La Tour Des Vents, Bergerac
Le Moulin de Malfourat, 24240 Monbazillac. tel: 05 5358 3010.
Angela's brother-in-law Matt had booked a nice restaurant for us during our stay in France. It was a place called La Tour Des Vents. Just up the road to Chateau Monbazillac by the water tower that you can see from the main road. It had great views over Bergerac and surrounding areas. They gave us a small round room by the entrance which suited us fine and kept our noisy lot from the rest of the diners as well.The maitre'd was extremely helpful and charming. He basically read through and translated the entire menu for us. You have to be a patient person to do that to a bunch of tourists. After he left we did dare ask what such and such was. I think collectively we were able to piece things together.
Thinking that it was be a good supportative idea to order some wines from the local area I asked for a Chateau Montdoyen and the Maitre'd pointed out that it was a sweet wine. Trying to impress I totally failed. After a bit more thinking the second attempt was better and we went for a white Bordeaux Graves that was golden in colour and rounded that even Hien liked it, plus one that seemed to have been made by an English sounding couple by the name of Sue and William Boyd, Chateau Pecacheral (sp??). The maitre'd even jokingly pointed the waitress in the direction of the wine expert, moi!
Me and Matt had the four different types of foie gras as a starter. I especially liked the pan-fried one that was soft and delicious. Some others went for the four different types of tomato with seared tuna. There was even one sweet cherry tomato on a cocktail stick with a "toffee apple" type glaze.
The lamb, steak and duck dishes were very tender and cooked to perfection. I had the lamb main course that was made up of a rack of lamb plus a small noisette of lamb as well. Both were very tender. Even though the rack was quite pink I had no problem eating it. That is something we found here and even more so in our BBQ the next day, is that the meat is fantastic.
There was a round of cheeses before the actual desserts. We mostly left the choices to the waitress seeing as there were no cheddar or dairylea in sight. For dessert Angela had the apple tart and that was a good sized round tart on its own, rather than just a slice. Most of us had the medley of four desserts which that night was made up of a creme brulee, raspberries sandwiched in brand snaps, strawberries with ice cream and a fruity sauce, chocolate cake and custard, and finally a strawberry and Chinese gooseberry in the middle.
The three hours that passed by went smoothly and didn't feel at all long. The staff were very attentive and everyone enjoyed it when they all simultaneously lifted the silver plated covers on presenting our main courses. This place comes well recommended if you are in the area.
Price-wise the set meals were 24, 35 or 42 euros or thereabouts. We had two bottles of wine at 30 euros each but they start from about 18 euros to 160.
