Showing posts with label Bar Jean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bar Jean. Show all posts

Monday 24 January 2011

112. A word from your faded correspondent

24th January 2011. Ac-tor Simon Williams, writing in the 'Delhi' Telegraph over the weekend about Biarritz, talks of its faded gentillity.. Just as it's "known" that Venice smells*, so it seems to be received wisdom among travel writers that poor old Biarritz is akin to an old lady living on her memories.. a little down at heel, some flaky paint here and there, roots showing and in need of a discreet makeover. Nothing could be further from the truth than this.

* There's absolutely no truth in the oft-reported 'fact' that Venice smells..



OK, like all ladies d'un certain âge, she has had a past.. but the Biarritz I know is sparklingly clean, bright and has s-t-y-l-e in spades. "Faded gentillity..?" Not even close. I'd take the Grand Old Lady of the Pays Basque any day in preference to some soulless, style-free, modern high rise resort (the holiday equivalent of a blonde bimbo). If bimbo is what you want - fine - but not for me.
Hotel du Palais (right)
Simon also waxes lyrical about the Hotel du Palais (no surprises there; mentioned before here), the Café Jean (now closed) - we prefer the Bar Jean and finally he recommends a visit to Cazenave in Bayonne (yet another favourite of ours). 
I can't fault his choices at all! (he must have read this blog!)

Here's a view of Biarritz through Spanish eyes..
However, I would take issue with his fatuous claim that "Biarritz is a bit like Cornwall in the summer, only warmer.." That statement could only be true if you accept that Hull resembles San Francisco - because they both have suspension bridges..! He was going so well until then too! Apart from that, Simon, a good column..!

So... marks out of ten? Let's be kind: "Royaume Uni.. neuf points!" 

A quick dose of "Father Ted" is called for..



Wednesday 30 June 2010

67. Anniversaries

29th June 2010. I think someone was trying to tell us something..! Today we planned to have lunch out to celebrate a major marital milestone.. This clip is more or less how we met!
We thought we'd try one of our favourites - Bar Jean in Biarritz (mentioned before here) - as the seafood there is always good - and fresh - and there's always a vibrant atmosphere..

However, when we arrived outside, despite 1st July being only days away (start of French holiday season) it was unaccountably closed.
Plan B clicked instantly into action.. This entailed a quick trip down to St Jean de Luz to the open air cafe that operates adjacent to the covered market there - but only when the market has finished for the morning. Again, seafood as fresh as can be - never had a bad meal there and it's great for people watching. Horrors! At 12.55 the market was still in full swing and no sign of his tables and chairs being set out..

No worries - Plan C was launched. This was to try Chez Pantxua in Socoa - just the other side of the bay.. the seafood is the best in the region (IMHO) and there is a fine selection of Basque art (inc. work by the noted Ramiro Arrue) on the walls inside:
Ten minutes later we were staring disbelievingly at the row of restaurants at Socoa - one of which was closed. No prizes for guessing which! 

We looked at all the menus from its neighbouring restaurants before finally settling on one establishment. (no names!). We were shown to a table outside in the welcome shade and there were 2 menus on the table. Within a few minutes we'd decided what we wanted - Madame's selection was gambas followed by lotte (monkfish) while I chose the salade Landaise and the paella - and then we waited and waited for someone to come and take our order. Finally, a waitress turned up. Oh, it turned out that the lotte was off - no more left - so Madame asked for the sole. Also off! So she chose the fish soup. We sat and waited again. And waited some more. The waitress didn't return to ask if we'd like an apero - which we would have liked - nor did she return to put some water or bread on the table. Everything was telling me that we should just get up and leave.. I don't make a habit of this - in fact, I don't think we've ever done it but this time I was getting more and more agitated.. Finally we managed to catch the eye of another waitress to ask for a wine list.. and to order some aperos while we were at it - a kir for Madame and a pastis for me. Ten minutes later, she returned with 2 kirs. Ye godfathers..

When the food arrived, it went from bad to worse.. my salade Landaise was awash in almost neat olive oil; Madame's gambas floated in an oily sauce that BP would have been proud of; her fish soup was watery and my paella was sponsored by BP as well.. Without boring you with all the details, suffice to say that, for the rest of the day, we both felt rotten. What was that about the best laid plans of mice and men..? This was the first time - in 3 years of living in France and in 20 years of visiting the region - that we've had this kind of experience. All we can think is that perhaps the restaurant in question had recruited unsuitable staff for the season.

30th June 2010. While Madame was in town, I decided (perhaps not 100% true!) that the windows needed cleaning; the stairs, the living room and the dining room carpets needed vacuuming; the front path needed sweeping and the dining table needed waxing (I threw the last one in as a freebie).. I worked myself into a lather in the morning heat accompanied by this playing in the background: 
 
More music for a summer's day:
  

