Sorry, no photos of this one; you’ll just have to imagine it
I do wonder about dining alone in France. You just feel that somehow you’re not fully engaged in the deep solemnity, of the institution, of the meal; that all good, right-thinking diners would bother to find someone with whom to share their meal. Basically you’re just letting the side down, as though you’ve turned up to play in a hockey match with your football gear or you’re standing in a queue for a train ticket with no trousers on. Or perhaps not fully appreciating cat videos.
It was my first meal out, after a long-ish day’s riding from Le Havre to Lyons la Forêt. Restaurant de la Halle sits right in the centre of the town (well, village, more like), overlooking the halle or covered market from which it takes its name. The market building looks similar to the ones you see in Cotswold market towns, with a roof set on columns (of wood in this case) and visible space for stalls selling produce and now local craft. See more about Lyons la Forêt.
I could have sat outside among the café tables, but with the last of the sun gone and having exercised all day, I knew I would be cold even in June, so I headed indoors. And I decided on the Menu la Halle – a terrine de gibier (game hunted in the forests of the town’s name, no doubt), followed by cod in a sauce of mussels, ‘et ses légumes’, and last a tarte aux pommes.
The terrine came quickly, set in a scattering of lettuce which glistened with a clear liquid… Was it just ostentatiously washed, I wondered? Or was that clear vinaigrette...? Phew, it was, a little fête of tang to work on the meat and pastry of the terrine. Among the leaves sat cherry tomatoes as tasty as miniature grenades of Italian summer and an array of mini-gherkins like miniature nobbled mortars.
Obviously as the single diner I expect to be put in the worst seat in the house and I don’t mind that, but it can have some unexpected, not to say comic, consequences. At La Halle I was placed between the two swing doors into the kitchen, In and Out, the one with a huge spoon above my left shoulder, the other shouting Entrée Interdite over my right. The instruction was ignored and they were used indiscriminately, thunking satisfyingly as they worked on their two-way hinges. And boy, could they swing. At moments, with a door enclosing me and my dining table from either side, I found myself looking out of an airy, three-sided box. A dining cubicle. I could have been in a Jacques Tati film.
The cod was good and firm, bright white, and it sloughed off in substantial, serious flakes, glistening and not glutenous, which I then slid around my plate, luxuriating them in the sauce moules. Deeply, definitely, satisfying. Ses légumes – courgette, leek and some boiled young potatoes - did their dance of accompaniment as I divided them and loaded them into mouthfuls.
Meandering through my meal – I was enjoying this and happy to mull on the day’s confusions of irritation, satisfaction at the idea of adventure and then post-exercise physical glow (read more about my Arrival in France) - I noticed that the swing doors were also emitting waves of hysterics from the kitchen. It was rumbustious, competitive no question, but generous, and accompanied by laughter, as though the chefs were football supporters and yet all their different teams had just won… Once, in the Caribbean, I witnessed a major row in a kitchen, with flying words and then flying potatoes, and an opened swing door, and – hard to believe the accuracy – a ‘bonk’ as a diner was hit on the head …at least here, defended by the swing doors, I wouldn’t be in the line of fire if it all kicked off…
Tarte fine aux pommes has to be a winner wherever you are. At this point, you might wonder what sort of glutton I am, stolidly opting for a pudding. Worse, if you read more of these reviews you will find I have a pudding with just about every meal I have in France. This is partly because I opt for the menu du jour, but hey, and I should force this point, I am cycling scores of kilometres each day and the natural fatty in me knows that it can eat pretty much anything it likes as I will just expend it as energy the next day. You’ll be delighted to know that the tarte came with lovely springy pastry which melded into the sliced of apple and the sugary juice. It was guarded by a sentinel blob of excellent home-made vanilla ice cream.
Restaurant de la Halle, 6 Place Isaac Benserade, 27480, Lyons la Forêt, www.restaurant-lahalle.fr