[This post is dedicated for the restaurant review assignment]
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La Taverne du Château
– The Tavern Castle
2 Rue Cros-Mayrevieille, 11000 Carcassonne, France
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| Main Entrance of La Taverne |
Being located at the heart of the medieval La Cite in Carcassone – right at the corner of the first square – this brasserie is a total hungry tourists captor (having said so, it included me and my friends then)! In another case of mine, I was captured by those beautiful classic design of their entrance! I mean, look at those mini shabby traffic light and the vintage looking vine on the wall which creep across the top of the door, curved at the very right angle, not too up high not too low down, just parfait! Simple yet artistic in a way.. I would obviously stop by and snap a picture, in which I apparently did of course.. Ha'!
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| Menu Placed Outside the Brasserie |
There are 2 types of full menu being displayed at outside of the restaurant for information purposes for their potential customer. Both menu is basically the same, it just the matter of the design.
Entering the brasserie.. our first sight was a full house restaurant, it was lunch hour and the first floor was packed! Soon, after greeted by one of the waiter, we are directed to the second floor through a small wooden staircase at the opposite side of the exit door. Referring to the photo below, there are a small bar area at the corner, and it's hard to not noticing that most of the furniture and decoration display (sculptures, the board and else) in the restaurant are dominantly made of wood. The yellow and warm orange tone on the wall is painted to compliment the wood. But, with the wall almost fully covered by so many decorations here and there together with the full house guests, the first floor was looking kind of messy and too overloaded.
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| A Glimpse of The 1st Floor |
Moving up to the second floor.. we took the corner seating area as there are not much choice left considering the second floor was also quite packed.Surprisingly, the second floor's bright yellow wall was more simple with not too much wall decorations and a good natural lighting coming from the classic window panels. On one side of the wall, there is a huge and gorgeous eye-catching painting that covered almost the entire side of the orange wall. I think, the castle in the painting is the beautiful scenery of Carcassone Château. The clean white ceiling is decorated with a wood panel to bring out the modern medieval brasserie ambiance. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that the medieval ambiance is not really captured well in the photos below, but I promise that in real, it was really felt like I was being in one of the brasserie in the medieval time – or in this case, a modern medieval!
Apparently, the seating is close to each other just like many other brasserie in France. Also, it might be because of the small space of the dining area.
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| Table Setting |
The table setting was very basic, only couples of glasses layed on top of the napkins and bottles of salt and pepper. I was expecting something more like the set of cutleries might be included too, but rethink about it maybe for the hygiene purpose, the cutleries was excluded in the setting – well, fair enough then.
The menu was presented by the server soon after we are comfortable in our seat. Just like at many other busy restaurant, the waitress was not waiting at the side of our table for us to read through the menu but impressively came by to check frequently if we are ready to order in the middle of her busyness.
La Taverne is well-known by its wine and they are serving many choices of foods from light to heavy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or tea time like crepes, dessert, pizza, salad, cheese, meats for main course and so on. They are also having an a la carte menu and set menu, as for the set menu, there are 2 types of set menu offered;
*The 12,90 euro meal, which consist of:
- Appetizer (Onion Soup or Goat Salad or Gizzard Salad)
- Main Course (Cassoulet Languedocien or Grilled Beef or Lasagna)
- Dessert of the day
*The 17,00 euro meal, include:
- Before meal (Biscuit/Cracker or Coffee)
- Appetizer (Smoked Salmon Salad or Gourmet Salad)
- Main Course (Salmon Steak or Cassoulet Languedocien or Duck with Olives)
- Dessert (Dessert of The Day or Cheese)
Unfortunately, the menu was all in French and it did not come with the English translation nor the English version menu like some other restaurants had. So, we have to ask the waitress for some English translation. Having said about translation, the waiters in La Taverne are willing to communicate in English with us even-though they are having a limited English vocabularies and was seems to having a hard time trying to translate the menu into English for us. Furthermore, the waitress have done a good job by providing a quick services even during the busy hour and she did not seems to get annoyed or angry when requested frequently to refill the water even during the busy period. For your information, some of the servers in other restaurants, especially in Paris were easily upset about this kind of things (no offense thought, I still love Paris!).
