All the guidebooks recommend Christian Etienne as the "Top Table" in Avignon. We hadn't planned on going here, as been Michelin starred it is more expensive than your average reataurant. As it happened La Fourchette was fully booked. In hindsight it was a good thing.
Certainly all other reviews of Christian Etienne were universally excellent. Also fortunately for us, it wasn't fully booked, and we were able to secure a booking (on the night in question).
The website contains all the menus. We went for the Pork tasting menu.
Unfortunately a combination of over-excitment at the food, and slight embaressment at taking photos of the food, I missed a couple of courses.
We started with an Amuse bouche of Veloute.. Creamy tasty
Pig's trotter croquette, porcini mousse .
Provençal pork sausage with Savoy cabbage, salad of Chinese cabbage,
roasted almonds.
Truely excellent
Fricassee of calamari with saffron Swiss chard, quinoa and sweet chorizo sticks,
sauce of chopped wild onions
Exquisite. calamari was ultra fresh and cooked to perfection, and matched fantgastically with the chorizo, and onions. No photo
Butternut squash velouté, mousse with local pork, waffle with Provençal snails
When this dish was presented to us, our waitress explained it in French. as a result we didn't know what we were eating at the time. We came to the conclusion that we have a pesto and olive dresing on the waffle, so it was a biut of a surprise later when we found it our 'olives' were in fact snails.
Filet mignon of Iberico pork, braised leeks, olive croutons
I'd had Iberico Pork, roasted before, and found it dissapointing. Then it was a roast loin, here it was diced, and fried off. Absolutely delicious.
Beaufort sliced with quince jelly, blood sausage, mesclun salad with walnut oil
Jellied beets, green pepper coulis, lemon-galanga sorbet, a touch of garlic
All in all I highly recommend Christian Etienne. The food was delish.. Service was prompt and pleasant.. (one slight confusion when we got the snail dish explained to us in French), and finally at the end of the meal Christian came around to all tables.. where we mumbled great praise upon him in our broken French
All in all I highly recommend Christian Etienne. The food was delish.. Service was prompt and pleasant.. (one slight confusion when we got the snail dish explained to us in French), and finally at the end of the meal Christian came around to all tables.. where we mumbled great praise upon him in our broken French
