FoodNet

The gourmet's guide to Europe

1903

Page 53

Presented as published in 1903. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
Royal. They were both very well cooked little meals. As I was a guest on both occasions, I do not know what their cost was. In the summer the Casino at Parame has all the usual attractions, and the chemin de fer in the Club Prive is often for very high stakes. Dinard It is rather surprising that, at such a flourishing town of amusement as Dinard is, there should be so few first-class restaurants ; but the people who live in the beautiful villas entertain, for the most part, in their homes, and the greater number of people who stay in the hotels are en pension , and are contented with the table d'hote meals of their hotel. The one restaurant of the first class is that attached to the Restaurant de Royal Hotel. It is a semicircle of r Hotel Royal glass windows, with a wooden roof, and though it affords splendid views of the bay and the islands, is a difficult restaurant to keep cool in summer and warm in autumn. It is closed during the winter months. It is quite first-class in all its appointments. Its cookery justifies its prices, which are on the Bois de Boulogne scale. Leoni’s band makes music outside in the lounge, and M. Renaud, who manages the restaurant of the Cannes Casino so successfully during the winter months, brings his good taste and his knowledge of the predilections of each member of a large clientele to Dinard for the summer season as the manager of the restaurant. The other restaurant in Dinard which merits parti- cular description is the Restaurant Beau Vallon, on Restaurant t^le Vicomte, the peninsula which runs Beau Vallon, out into the Ranee, the great estuary La Vicomte which is between Dinard and St. Malo. The restaurant is an easy walk from the town, and the cliff path by which it can be approached is a French Provincial Fowns 93 pleasant way by which to reach it. The restaurant, which is quite a small building, has in its grounds a terrace half way down the cliff, where there are a dozen little tables set out, and which commands a very fine view across the Ranee to the St. Servan bank. There are also tables sheltered by hedges of privet, and little summer houses, each with a table in it. The Beau Vallon is a favourite place at tea time, and it is also popular at luncheon time. The prices, as a rule, are quite moderate ; but if the proprietor is put on his mettle he can serve a feast of ceremony with due dignity, and charge a high price per head for doing so. A dish of crab is one of the specialties of the house. