Le Manoir - Abbaretz

New chef (but it is a coming back) new menu I enjoyed all, just be patient if you want to visit on Sunday but it is worth waiting a little

Since coming to live in France, madame and I have often been disappointed with food in restaurants, particularly at the higher end. Unimaginative and predictable menus, old fashioned with heavy, over-rich sauces and a suspicion that one is being served dishes bought in from catering companies. It was therefore a welcome surprise when we lunched at Le Jouffroy d’Abbans recently. Attached to the hotel, Le Manoir de la Jahotiere, this restaurant sits in tranquil parkland, lawns and woodland. It was a lovely sunny day so we elected to eat au terrasse and enjoy our aperitifs (sadly they do not offer gin and tonic! while perusing the menu. Both menu and wine list are quite short and reasonably priced, given the standard of the place. A two or three course menu de jour is available at €19.50 or €23.50 but we felt inclined to push the boat out and eat a la carte, with a fixed price three course meal costing €38.00, cheese extra at €8.00. The choice of dishes is quite limited, but far better that than choosing from a huge list, probably being the contents of the freezer! Five or six course tasting menus are also available. All three courses were absolutely excellent. Original, modern, beautifully cooked and utterly delicious. A bottle of Pouilly Fumé at a not unreasonable €24.00 was a good accompaniment to our selected seafood dishes. We sat and enjoyed our coffees and mignardises while reflecting that our faith in French cooking had been restored.

We were quite surprised at the quality of food and pricing related to other restaurants. Normally in a nice hotel you expect to pay more, but that really wasn't the case hear. For the quality of food and wine it was pretty competitive with the local area.

Please see my review of the Manoir de la La Jahotiere, the hotel. The restaurant is part of the hotel and from our experience of 7th October 2016 very much valued by french people/ locals as they were very much represented. The food was cooked to order and absolutely delicious so, so tasty [fish dishes for both starter and main course]. My husband had a chocolate dessert which he thoroughly enjoyed. It seemed most people were having a 'souffle ' dish for dessert which again was prepared fresh and looked so, so lovely. Both restaurant and hotel are recommended without any reservation and are highly commended to you.

We were seated at a private spot by a window in a lovely room with a piano, stone walls and a wooden barrel ceiling. A charming girl waited on us and was a delight. She wrote down the names of all 6 wines we tasted. They were unusual picks and all perfectly matched with our dinners. The chef served up little surprises... the warm grissini wrapped with Iberian prosciutto came with mascerated popcorn tapenade. The velouté of asparagus was set off by crumbled almond bits. Great scallops. Great langoustines white asparagus.