Lovin’ the Loire

Avenue de la Tranchee is an unremarkable street. Situated on the right bank of the Loire River, Loire Valley, it houses mostly tawdry sex shops, poorly translated signs for adult novelty paraphernalia and a few business premises.  Had the taxi driver not pointed it out, we might have missed number 101, Charles Barrier, the Michelin Star restaurant where Chef Herve Lussault works small miracles with whatever is in season. The Loire valley is a bit like that. Turn a corner and marvel at chateaux that dominate the landscape, dwarfing the tiny village below. Walk into a room, replete with exquisite tapestries and learn that this is where every morning, the royal doctor inspected the royal waste product and declared to all that the king was well. Stumble through dark and musty caves, dug to escape the Normans, to taste wine and breathe in centuries of viticulture.

Famous for its goat's cheese, wine and more than three hundred chateaux that are dotted across its eight hundred sq. km, the Loire valley is a gourmand's delight. From the Michelin star restaurants to small bistros to the simple baguette with jambon and marinated vegetables, it is difficult to have an eating experience that is not pleasurable. Referred to as the Garden of France, the Loire is home to gardens great and small and if there is one essential to the Loire residents' own patch of terroir, it is the potager or kitchen garden. The world-renowned Villandry gardens have one, the average resident of the Loire has one as well, albeit on a smaller scale and those who dwell in units don't just give in on the premise that there simply isn't room; their window boxes and balcony pots are overflowing, sprouting parsley, rosemary, dill and the king of French herbs, tarragon.

The train trip from Paris to Tours, Loire's biggest town, affords a glimpse into the backyards of the Loire Valley residents and a hint people's lifestyles and attitudes to food. One thing becomes apparent: If you want to eat it, grow it. Noticeably absent are swings, swimming pools, barbeques and ornamental fountains and in their place chickens, ducks, pigeons, rabbit hutches and goats next to cordoned off plots of tomatoes, asparagus, capsicums, aubergines, zucchinis and pumpkins. Lattice trellises groan under the weight of vines and other produce, spilling down in the colours of the season. Terracotta pots are chock full of essential French herbs. Anywhere there's a space, there's a plant. For anything else that can't be sourced from your own backyard, there are local markets, butchers, charcuteries and at various times of the year, food and wine fairs. The people of the Loire Valley understand food. They understand fresh, seasonal and local. Near enough is not good enough. These are people who are passionate about food. No French-style Coles or Woolies either. Nothing from a can, a packet or a bottle (unless of course, it's a bottle of Vouvray wine to share over dinner) and if it is in a can or bottle (think jams and mustards) there's a good chance it will be locally produced, organic and suited to accompany the local fare.

Amboise, twenty-one kilometres from Tours, is a good base from which to explore the Loire Valley. The tiny, picturesque village sits nestled in the shadow of the grand Chateau d'Amboise which perches upon a clifftop like a protective Renaissance hen. Leonardo da Vinci spent his remaining years in Amboise, at Clos-Luce, having been invited there by Francoise 1, and it is not difficult to see why he stayed. His cottage overlooks lush, expansive gardens, the food and wine are par excellence and the climate temperate. (Da Vinci's house is open to the public if you don't mind the school kids on an excursion and the piped Renaissance muzak on loop). The surrealist artist Max Ernst left his mark on Amboise in the form of his turtle sculpture and just near the artwork are the local produce markets. Hunting season, in Autumn, was well underway when we visited the Loire, so travellers at this time of the year are greeted with pheasants, wild boar, goose and all manner of game.

Getting out of one's culinary comfort zone is often hard to do but worth the exercise. Pigeon, chitterling and organs, in general, are not staples back in Sydney but, if you're adventurous, there's no better place to try them. If you're not, there's plenty to choose from and if you're vegetarian, despair thee not, the vegetables are delicious, as is the fruit; something to do with centuries of propagation, trees hundreds of years old and the Kimmeridgian soil in the valley. The idea of old, of taking the time to craft, the whole concept of slow is perhaps why everything in the Loire Valley tastes so good. 

'Take away coffee!' our tour guide, John-Luc said incredulously. The chateaux, as impressive as they are, were beginning to blend into each other and we needed a fix before boarding the minivan to Chambord, the 420-room chateau. 'We don't do take away anything here. If you want coffee, you sit down and be sociable. We are not like Americans. We take our time.'

Chef Herve Lussault at Charles Barrier believes quality, freshness and variety are essential to good French food but also explains that the history and recipes left by their forefathers have engendered a rich source of knowledge about food and how to prepare and cook it. Lussault is not your typical French chef. A Laotian refugee, he arrived in France in 1980, sponsored by an association, first working at Le Château d'Artigny and then in Paris at the famed Lucas Carton restaurant before taking over as head chef at Charles Barrier in 1996. His passion and inspiration come from having worked with top chefs, his own instincts and the patronage of his godfather, Jack Magord, director of the restaurant. Lussault brings to the local cuisine a subtle French-Asian experience, which he says gives real meaning to his work. The restaurant uses local suppliers, has its own herb garden and two sommeliers. Wine is part and parcel of French gastronomy, he tells us.

Time waiting and entrees served cold were two comments that came up on Trip Adviser regarding some of the French restaurants visited. A French friend politely but firmly suggested that travellers do their research before leaping onto Trip Adviser to blog their complaints about the lack of hot entrees and waiting times. In some restaurants in France, she informs me, the entrees are made from ingredients that can be served cold so that more time can be spent on cooking the main meal. And because there is nothing processed, everything is made fresh, so cooking time is sometimes longer. Visions of chefs going out the back to pull radishes and asparagus from the kitchen garden are not that farfetched.

The idea of the kitchen garden came originally from Italy where two criteria for a Renaissance garden had to be met. A garden had to be useful. It also had to be pleasing aesthetically. At Villandry, the cabbages are raised under glass like small, incubated babies and nurtured until they are older before being carefully transplanted into the mother garden at a later stage in their development. We'd never seen cabbages like these before. The three of us stood gazing affectionately at them like the horticultural equivalent of the Adoration of the Magi until John-Luc poured cold water on our wonderment.

'Remember,' he said this is a working garden. 'They will be eaten.' Voila, the useful element. Don't get too attached to that cute cabbage – next week it will be an ingredient in Soupe aux Chou. And where else in the world would mon petit chou or 'my little cabbage' be a term of endearment?

And speaking of endearment, what many tourists come for besides the chateaux, is the cheese. Some French cheeses, like French champagne, come under an appellation system (AOC) which stipulates that a product must be produced within a specified region of France following established methods of production. It's protection, its perfection. It ensures top quality and stops fraudulent claims on inferior products. Six Loire kinds of cheese have made it onto the list, so we made sure to try them all. No disappointment there. When the Saracens plundered the Loire at the beginning of the 8th century, sacking churches, monasteries and public buildings, they left behind not only the goat, but accompanying recipes and so The Dark Ages bequeathed to France one of its most famous products. 70% of all the goats' cheese in France comes from the Loire region, cheeses with unpronounceable names and indescribable tastes. Chevre of every description; hard, soft, runny, tart, smooth, stinky, ash-covered, shot through with herbs and marinated in oil. One of my travelling companions didn't eat goat's cheese. She tried a small piece on our first day in the Loire. She ate goat's cheese every day until we left.

The Loire has something for everyone and let's not forget Charles de Gaulle's famous quip, 'How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?

Below are some photos I took in the Loire Valley.
Third from right and the bottom three are the Villandry Gardens.