Sud de France 4.4: Out to Lunch at Béziers’ Au Soleil Restaurant & Salon de Thé. .

Au Soleil Restaurant

I define art as something that surprises and delights me and by that standard “Au Soleil” restaurant is a work of art. It is everything a small eatery should be and more. It is an intimate Salon de Thé, at the heart of a city with a dining area decorated with a minimalist sensibility that makes for clean lines and an airy atmosphere.   

“Au Soleil” (In the Sun) is one of several restaurants on the square between Béziers’ la Madeleine church and “les Halles,” its large indoor public market. 

A Roman statue found in the city.

To me, Béziers is one of the most beautiful cities in France but, like so many places, it is struggling to define its future while simultaneously trying to repair past neglect. 

It was settled in Neolithic times, was a Roman town, then a medieval center and then it finally boomed at the end of the 19^th century (only to have its fortunes dimmed in the 20^th.)


But that 19th century heyday left the city with a legacy of beautiful places. One of my personal  favorites is the “allée Paul Riquet” a several block long, tree lined promenade, with the city’s municipal theater at one end and a delightful English style formal park, the “Plateau des Poètes,” at the other. 

A "Belle Epoque" building in Beziers

The allée itself is surrounded by gorgeous “Belle Époque” buildings replete with lovely terraces and lots of exquisite, intricate ironwork. And it’s just a short walk from Au Soleil, through Béziers’ clothing shop lined streets to the quiet of the allée and the park.

I have photographed and written about food and restaurants for dozens years and I’m pretty jaded about the subject. I’ve been in Michelin star restaurants and in American “Best Places” but for me “Au Soleil” is among my favorites. Simply it is one of the best small restaurants I’ve ever been in. 

At  “Au Soleil” the whole point is the food. We were in the city on some business the other day and decided to have lunch at the restaurant. After settling into our chairs we ordered tea and one of the day’s special, the “La Terroir” plate. Terroir refers to the special nature of the land and this plate is a celebration of the land and autumn. 

Unfortunately when the food arrived I jumped in and started eating, forgetting that I wanted to do some photos first. So please excuse the nibbles I took out of the food in the picture below.

On the plate from left clockwise around you can see a small salad, a duck and potato “parmentier” (which I’ve opened up to reveal the duck), jambon (dried ham) with a red wine confit, a thick autumn vegetable soup (in the glass jar), an onion tart and chicken mousse in pastry (which I cut open too.)

Each of these items was superbly prepared but what really caught my attention was how well their flavors worked together. In my experience the matching of flavors and textures on a plate is one of the hardest tasks for a chef. And as a result I think that you can often judge a chef’s skill by checking out how they've presented the vegetables. 

Most chefs take pride in their main preparation but the vegetables are often an afterthought, put on the plate to provide some color or to fill an empty space. This was not the case  with my “la terroir” plate. The onion tarte was a treat in itself. Moist and light, the egg and onion mixture was hot and perfectly cooked. 

It is not the kind of sensitive and creative care you see every day.

Our lunch cost us about $12 USD each and as I left the restaurant I thought to myself that if “Au Soleil” were in Paris the meal would have easily cost three times as much.

And that’s what is so special about the Herault. It is a region that has been overlooked and bypassed. Undervalued wines and a lack of big name star supporters it lay dormant. But today its the fastest growing region in France, talent and new ideas. With luck in a few years Béziers will become the the Paris or Berlin of Sud de France.

The city hall mural complete with the mayor and the artist.

Sud de France 2.5: When the Google fails where are the cops when you need them?

We had planned to turn ourselves into the police today. 

According to our long stay visas within a week of arriving we are supposed to check in with the local Prefecture of Police.  

Naturally we go online to find it and when we Google “Prefecture” we get the web page for the Sous-Prefecture in Beziers. There’s a little Google map on the page to help find them and I zoom out to look for landmarks in Beziers.

To my surprise as the map takes in more area, I discover that the arrow is stuck in the town of Montblanc some twenty miles from Bezeiers. Okay I think, perhaps it is part of the metro area of Beziers just as parts of Long Island are part of metro NY. 

But I'm unsure of this so I go to Google Earth which finds the address again in Montblanc. Well if you can’t trust the Google and Mama Google Earth who can you trust? 

So Diane puts on her high-profile intimidate-the-locals suit and grabs her corporate lawyer attaché case full of papers and we head out to meet the cops.

The drive is uneventful. We roll through the hills of the Herault and reach  Montblanc a typical southern French town that has grown as a retirement community with loads of small newish townhouses. 

As directed by Google we turn off the D-18 make a right on the Rue de la Paix and a left onto the Avenue Edouard Herriot. But after passing by a block or two of residences it’s clear that the Google has steered us wrong. 

When all else fails in France you go to the nearest Mayor’s Office and beg for help. Every town has a mayor and every mayor has the kind of power that a Boss Tweed or Mayor Daley could have only dreamed about. Want to put a terrace on your home get the mayor’s okay and it’s a done deal. Want a house? Ask the mayor.

But things are not going well today and as we open the door to the Mayor’s office and the doormat gets caught and is dragged along until it jams the door halfway open. We push at it but it won’t budge. 

Sacre bleu! The Americans are destroying City Hall. A secretary sees us and shrugs. She comes out and gives the door a hard rap, freeing it. She passes me with a grim face and I try to be invisible. This is probably a really bad moment to ask where the Prefecture is—but we do it anyway. 

"Where is the office of the Prefecture?" The secretary looks at us as though we are morons from space who have landed on the wrong planet. 

"What Prefecture? “She asks and Diane explains that we have a slip of paper from the Consulate in San Francisco that says we have to see the police when we arrive in France. She hands the secretary the wrinkled 1x5 inch strip of paper that was slipped into our passports by the Consulate. 

It is a sorry looking piece of paper that looks like it was hastily cut out of a larger piece of paper and it hardly looks official.

If anything it resembles an amateur's ransom note. 

And even worse it is written in English. The Consulate sent a note in English and not French. 

The secretary looks at it and puts it down as though it is covered with dog poop. Her expression says “What is wrong with you people?”

Score another point for the morons.

She shakes her head, goes to her computer and prints out a map--a Google map--with a large red arrow pointing to a spot in the middle of the city of Beziers.

“La,” she says, “C’est la.” It is there.

I look at the map and notice that the scale is so big that the arrow covers most of the city of Beziers and the tip of the arrow is pointing to a blank white space.The Google has struck again.

But we smile, we thank her a million times and gently ease ourselves out the door making sure not to get it stuck again.

Back in the car we get on the road and I’m feeling like an outlaw--like Bonnie and Clyde, like enough is enough.

If the cops want us badly enough let them stop hiding from us. Come out in the open "flics" and find us. Otherwise we won’t can't find you. 

Maybe we will go to our very own Mayor and throw ourselves on her mercy.
Ça va?

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer