Magnum and Le Tire Bouchon: two wine bars to discover in Toulouse

When I knew I was going to spend 24 hours in Toulouse recently I asked my followers on Twitter - as you do - what restaurants and wine bars they would recommend. Unusually they all suggested different places which didn’t help that much so I ended up trawling around online.

The problem with Toulouse is that everything seems to focus round its big - and rather beautiful - squares which can get pretty crowded on a Saturday night, even in January but we were after something a bit more off the beaten track - and found it in two small family-run wine bars: Magnum and Le Tire Bouchon.

Le Tire Bouchon in Place Dupuy, which was recommended by French restaurant critic François Simon, was the first port of call. You honestly wouldn’t know anyone was eating there. It looks just like a wine shop then you peer in and see they’ve managed to cram 3 tables in among the jumble of boxes (and another three downstairs)

They only serve food at lunchtime which is cooked by the owner Philippe Lagarde's wife Laurence. Nothing is chalked up on a board - not even the prices but it’s 16€ for two courses, 21€ for three. A big plus is that it's easy to eat veggie without really trying (rare in France). I had an excellent butternut squash and coconut milk soup with coriander crème fraiche and homemade cheese ravioli while my husband stuck to the more conventionally south-west French options of piquillo peppers stuffed with confit duck and a homely veal stew. Puds were a classic chocolate mousse and a rather delicious fluffy cheesecake

They don’t do much in the way of wines by the glass - you’d be better off buying one of the bottles from the huge selection on display which unusually features wines that are not French - though they will be at the very least organic and biodynamic. We tried a white grenache blend called Cool Moon from Les Enfants Sauvages which was a bit wild and funky for me (though better after decanting) and a lovely Gipskeuper German riesling (2009) from a biodynamic Wurttemberg producer called Beurer.

It was actually Philippe who suggested Magnum which is one of Toulouse’s oldest streets, rue Perchpinte - about 5 minutes walk from the Carmes metro stop. It’s more obviously a wine bar with a smaller selection of wines but a bigger menu of which the charcuterie served at almost fat-meltingly warm room temperature is a stand-out feature. (One customer went over just to sniff it) We also had a great umami-bomb of a carpaccio with slow-roasted tomatoes

But the two stand-out dishes were again made by the owner Jérome Rey’s wife who comes from Réunion. Some local Toulouse sausage and prawn dumplings served with a spicy sweet chilli sauce (sounds dire, but it was brilliant with the 11% Thierry Puzelat gamay we were drinking as you can see from my match of the week) and some potato pancakes with lumpfish roe and a creamy lemon dressing I could have eaten twice over. (My Guardian colleague Marina O'Loughlin went a few days later on my recommendation and was raving about a cheese and ham brioche toastie with truffles. The menu obviously varies.) We spent about 70€ but could have spent a lot less.

These places won’t be for everyone. If you want more of a theatrical Toulouse scene and don’t like natural wines you may want to go for one of the better known names like Christian Constant’s Le Bibent. But if you want somewhere where you actually get served by the owner and experience a less touristy side of Toulouse they’re perfect.

PS judging by how full they were you’d do well to book - at Magnum you probably stand a better chance of getting a table if you eat early as the locals start to pour in from 8.30 onwards.

Where else to drink in Toulouse . . .

Le Nez Rouge, in rue des Couteliers - another natural wine bar recommended by Philippe

No. 5, 5 rue de la Bourse - 700 different wines, 30 of which are available by the glass at any one time.

. . . and where to stay

Hotel Albert 1er - we stayed in this solidly bourgeois French 3 star hotel in rue Rivals just off the main shopping street rue d'Alsace-Lorraine. Providing, somewhat surprisingly, an organic breakfast. Our very large double room cost 113€. Not flashy but well-run and welcoming - a hotel of character, not a boring modern chain.

 

Chez Miton and Au Fil de L’Aigronne: two Loire bargains

Instead of hurtling down south on the motorway as we used to do with the kids to minimise family squabbling, we’ve taken to a stately three day progression with frequent stop-offs to visit winemakers, eat or simply drive through France’s beautiful unspoilt countryside and blissfully traffic-free back roads.

It sounds expensive but apart from the crippling cost of petrol it needn’t be as these two recent finds prove:

At Chez Miton which is in the village of Chahaignes, about half an hour north of Tours you can have a two course lunch midweek for 12 euros (£10.33/$15.77) including service. The food is quite basic but it’s decent, generous and amazing for the price.

We ate a simple green salad with confit tomatoes, that good old French staple jambon et melon, pork with noodles and an excellent andouillette (so my husband told me - I never touch the stuff) with a sharply flavoured mustard sauce, which I can vouch for. Adding a dessert would have added another 3€. No wonder the place is packed.

The wine’s good too. We had a 50cl ‘pot’ of light, fragrant Pineau d’Aunis* from local producer Philippe Sevault for just 13€.

And in the evening we stayed at an excellent chambre d’hôtes Au Fil de L’Aigronne at Le Petit Pressigny south of the Loire which was recommended by fellow wine writer and Loire specialist Jim Budd on the strength of the fact that it’s bang next door to a restaurant called La Promenade which he also rates highly. The food was good but we had to endure some painfully slow and at times stroppy service. Maybe it was an off-night and they were over-stretched - it has consistently good ratings on Trip Advisor.

The B & B though is a bargain with friendly, generous hosts who throw a top breakfast with home-baked madeleines and local goats’ cheese in with their incredibly good value overnight rate of 60€/£51.64/$78.85 for a double room. (The only downside - Internet addicts may like to know the wifi is a bit dodgy.)

* a very old and rare grape variety from this part of the Loire.

An insider's guide to the fish restaurants of Marseille and Cassis

Travel writer Philip Sweeney hobnobs with the locals, checks out the best places to eat and discovers why fishing for bouillabaisse isn't as easy as it once was . . .

Pagnolesque, pastis-swigging boules players they may look still look like, but the fishermen of Marseille have a hard time of it today. Ex-fishermen outnumber practising examples. The captain of a pleasure boat I took around the Calanques, a former trawler skipper, listed the problems: depleted fish stocks, EU interference, soaring price of diesel, difficulty selling boats if you can’t make a living using them: owners are actually destroying good vessels, apparently. From 700 twenty years ago, the Marseille fishing community is down to 230 today.

The worst affected are the big tuna boats and the lamparo night fishing trawlers. The petits metiers, one or two man crews, some still operating the brightly painted traditional wooden pointus, are holding up reasonably well; lower outgoings, more flexible sales. The big boats sell all their catch at the main Marseille fish market, down west at Saumaty, past the ferry docks, flyovers, silos and warehouses, the old central Criée on the Quai du Rive Neuve having become a theatre.

The small fishermen also sell directly to the public. A couple of dozen set up their stalls in the mornings on the Vieux Port, squeezed back to the quayside by the massive road works with which Sir Richard Rodgers is turning the rough old Quai des Belges into a gleaming new pedestrian paradise for Marseille European City of Culture year, 2013. Half their stock is live fish, waiting in shallow blue trays or buckets with bubbling air lines: loups, rascasses, rougets, lottes, known in the South as baudroies, chapons, the baudroies’ even uglier cousins, galinettes, vives, conger eels, piles of the multicoloured rock fish necessary for bouillabaisse stock.

To the western side of the harbour lines of restaurant terraces await the tourists, bouillabaisse displays at the ready, nowadays translated into Chinese as well as German and English. In many cases the fish on show is sunken eyed and the prices rip-off. In some, the food is classy, but so are the prices.

I met Christian Buffa, chef/proprietor of one of the classiest, the Miramar, buying a particularly apopleptic-looking chapon to complete a demonstration bouillabaisse, and went back to sample his bourride. The Miramar has an elegant 1960s panelled interior behind its terrace, polished service by a 50% Far Eastern team, and large carte of tempting classic cuisine, which doesn’t come cheap. Fifty nine Euros for bouillabaisse or bourride: the bourride, which I prefer, comes in the same two stage form as the bouillabaisse, soup first, with croutons, cloves of garlic to rub on them, and aioli, then the fish and potatoes, just cooked in the broth, on a platter. The Miramar’s soup is utterly delicious, an assortment of rock fish in stock, cream and aioli all emulsified into pale brown velvet, subtler and richer than the reddish tomato based and rouille infused liquor of the bouillabaisse, good as that is.

