09 December 2014

Little white vans?

It wasn't that the food was bad at Les 200 Bornes in Pouilly-sur-Loire. It just wasn't exciting. I think we had our hopes up about the other restaurant, which couldn't seat us because we hadn't reserved.

Les 200 Bornes is a French formula restaurant. There's one much like it over in Noyers-sur-Cher, not far from our house. And there's one in Sambin, between here and Blois, where we had lunch with Australian friends just a couple of weeks ago (because the restaurant we really wanted to go to was fermé exceptionnellement that particular day and we had to find someplace to have lunch).


The formula in these places is a salad bar for the appetizer and then a choice of one of three main courses. We chose the curried chicken and rice at Les 200 Bornes. One of the other choices was andouillette grillée (a kind of chitterling sausage) and I've forgotten the third. Then there's a dessert bar, including standard items like mousse au chocolat, île flottante, tarte aux pommes, and a Paris-Brest pastry.


There's nothing wrong with such a menu, but it's not special either. The place is a truckstop — un relais routier — the kind of restaurant where all the little white vans driven by workers and contractors are parked at noontime, and where working people can get a decent meal for not much money. The food is standard French fare that I've been familiar with for 45 years now. It's better than a McDo burger. One sign that Les 200 Bornes might not be the best relais routier was the total absence of little white vans in the parking lot.

The one special thing about the truckstop in Pouilly was that it had a very nice wine selection — Pouilly and Sancerre whites (Sauvignon Blanc), plus some Sancerre reds (Pinot Noir). We were driving, and we had left Callie out in the car, so we couldn't spend a lot of time tasting and didn't want to over-indulge. We had a two-hour trip ahead of us, and the weather was wet and windy, so caution was the watchword.


What does Les 200 Bornes mean? A borne is a milestone — une borne kilométrique — a distance marker along a highway that usually tells you how far you are from the nearest two towns. By extension, borne also means kilometer in everyday language, as in Pouilly-sur-Loire est à 200 bornes de Paris. There's a dice-and-cards game called Mille Bornes that has all to do with cars, flat tires, breakdowns, and that kind of stuff.

Why 200 bornes? It's because Pouilly-sur-Loire is 200 kilometers south of Paris on the old Route Nationale 7, which was the road heading south that people drove on to get to Provence and the Côte d'Azur way back when for their vacations. The route has been replaced by wider and faster autoroutes now, but the Nationale 7 still has the kind of cult status that the old Route 66 has in the western U.S.

13 comments:

  1. Wow the food looks so delicious.The landcape and decorations are interesting..I like it.

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  2. You chose curried chicken in a relais routier?! Pining for the 1970s? You may have to hand back your 'Serious Gourmet' card, sorry...

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    1. I didn't choose andouillette... And I can't remember the other choice, but it might have been foie de porc. Whatever it was, the chicken seemed to be the best option. C'est dire...

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  3. "the restaurant we really wanted to go to was 'fermé exceptionnellement' that particular day"...
    Ken... do you think something is telling you you should stay home and eat???

    I like the thought of curried drumsticks...
    but this appears to just be a couple of roast 'sticks with a curry sauce poured over...
    much like "frites with curry sauce" in a chippy.
    The mix of wild, white and red rice looks nice though.
    I would have gone for the chitterlin's though...
    a Yorkshire/Northern speciality...
    packaged in a French way!
    On Dewsbury Market they served them straight out of the pot...
    with salt, pepper and malt vinegar...
    or squirty "American" mustard...
    they also served cooked udder...
    despite the lurid appearance...
    apparently very nice...
    so I'm told!!

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    1. Chitterlings are a Southern U.S. specialty too, but I've never eaten them. I understand the smell of them cooking is overpowering. I have had French andouillette and andouille many time, but I've never really developed a taste for those intestinal specialties. As they say, une bonne andouillette sent la merde... mais pas trop. Pour moi, effectivement, même un peu c'est trop.

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    2. "I understand the smell of them cooking is overpowering."....
      not that I noticed... but Dewsbury is an open air market...
      and the permanent chitterlin's stall was on the draughtiest corner...
      perhaps that is why!??
      The only one I don't like is the Breton one that is stuffed backwards and forwards through itself...
      when sliced it looks like lots of little rubber bands...
      and the mouthfeel seems much the same...
      although the flavour is OK.

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    3. I have a friend who says his father used to cook chitlins at home a couple of times a year. He would invite his buddies and they would drink beer and then have a chitlin feast. My friend and his mother would leave the house for the day to get away from the smell. My friend, by the way, is a retired surgeon, so he's not too squeamish about most things.

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  4. Enjoying the chitlin talk- rubber bands and all. This restaurant would be called the Whistle Stop maybe in Alabama, and the chicken would be fried. I can taste your disappointment in this post lol. I like the farm equipment as decoration.

    PS Lewis said his dad and friends were drinking whiskey while the cooking was going on.

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    1. Whiskey! I hope it was Kentucky Bourbon. Those rascals.

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  5. Lewis remembers names like Ancient Age, Early Times and also Canadian Club. I just checked out the names of KY bourbons and there are a bunch of them. Best bourbons in the world...

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  6. Hi, when you look at the restaurant, you see they they are riding the nostalgia wave. The "Nationale 7" was the main road for those in the north, especially the Parisiens, to get to the Mediterranean coast for their vacation. Some used to do the whole trip on bikes. This started in the late 30's, when vacations became a right. And it was the main road until the late 60s when the autoroute was in place. I remember in the 70s that the last bit of highway was still not done from Aix to Toulon.
    My second remark is the well known card game; Mille Bornes. The "bornes" are the famous Michelin red and white markers that give you the distances: http://tinyurl.com/pgystmd

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