Espedaillac workers’ restaurant

Auberge Beaville in Espedaillac, southwest France.

©Warren Nunn 2004

If you visit the French countryside, a not-to-be missed experience is eating at a traditional workers’ restaurant. It will cost about 12 Euro ($A24) but a more filling and challenging menu will be hard to find.

The midday meal is sacrosanct in France and in rural areas particularly, tradesmen and locals flock to places such as the Auberge Beaville in Espedaillac.

More tourists have switched on to these five-course meals that are served in a manner that has not changed for centuries.

For starters, there’s bread soup followed by a salad entrée (lettuce, tomato, eggs, walnut topped with vinegar dressing) that is served with Gesier – duck’s stomach muscle. Don’t be put off by the thought of it. No part of the bird goes to waste around here.

Tuck in. It’s great! You can always eat it with a big chunk of chewy country bread and wash down with a glass of wine.

The Auberge Beaville was once a farmhouse and has a traditional Cantou (fireplace) a focal point of an intimate restaurant that seats about 40 inside with room for more outside. The fireplaces were built big enough to accommodate two people on box seats that contained salt, a valuable commodity in times past.

A large cooking pot suspended from above sits over a fire that keeps warm both the food and the farmer and his wife.

Back to the meal and Cog-Au-Vin is served. For the uninitiated, the rooster that sits on the plate before you had been force-fed red wine till he expired, then was cooked in red wine! He’s served with pasta and wine sauce.

Now the cheese  – camembert, gruyère and blue cheese with more bread.

Dessert is peaches that have been soaked in wine for two days served with a cake that is set aside to draw up the juices that remain.

Coffee, a long walk and an afternoon nap seem mandatory thereafter. But not for the workers who disappear as quickly as they arrived.