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| The Waitress |
As for the food.. I was ordering the 12,90 euro set meal
with Gizzard Salad (The waitress did not say that it is a gizzard, she
said it was something to do with chicken. If I knew it was a gizzard, I
might reconsider my option! Well, blame the language barrier!) – Cassoulet Languedocien for the main course and the dessert of the day (Lemon Pie). In addition, like most of the brasserie in France, they always provides botomless or refillable baguette and water for free!
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| The Complimentary Baguette and Water |
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| Salade de Gésiers |
Well, surprisingly the gizzard was beyond my expectation! It was
delicious! Not chewy, in fact it was perfectly tender and smell like
smoked meat and then I was expecting the salad to taste like a whole
bottle of mustard is being poured in to the salad again like my previous
experiences in Paris, but again I was wrong. It does have a taste of
mustard but not too heavy, just enough to add some fragrance along with
the olive oil grease. The portion was big and the plating was neat. Food
rate out of the 3 dish, 7 over 10.
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| Cassoulet Languedocien |
The
Cassoulet (a rich and slow-cooked casserole) in the other hand, comes
with duck confit and Toulouse sausage. The portion is fair but if you
ate appetizer before, it is enough to make you full. As for the taste, I would say, it was too salty for my taste-bud. I was able to endure it for the first couples of spoons but as I continue, I can feel my throat start to reject it, so at the end, I did not finish it. I'm not sure maybe it is originally suppose to taste like that and I'm just not used to it or maybe the Chef was accidentally drop too much salt into it. I think, if it taste lest salty,it will be very nice! Well, food rate among 3 dishes, 5.5 over 10.
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| Dessert (Lemon Pie) |
For the dessert, I ordered a lemon pie from their dessert du jour's options. It served in a plain basic platting, side by side very neatly with vanilla whipped cream. But I think the plating was good, after all simplicity is sometimes the new more. Then, here is the the twist, I remember correctly that I ordered a lemon pie, because I thought I needed a touch of citrus from being nauseated from eating too salty before. But, on my first bites to the pie.. it taste more like almond. Not a baked almond nuts, more like an almond powder or almond essence and I'm not in fancy for that almond! It taste just weird for me, something to do with the medicine-like taste. Ugh! I barely taste the lemon flavor, only a tint of the fragrance. But, since it will be such a waste if it is not eaten, so I was trying to eat it with the whipped cream and to my surprise, the whipped cream was really good! It smell and taste so rich in vanilla! At the end, I finish the whipped cream instead and left the pie half finished. Well.. food rate our of 3 dishes, 5 over 10.
Overall, I would say, it kind of worth the money, though. Because the portion is quite big and maybe for some people the almond pie is delicious and the cassoulet is not too salty, because again, maybe it was just me and my taste preferences, not the foods problem. One of my friend ordered Lasagna said it was good though.. Also, many has reviewed that the wine provided in Taverne is very good and are varies from many regions, so it is a good place for a wine lover to stop by and taste the wine then! Thus, the in-house service was after all very good too, no wrong bill, no cynicism, average amount of smile from the busy waiters and most importantly, no need to wait for long even when in the busy time! So, we can finish quick and continue to explore and snapping pictures of the gorgeous Carcassone Château and of course.. shop around! Furthermore, they also have their own restaurant's special designed website (http://www.blasco.fr/version_flash/taverne.htm) which is very medieval-rustic looking but easy access and in which allows their potential customer to even do a reservation before-hand and completed with a medieval looking map explaining the way to the brasserie and as well photos of the brasserie. Another additional marks for La Taverne du Château then!
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Reviewed without offense to any parties :)
This is not the end of the story. This is
just the end of another pieces of stories. So brew your tea, bake your
cookies, be back later and flip the page--
Enjoy the little treat,
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