Restaurant Review: Restaurant La Tour

La Tour, Sancerre, France My delicious dessert with cherry ice cream and lemongrass sauce

La Tour, Sancerre, France
My delicious dessert with cherry ice cream and lemongrass sauce

It was my first time dining in a Michelin star restaurant and La Tour has one.  We were in Sancerre for a language school and I wanted to have one really nice dinner in France before we left.  We booked a reservation for Thursday evening.  We talked about whether we should take the kids and we had a list of babysitters.  Mel thought we should take them so they could experience it too, and I am so glad we did.

La Tour has 3 Prix Fixe Menus.  One of them comes with wine.  We opted for the middle one which was 58 Euros for 5 courses.  We ordered wine a la carte.

We spent some time before we went for dinner, preparing the boys for what to expect.  We asked them if they would like to go to a really special dinner.  They said yes.  We told them they would need to eat with a knife and fork and would need really good manners.  We told them there would be dessert.  We told them the food would be really interesting  and they would need to try everything but they didn’t have to eat what they didn’t like.  They were interested to try it out.

We had 5 courses plus an Amuse Bouche, a soup, and the tiny dessert at the end of the meal.

The courses were:

Amuse Bouche–a tiny square of water melon with goat cheese and mint and a homemade crisp with shrimp and sesame.

Soup–Cuttlefish with soy broth

Salad–simple greens with viniagrette

La Tour, Sancerre, France

La Tour, Sancerre, France
Appetizer–Gambas croustillantes à la noix de coco, nouilles de sarrasin

Appetizer–Gambas croustillantes à la noix de coco, nouilles de sarrasin

Fish Course–I don’t know what it was but it was gorgeous

Main–Cochon de Mr Dougy, brocolis et piquillos (Mel and Emerson got this)

Pigeon de Saint Quentin sur Nohain, fenouil et cuisses confites  (Xander and I had this)

Assiette de fromages, grand classique

Dessert–Île flottante, verveine et cerise  (Mel and I had this)

Fraises melba (the kids had this)

Petite Fours–tiny lemon tarts and tiny chocolate tarts

We didn’t eat out much on this trip.  Just a few times.  But I was so glad we did this.  It was interesting, it was memorable, it was very French.

The Amuse was quite tasty.  The bread stick made with shrimp and sesame was so delicious.  The melon with goat cheese was fresh and bright.  There were so many courses and the food was so delicious, we ate too much.   We would have been okay, but in the beginning the boys left some amazing food behind and we ate some of theirs.  We had to stop!

Each course was spectacular.  The Gambas appetizer was one of the best courses ever! I had never

Yummy stinky french cheese

Yummy stinky french cheese

eaten pigeon and it was so interesting.  It was served medium rare and I thought it tasted slightly steak-like.  My dessert lingered on my tongue as we left and lingered in my mind for weeks.  The flavors of cherry ice-cream and lemongrass sauce were spectacular together.  Picking cheese

La Tour, Sancerre, France Cheese Cart

La Tour, Sancerre, France
Cheese Cart

from the cheese cart and having the boys choose and try a variety of interesting cheeses was a highlight of this meal for me.

The boys tried everything and had really great manners.  Between courses we let them go outside on the square and blow off a little steam.  It was a 3 hour dinner and they got more enjoyment out of it than I expected.  One of my favorite memories of our trip is them earnestly choosing their cheeses from the cheese cart.  And they liked the food.  They were adventurous and they enjoyed the journey.

I am so glad we went and so glad we shared this experience with our children.

 

 

 

 

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  1. My Top Ten Most Memorable Restaurant Meals | cruciblebookii.com - […] were able to order in French, too, which made it even more fun for us.  Here’s a previous post …

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