The gourmet break with Hubert Giblet*
In Cormery, the Les Roseaux Pensants restaurant offers an attractively atypical concept, helping it to stand out in the culinary world of Touraine. Food lovers in search of something new, this is for you!
This restaurant really is unusual… and always serves healthy and high-quality food
To begin with, “Les Roseaux Pensants” (“The Thinking Reeds“) does not really sound like the name of a restaurant. If you have ever studied philosophy, you might remember that Blaise Pascal wrote in 1660:
Man is just a reed, nature’s weakest; but he is a thinking reed. It does not take the whole world in arms to crush him. A little vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But if the world crushed him, man would be even nobler than whatever kills him, since he knows that he dies, and the world has the advantage of not knowing it. So all our dignity lies in thought. This is where we should take our stand, and not on time and space, which we cannot fill. So let us aim to think well: this is the principle of morality.”
©Elizabeth Froment
The restaurant was once none other than the Auberge du Mail, which was well known to many. But let us take a look at the backgrounds of the young restaurant owners: Stéphane Enault (in the kitchen) and Laurène Attia (in the dining room) did not study for a culinary degree at school, but were both… lawyers!
They both love cookery, are fans of local ingredients and are trained in culinary and cultural techniques. Stéphane left the Bar set to work in Parisian restaurants, where he learned “on the job” and took a vocational diploma as an external candidate. Laurène took courses in growing aromatic and medicinal plants. Surprising, isn’t it?
Trust the living world to awaken our taste buds
Among the techniques used in their kitchen, lactic acid fermentation is definitely one of their favourites. This is an age-old preservation process which brings new flavours to fruits and vegetables and boosts their vitamin content. For a healthy mind in a healthy body!
©Elizabeth Froment
Have you ever heard of tempeh?
Tempeh is an Indonesian speciality made from fermented soya. It can be used in endless ways, since it can be produced from almost all legumes, as well as some cereals. The process consists in inoculating a very specific fungus (Rhizopus oligosporus) on a cooked legume or cereal, and to leave it to develop in the right conditions. After about 24 hours, a mycelium forms and binds the grains together. And tempeh is born!
As well as helping us consume healthy legumes and cereals, tempeh provides numerous other benefits as a result of the fermentation process. It provides an introduction to new flavours, unfamiliar to our Western taste buds.
Les Roseaux Pensants make a 100% local tempeh from a blend of black turtle beans grown by Théo Meneau, an organic farmer in Marcilly-sur-Vienne, and from chickpeas from Ti’bio d’Aire, an organic farm in Courcoué. They then cover the tempeh with a lacquer made from barley miso and serve it with a Camargue rice risotto with Brittany seaweed butter and brewer’s yeast, along with shiitake mushrooms grown in Loches by GAEC Saint-Paul.
Tempeh is more than a new culinary discovery. It is also a way to vary your diet in line with the ecological challenges of our times.
Tempeh with chickpeas and quinoa, barbecue sauce with fermented peppers, carrots glazed with sage butter, parsnip puree and baked broccoli. ©Hubert Giblet
And what is the result on the dining table?
It will come as no surprise if I tell you that you are going to experience quite an unusual culinary adventure! At the time of writing, for example, on the menu you will find:
- Smoked trout, fennel, Granny Smith apples, yoghurt sauce in herbs, apple and celery gel, seaweed crumble, fermented pear, water cress snow
- Soft boiled egg, leek velouté, fermented asparagus, ground-ivy cake, fresh Sainte-Maure de Touraine cheese with water cress and mizuna
- Tacos with shredded chicken, red cabbage in vinegar, medley of pickled, fermented and raw vegetables, mayonnaise with kimchi and salsa verde (vegetarian version available)
- Spare ribs, baby potatoes, spinach, navy bean puree, baked red onion, kimchi
- Bone-in guinea fowl fillets, baked carrot puree, glazed carrots and turnips, black chestnut condiment
- Quinoa tempeh, fried mushrooms, celeriac puree, fermented shiitake mushrooms, baked pak choi cabbage, sage sauce
- Beetroot confit, beetroot cream, hazelnut praline, milk with elderberry gel and foam, beetroot sorbet
- Walnut tart, pastry cream with meadowsweet; miso ice cream
If, like me, you are unfamiliar with mizuna, kimchi, kombu seaweed and miso, Laurène will be delighted to explain all these ingredients to you or tell you how they are made. But whatever happens, your taste buds will be delighted!
Apart from a few exotic ingredients which obviously come from outside Touraine, short food supply chains are preferred and mainly from organic or responsible farming suppliers. And, of course, directly from the restaurant garden, too. During my last visit, everything was absolutely delicious. The Chef has even managed to pull off the masterstroke of appealing to a Touraine clientele with… Sainte-Maure de Touraine cheese!!!
In the garden ©Elizabeth Froment
Fresh Sainte-Maure cheese, glazed and lightly heated, kimchi with Espelette pepper, thyme jelly
Along with the skilful cooking, the service at Les Roseaux Pensants is pleasant and efficient. The setting resembles the owners, peaceful and unpretentious. Laurène is continually expanding her knowledge of plant dyes (dye, indigo, eco-printing), helping her to enrich the decoration of the restaurant and dining tables with her own plant creations. And in fine weather, the terrace offers a warm welcome to diners.
Worth noting: Les Roseaux Pensants has recently set up dynamic workshops focusing on fermentation, which have been a big hit. To take the experience of sharing and interaction further, the owners will soon be organising workshops on a range of themes, but always with the guiding thread of the world of plants. Plant dyes will be one of the themes – and they will soon be unveiling others…
Les Roseaux Pensants
2 Place du Mail, Cormery, France
+33 (0) 2 47 43 40 32/ Contact@lesroseauxpensants.fr
www.facebook.com/lesroseauxpensants
Open from Thursday to Sunday, from 12.30 to 2 pm and 7.30 to 9 pm
* Hubert Giblet, gourmet and food-lover, is head of the Automnales Gastronomy Festival and the “Déambulations Gourmandes” trails at the Val de Loire Terres de Gastronomie association.