Entrées et plats au Relais d'Artémis à Bracieux

Last week, our friend CHM invited us to lunch up at the Relais d'Artémis near the Château de Chambord and the city of Blois. We've been there three times now, and it's an excellent restaurant with reasonable prices. The occasion for our lunch was the 11th anniversary of moving into our house near Saint-Aignan and the 10th anniversary of the first time CHM came and stayed here with us.

At the restaurant, we were able to sit outside on the patio and enjoy fine weather along with some fine cooking and food. Last summer, we wanted to have another restaurant in the village of Bracieux where we had had a very delicious meal earlier. Unfortunately, it was complet — completely booked — for the day of our outing.

We chose the Relais d'Artémis as a back-up plan a year ago, and now it has become one of our restaurants of choice in the Blois/Chambord area, for the food and the setting. We plan to return to the other Bracieux restaurant, Le Rendez-Vous des Gourmets, as soon as we can, by the way.

The menu we ordered from at the Relais was priced at 26 euros per person for first, main, and dessert courses. For 31 euros, you can have all that plus a cheese-and-salad course between the main dish and the dessert. We ordered a bottle of the local Cheverny rosé wine (18€) to drink with our meal.

Okay, what was the food like this time? CHM and I both ordered what you might call « le festival canard » — duck foie gras as a first course, and pan-roasted duck breast as the second. Foie gras is controversial in many countries but not in France, and it is delicious. It's the fattened liver of a fattened duck, served as a kind of pâté. This time it was served with a dollop of slow-cooked figs and two little crispy pastries filled with a creamy stuffing, and with some good bread.

The duck breast was cooked just enough to be served just « rosé » or medium rare. That's the way duck breast is normally cooked. It came with a few steamed new potatoes and a little pile of sauteed carrots and cabbage. I'm not sure which part of the duck I enjoyed eating more.

Walt went the fish route this time. He had a salad featuring cured salmon as his starter course. He said it was pleasantly salty. He didn't say or I didn't ask what the ring of red sauce around the plate was.

As his main course, Walt ordered a fillet of sandre or zander — a.k.a. "pike-perch" — which is a European river fish. The only time we ever eat sandre is in restaurants, as it doesn't seem to be available at the markets or supermarkets around the area where we live. I know Walt said it was really delicious with the accompanying risotto and fava beans.

I wrote last year about the Relais d'Artémis several times. Here's a link to the search results page with four or five posts about the restaurant listed.