In search of something cheaper and simpler, I tried the Boite à Sardine, a narrow shop up on the Boulevard de la Liberation with a steel fish counter inside and a few tables on the pavement. Funky enough, with locals outnumbering the tourists, the latter perhaps frightened off by the oubliette-like toilet/storeage cellar. Some of the food is a bit alarming too. Really good rougets at the moment, I was told: eat them whole, the liver is extremely good. Maybe, but the neat sets of miniature entrails from my rougets went straight under a convenient oyster shell; luckily I was also sampling the Boite’s excellent range of fifteen types of oyster, some delicious mussels and razor clams, supions, the little squid typical of Marseille sautéed in oil, garlic and parsley, and plenty of other plate cover.

Next, off east to Cassis, and another fish shop/ restaurant, the Poissonnerie Laurent. Leaving the Vieux Port by the coast road, you pass a series of rocky inlets, progressively wilder as you leave the city. The first is the charming little Vallon des Auffes, a mini Vieux Port nestling below the raised seafront promenade, home to the classic restaurant Fonfon, but also the cheaper and better Chez Jeannot, where I ate excellent pizza and succulent supions fried in flour with Jonathan Meades, the former Times restaurant critic now resident in Marseille. (Meades‘ other favourites include Toinou and François Coquillages for shell fish and Chez Vincent and Etienne for supions, by the way). Beyond lie the calanques, rocky fjord-like inlets with tiny harbours and humble looking cabanons, fishermens’ huts, which you feel like snapping up for a cheap pied dans l’eau till you find a converted one goes for a quarter of a million euros.

Cassis in an exquisite little port with boules players under plane trees, rows of quayside cafés, steep old blonde stone alleys, then the surrounding hills, with the villas and plush apartment blocks of serious old money, plus a newer population of footballers and the few Marseille gangsters who aren’t in Marbella. And right up to edge of the town, the beautiful vineyards of the twelve domaines comprising the old appellation of Cassis, about which more shortly.

The best time in Cassis in the summer is morning, before the tourists flood in. On the quay is a miniature version of the Vieux Port Marseille fish market, down to three local fishermen. One of them is Laurent Gianettini of the Poissonnerie Laurent, who bought his pointu, says his brother and restaurant manager Eric, instead of a Porsche. Eric doesn’t have to be joking: restored 1930s pointus start at 35000 Euros.

Sitting outside the Poissonerie overlooking the harbour, I ate excellent supions à la provençale, little whitebait –like friture with two rouilles, one dry and potato-based in the old style, one shiny with oil, a grilled loup. The poissonnerie gets 80% of its fish from outside the region now, including the Atlantic, and sells local fish mainly to keep the trade going, and the bouillabaisse authentic. Frankly, it would pay them to buy in sous vide bouillabaisse and pre-packed fish, like more and more restaurants are doing, whether they admit it or not. Still more gloom, in piscine economic terms, but somehow difficult to fret over, on a vine covered terrace, between an emerald sea and a bottle of chilled Clos Sainte Magdeleine Cassis.

Le Miramar, Marseille, www.bouillabaisse.com 0491914109

La Boite a Sardine, Marseille, www.laboiteasardine.com 0491509595

Chez Jeannot, Marseille, 0491521128

La Poissonnerie Laurent, Cassis, 0442017156

Marseille Tourism details: www.marseille-tourisme.com

Cassis Tourism details: www.ot-cassis.com

Philip Sweeney travelled with Rail Europe, www.raileurope.co.uk, 0844 848 4070, Travel Centre, 193 Piccadilly, London W1j 9EU. Fares from London to Marseille from £119 standard return.