1st July 2010. Up early this morning - swimming things on - and down to the beach at Anglet before the sun climbed up too high. We stayed there for 1½hrs and very pleasant it was too. I'd recently started re-reading Peter Mayle's "Hotel Pastis" again, his amusing and enjoyable tale about an adman opening a hotel in the Luberon, and I finished it there on the beach this morning. 
In re-reading the book, I was reminded of the sheer awfulness of the BBC TV series "A Year in Provence" with the late John Thaw in the lead role. I watched about 5 minutes of it once when it was first transmitted in 1993 before switching it off. I can only imagine how Peter Mayle must have cringed and squirmed with embarrassment when presented with such a steaming and odiferous adaptation of his work. This was banal television at its most banal. And while never a fan of the curmudgeonly John Thaw, his selection for the Peter Mayle role was a piece of mis-casting on a truly epic scale. Fine in other roles but definitely not this one. The series is available on YouTube.. I tried watching it again just now and it's still every bit as turgid as I remembered. It has every cliché in the book.. The first scene in France is accompanied by... guess? An accordion playing in the background and cicadas..? Well done. How the humour and deftness of touch of this genuinely funny and enjoyable book was transformed by the dead hand of the BBC into this 33 carat dross remains one of life's little mysteries. Watch it and weep.. (Edited to add: It looks like someone has had a rush of common sense to the head because the video seems to have been removed. Phew!)
    
A mega-yacht belonging to one of the world's mega rich was moored at the bottom of the road this morning. It's the very distinctive-looking "Skat" - it comes with its own colour co-ordinated helicopter (natch!) - and it belongs to an extremely wealthy former Microsoft software engineer (is there any other kind?). All that money from ones and noughts - I guess the tricky bit is putting them in the right order..! 
This was a few evenings ago down on the beach at Anglet looking west:
And finally, a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G-Major (I-Allegro) on a Moog synthesiser.. (pity this is ingrained into everyone's memory as the old "Antiques Roadshow" intro..) I prefer this version:

However, for the traditionalists, here's the same piece played on conventional stringed instruments:
So - which one does it for you?

Wednesday 2 September 2009

5. Life in the Gîte

The windows open wide in the gîte so in the morning fresh air breezes in and we can hear the sounds of Madame D conducting a conversation at Force 9 with a friend who’s stopped by. There’s a fenced garden so our cocker, Chibby, can run around to his heart’s content. The farm faces south and along the edge of the garden are three tall palm trees mixed in with a few Scots pines. The Pyrenees provide a misty blue backdrop.
The farm is about ½ mile outside the village and it lies in a dip at the bottom of a winding single track lane. When I take the dog out for a walk up the lane in the evening, all I can hear is the sound of a church bell, M’sieur D calling from the fields to the farm in Basque or his heavily accented French and Madame D calling back to him over the sound of a passing tractor.

Madame D stopped by one day and offered us an omelette that she’d made using home-grown sweet green chillies and at least 6 fresh eggs from her chickens. It was the most unbelievably delicious yellow omelette. A few days later she came by with 6 more eggs – still warm from the production line - and some more of her green chillies. This time Madame made an omelette from them… sublime.. mmm, the taste of an omelette cooked with fresh free range eggs.

Food does have a different taste here. Occasionally in England we'd buy tuna steaks but they must have been a few days old by the time they reached us because they usually tasted like cardboard. Madame prepared some the other evening that were chalk and cheese compared to what we could find in England. There, she found that it wasn't easy to cook à la française - finding the right ingredients and produce - the fruit and vegetables that she was accustomed to, not to mention the cuts of meat, poultry and game, fresh fish, the variety of cheese etc. And the wine.. Another difference I noticed between life here and in England is that when people are sat around the table here, they often talk about the meal they're currently enjoying, one they've had or perhaps one they're going to have - or, as is often the case, all three! In England, it's definitely non-U to appear to enjoy food too much. Or at all. As one dear colleague said to me once when I was describing what Madame had prepared over the weekend, "But it's only food.." And therein lies the difference..

The temperatures were just about perfect for the first 3 weeks. The skies were blue from horizon to horizon almost every day and the temperatures were stable at around 24C, although one Sunday it was up as high as 32C. We'd always heard that September was the best time to visit the Pays Basque and so it proved. The madness of July & August is no more as the vast majority of families have gone back and parking in Biarritz or St Jean de Luz isn’t much of a problem anymore.

The light in Biarritz is amazing – it must be something to do with its location right on the sea and the fine spray/mist that is lifted up by the surf. It’s dazzlingly bright and very sharp. Just by the indoor food market in Biarritz (Warning: a place to avoid if you feel peckish) we had lunch one day in a small café/bar – Bar Jean - that was very authentic, very Basque/Spanish and very busy.. Gypsy guitar music swirling through the buzz of conversation, tiled tables, bullfighting posters on the walls and lots of animation..

First we ordered some grilled sardines and, to fill the gap until they arrived, we had some tapas and a tortilla. An icy cold bottle of rosé kept us going while we waited. The sardines came with a baked potato which was one of those waxy yellow ones that they have here. This was the second time we’d been to Bar Jean and it appeals to us both very much. It’s rustic and simple and the seafood is as fresh as you like – it comes straight from the fish market which is just across the road.

We were in there one lunchtime and an elderly couple from Bordeaux shared a table with us. Within minutes we were chatting away - she told us she was 85 and her husband was slightly younger. They were both so much fun. (and when did you last say that about a brace of octagenarians..?) He ordered a dozen oysters (hoping, optimistically perhaps, that one might work!) and his wife had grilled tuna while talking dix-neuf to the douzaine... They both seemed so alive and vibrant.. and gave me renewed hope that being eighty need not necessarily mean the end of everything we enjoy.

Now where did I put my cardy..?