Lunch at Le Caméléon in Maintenon

Maintenon is a small town just north of Chartres where there is a Renaissance-era château of the same name. Mon ami de longue date (not to say "old" friend) CHM and I had lunch in the town last Saturday. The restaurant we chose had an exceptionally long menu with a lot of choices for the first, second, and dessert courses, as you'll see below.

The day before, we had enjoyed a good lunch in Paris at the place now called Le Grand Bistro (ex-Bistrot de Breteuil) and we thought that the Caméléon in Maintenon served a lunch that was at least as good for half the price. At the Grand Bistro, the atmosphere was slightly upscale for a weekday lunch, but our waiter was efficient and easy-going. The clientele was older and people were more dressed up. It was pleasant.

At the Grand Bistro, the price was 44 euros per person, which included a bottle of wine for two people. At the Caméléon, our bill came to 48 euros, everything included.

In the small town restaurant, the atmosphere was much more populaire and "down-home." There was a crowd of regulars, and boisterousness rather than decorum was the word of the day. Many of the customers were younger and less well-dressed. It was noisy. I thought it was fun.

My photos don't do the food justice (the light conditions were less than ideal), and the food certainly wasn't fancy. However, it all seemed fresh and freshly prepared. The seasoning was near-perfect, though I did add a little salt to the salad. We were at the table for nearly two hours, though there was no long wait at any time.

« Salade de Saumon frais et crevettes » with a nice fresh-tasting vinaigrette dressing

With lunch we had a half-liter pitcher of rosé wine. It was a dry rosé that went well with the steak I ordered and with the seafood dish that CHM had, and also with the fresh salmon and shrimp salad that we had as a first course.

The « Bavette d'aloyau » (flank steak) with its peppersteak sauce was tender and tasty.

The little serving of zucchini, tomato, and green beans was garlicky and crunchy.

I didn't take any pictures of the desserts. I had a slice of lemon meringue pie and CHM had the house "crumbble" of apples with cinnamon.

The « Marmite du pêcheur gratinée façon dieppoise » was fish and shellfish (saumon, moules, calamars,

pétoncles, gambas — that's salmon, mussels, squid, scallops, and prawns) with

a creamy rice base and and au gratin topping.

Yesterday we had lunch in a restaurant in a village very not far from Saint-Aignan that was also really good. More about that over the next few days.

Une maison Renaissance

This house in Châteaudun, across the road from the Eglise de la Madeleine, was built in 1577. That was toward the end of the French Renaissance of the 16th century. I think it's a beautiful building.

The Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard died in Touraine in 1585, and the first English colony in North American was founded that year in what is now North Carolina. Down near Bordeaux, the essayist Michel de Montaigne died in 1592. Henri IV became king of France in 1589, and Catherine de Médicis died that year. Religious wars between Catholic and Protestant factions were raging in France. That pretty much situates it for me. And this house, still standing, was already built.

A kind of restaurant "selfie"

I was sitting in a little restaurant in the town of Maintenon, across the street from the château of the same name. Maintenon is just a few miles north of Chartres. CHM had excused himself for a minute or two, and I was waiting for him to come back to the table and to order lunch. I noticed a mirror on the wall across the room from me.

Below is a shot that I snapped just a minute before the one above. It shows me, another customer or two, and the woman who was running the dining room. I was shooting into a round mirror.

We had a very nice three-course lunch in Maintenon before driving on to Chartres, Châteaudun, and Saint-Aignan. More later...

Reverse order: Châteaudun

I'm back in Saint-Aignan after three days in Paris. It was a good trip. Yesterday we left the city at about 8:15 a.m. and spent the day on the road, arriving here at 5:30 p.m. The distance we covered was about 175 miles — a lot of it on little winding roads.

The car I rented for the trip to Paris was this one, a Kia Rio. I rented it at the SuperU supermarket in Saint-Aignan.

I call this reverse order because the first photos I'm posting come from the last place we stopped. It was the the city of Châteaudun, about 90 minutes north of us and little way south of Chartres.There's a big château there, as you would imagine, and also a big church called L'Eglise de la Madeleine. I don't know much about it.

Actually, I stopped in Châteaudun to visit the public toilet there. In France, if you travel around the same region a lot, pretty soon you start noticing and remembering where the public facilities are. Or the fast food restaurants, which you can sneak into to use the toilet. I've been to Chateaudun several times over the last 10 or 12 years, and knew it would be a good mid-afternoon pit stop. But passons...

Wikipedia doesn't tell me much about the church in Châteaudun — just that it is a Catholic church (duh...) and that it was listed as a national monument by the French government in 1922. What I can tell you is that it's enormous seen from inside, it's perched on the edge of a cliff above a ravine where there's a road and a lot of houses, and it's absolutely luminous inside because the windows are huge and made of light-colored glass.