Overdidit Sunday

21st October 2012

It has to be said, Épernay is essentially a crummy town. In England it would be Bracknell, or Basildon. It’s surprising really, you would think that the very heart of Champagne country would be an immense tourist draw with plenty of facilities for oodles of international visitors. Mais non. It’s a bland single-industry town with a boring bunch of shops and bistros, a handful of champagne bars being the only indication that there’s anything going on here.

Oh, except for the Avenue de Champagne of course. Entirely at odds with the rest of the town, there is a grand kilometre-long cobbled avenue lined with the ostentatious villas and cellars of most of the great names in champagne. Moët & Chandon, Perrier-Jouët, Pol Roger, Castellane, Mercier, the list goes on. Of course there’s nothing but champagne houses. Wouldn’t it be so outrageously wrong to stick a nice cafe half-way down the avenue? Or even at either end?

To cut a long story short, by the time we’d been out champagne tasting in the Cotê des Blancs in the morning and wandering up and down the Avenue de Champagne tasting in the afternoon we’d hit a magic 50 champagnes tried and tested, and were feeling fairly flaky when we sat down for dinner at the Michelin-starred Les Berceaux.

Didn’t like it. And I refuse to believe it’s only because I was a bit tired out. The food was rich and unimaginative, some of the dishes unbalanced, and frankly I don’t need another slab of cold foie gras with toast. If that’s all you need to offer to win a Michelin star in France, no wonder there’s one in every big town.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2012 at 1:41 pm and is filed under France. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.