Carcassonne Day Two : Restaurant Au Four Saint Louis
I’m quite review driven when selecting restaurants and this location was highly reviewed and looked like it had some character to it. We had meandered in a little earlier to reserve a table and although the downstairs area is small, there is a larger dining room upstairs and that’s where we were seated.
I like a bit of rustic and the stone building did have a considerable charm to it without feeling formulaic.
The room that we were seated in. We’d obviously decided what we wanted quickly and didn’t need to faff about and fortunately the staff recognised that so we weren’t left waiting for very long. The restaurant has a permanent pizza menu and they always have cassoulet, but everything else changes daily and is specials driven.
The starter of the goat’s cheese whilst Liam went for a French onion soup. I had no idea whether the cheese would be served hot or cold, but it was the former and I could take that gamble as it’s an agreeable cheese to me either way. I have this odd thing that I don’t like melted cheddar, particularly the smell. This is why pizzas should never be made with a cheddar and mozzarella mix, but I digress somewhere here. The cheese was mild and creamy, whilst the salad was, well, salady. Unsure of protocol, we risked getting more water and bread, not knowing whether it would be charged for later on, but it wasn’t. One slight oddity is that we had to reuse the cutlery for the starters and main courses, which didn’t seem entirely usual, especially when they were plonked back on the table.
Cassoulet, with Liam’s traditional local dish of pizza in the background. The Cassoulet consisted of white beans, pork sausage and duck, and it much thicker than I had anticipated, making it filling and especially so when I kept getting more bread delivered to the table so it all transpired to be more substantial that I had expected. The meat was tender and the duck fell off the bone, with the duck skin being perfectly crisp. This is very much a French comfort meal, in the way that Maltesers are one of my comfort meals, and it’s one of the restaurant’s signature dishes. I would add here, for reasons of precision, that I’m now comparing Maltesers to a restaurant cooked Cassoulet. Well, I don’t think I am.
I was also impressed at the craft beer selection, they had numerous different options from FADA and they were suitably interesting, the Blonde was clean tasting with slight fruit notes, whilst the Sunny IPA was hoppy and light. I’m not sure how many French restaurants are moving towards making an effort to embrace craft beer, but I hope that the number steadily increases to move away from the expectation that customers will want to order wine.
The service was attentive and friendly, with the prices being moderate and I was pleased that there were no additional charges added at the end. The staff spoke English, which was very useful for Liam and I, and it felt like a traditional French meal in the heart of the historic walled city of Carcassone. I think that reservations are going to be useful here, perhaps even essential, as it seemed a popular destination for locals and visitors to the city. All really rather lovely.
