An Intermezzo: The Restaurant LE MOULIN DE MON GRAND-PÈRE in Figanieres

I do not know when other bloggers write there blogs. I guess there are professional bloggers that do nothing else then writing blogs…

Well I personally write many of my blog entries during holidays. Holidays give you the chance to get a positive distance to your job and to reflect – in agile you would say: run your personal retrospective.

Nevertheless holidays are as well holidays. We – my wife and I – often spend holidays in Italy or in the Provence, the southern part of France. We travel around, book a B&B or a “petit auberge” in any of the small villages in the middle of nowhere exercising a lot of sports like climbing and biking.

The fun thing with sports is: you get hungry – and you can enjoy a delicious dinner without a guilty conscience. Sad thing of most small villages is: the only restaurant at the place is the Pizza truck.

During these spring holidays we stayed in Figanières, a small town north of Draguignon in France. If you not know where Figanieres is – don’t worry, Google map knows. Point is: Biking all day and awful hungry we searched for place to eat. Any place would be sufficient – even the Pizza truck. But luckily we passed by a weird looking building with a small sign outside that said:

What to say… everything at LE MOULIN DE MON GRAND-PÈRE is special. These are the Google Maps coordinates to get there. If you are around in this region – book a table for dinner, especially if you like

• The very special atmosphere of an ancient oil mill, carefully and lovingly restored
• Time for each course to enjoy, to have a good talk and to amuse
• A very special owner, cook, person.
• A course of culinary delights, as perfect arranged and served as tasty

…well, then you found the right place to go.

When we entered the LE MOULIN DE MON GRAND-PÈRE, the proprietaire was very surprised “you just drop in without reservation?!”. I wondered as it was 7:30pm and the room was empty. The answer on our “is there any fault in this?” was: “No, but I love to serve a perfect dinner – so I need my time and I have to take my time. I like to be prepared for every single guest”. Doesn’t that sound promising?

“So if you are not in a hurry” the proprietaire said, “please seat yourself I I’ll do my best.” …and – while he rushed through his open kitchen he started telling us stories about his life.

What to tell you… the evening was very special. The waiter – we guess the proprietaire’s father, but this is a guess only – was a special person as well. If you think about a true native south France character, you got it. He lead us through three courses every single one a feast for your eyes and outstanding tasty.

We spend about four hours in this very special location. When we finally tried to leave our proprietaire knocked off a bottle of something – well I do not remember.

The Proprietaire

The propritaires father?

Luckily our B&B was two hundred meters walking distance. Well just take a look at the pictures above and decide yourself. This evening at LE MOULIN DE MON GRAND-PÈRE was special.