entertaining evenings with friends at their beautiful home in Vaujany, La Boite Qui Brille. I just love how they have decorated this modern chalet, proving that you can use contemporary colours and materials to build a cosy and welcoming space.

chaumierelesiris

~ A fairy-tale cottage by the Seine in Normandy

Category Archives: France

Dinner by Michelin: Gill

Former Apple Product Manager’s Record-Breaking Trek Across The English Channel With Sir Richard Branson

Tour de France 2012: Abbeville to Rouen

An English Garden in Normandy

Awards Season

The most famous garden in Normandy

Le Havre in Rain and Sun

An Abbey in April

From Vieux-Port to Aizier

From Normandy to Isère and Chalet Chic

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