Emily in France 🇫🇷 Ultra-Local Pub Food... in Normandy?
Truly local.
Whether I'm giving tours or pitching articles, one thing I find surprises many Francophiles of foreign extraction is the fact that France is home to a locavore movement. The implication of such a movement is, of course, that there was a time when the French did not gravitate towards local food, an idea that is antithetical to our very perception of the French and their relationship with what they eat. And that perception is a misconception.
It stems, in large part, from the fact that for many Francophiles, France is a country resolutely stuck in a time when bicycles were the primary method of transportation, and everyone's father or grandfather made cheese or wine or both.
The reality of France is... quite different.
There are a lot of contributing factors that have led to a rupture between the average Frenchman and his food over time. A major one is the Trente Glorieuses, a period of about 30 years following Occupation when France experienced tremendous economic growth and welcomed its very first hypermarkets... which contributed to the slow death of its villages. These days, many people who live in the picturesque countryside regularly drive an hour to the closest big supermarket or to where they work; many villages are appended as S.B. – sans boulanger.
But with the neo-rural movement has come a return to the land, not just for the average Frenchman, but for chefs who tire of Paris. I reported on this topic for the BBC, and one chef whose work in the countryside never fails to bowl me over is Ed Delling-Williams.
The former chef of Le Grand Bain is a native Bristolian with a background in pubs. During lockdown, he brought his approach to Normandy, where he opened his The Presbytère in a former vicarage. Here, he marries the English approach to pub grub with Norman terroir, and the results have impressed me (and many others, including Le Fooding) from the jump.
Recently, in collaboration with the Manche department, Delling-Williams cooked up a multi-course, ultra-local meal for members of the press, including yours truly. The meal was also attended by many of the producers whose products the chef had transformed and spotlit on our plates. There's nothing quite like eating an impeccably prepared celery root, redolent with the umami scent of roasted yeast and house-made ricotta, while sitting opposite the farmer who grew it.
We began the meal with local oysters, briny and sweet and accompanied by cider – another local Norman product category, the sheer variety of which became quite clear over the course of the evening, thanks to Dominique Hutin's unbridled knowledge and generosity.
Tis the season for pâté croûte, but the chef took this charcuterie classic in a wholly novel (and vegetarian) direction, stuffing the pastry case, not with meat, but rather with potatoes, camembert, and a generous studding of black garlic. That inky puddle on the side was a play on the great British tradition of pickle, with a sweet-and-savory vibe.
After the delightful celery root, our dinner companions played a bit of musical chairs, and so it was that I dug into lobster with cider sauce across the table from the very fisherman who had caught the lobster aboard the fishing boat he inherited from his grandfather.
Leaning into the lighter side of local terroir meant that the trou normand was an unnecessary – but totally welcome – interlude. This tradition of a "Norman hole" generally takes the form of an alcoholic sorbet, served to help cleanse the palate... and create more "room." For this version, a glass of Calvados was served alongside a granita made from slow-fermented "black apples." It was delightful.
Delightful, too, was the finishing touch: tarte tatin served with a heaping helping of crème crue, or raw cream, luscious and rich. The ideal way to finish off this exploration of the incredible local products Normandy has to offer.
This is the free edition of my newsletter, which comes out every Tuesday. If you're interested in subscribing to the paid edition, which comes out every other Thursday and features exclusive tips on Paris dining and more, sign up here!
Cheese of the Week
Subscribers to my paid newsletter got a list of my favorite Christmas cheeses in their inbox last week, but I'm continuing in the same vein with this week's spotlighted fromage: a hay-aged Comté from a fromager-affineur who's a regular at the 5th arrondissement Maubert market. His Comté is aged in hay for 30 months for a distinctive cereal aroma that marries so wonderfully with the toffee and brown butter notes this cheese is known for.
Normandy is best known for cow's milk, but just to the south, the Loire Valley is chèvre country, with five AOP cheeses made with goat's milk including Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine.
To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and tune into the Terroir Podcast, where Caroline Conner and I delve into France's cheese, wine, and more one region at a time.
What I'm Eating
Café des Ministères is exactly what one hopes for from a classic French bistro. The menu is stocked with once-ubiquitous dishes with old-school panache: Think puff pastry vol au vent filled with your choice of lamb or veal sweetbreads or lobster, Hemingway’s favorite herring with potatoes, or the calf’s head former president Jacques Chirac famously ate in nearly every village he visited. The affable, friendly front-of-house team is quick with a joke (notably concerning the size of the award-winning cabbage and one’s ability to tuck into both that and dessert. Don’t worry, I managed. Kind of.)
More on the blog.
Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france and on the blog.
Where I'm Going
1. To Park Side, aka the "best Italian restaurant in Queens," to feast on (probably) veal parm. Or pork chop milanese. Or pasta with lamb ragu. I'm not sure yet, but it's going to be enormous and covered in Parmesan cheese.
2. To Porto Rico coffee, to stock up on my favorite beans.
3. To Tal Bagels, for a requisite everything before returning to France!
What I'm Writing
1. Six tips for the perfect French onion soup, according to Paris' pros. In Food52.
2. This panettone will put your grandma's recipe to shame. In InsideHook.
3. Here's your secret, no-fuss hack for next-level beef tenderloin. For InsideHook.
What I'm Reading
1. Sometimes I tell myself that the reason I have such a hard time writing plot-driven books is because I live in a country where so many novels of the exact opposite style are published. Passage de l'union is more plot-driven than its bookshelf neighbors, following the ethereal, magical-realism-esque discovery of the narrator's bizarre connection to an Occupation-era polemic, but despite its almost Paul Auster-y vibe, by the end, it ultimately felt more rooted in the author's day job as a lawyer than in the story it wanted to tell.
2. Those who know me know that my love of vegetables borders on the comically obsessive, and chief among them may be crucifers. Brussels sprouts have long been a fave, so I loved this story on why the advent of oven roasting was just one element in what gave these baby cabbages their makeover in the court of public opinion. In Mental Floss.
3. (In French) Morbier has just won a lawsuit against a cheese that wasn’t borrowing its AOP name, as Gruyère producers failed to do against American cheesemakers earlier this year. Rather, in a first for the cheese world, Morbier has earned itself the exclusive right to feature the line of grey ash that makes it stand out. In Le Parisien.
A bientôt !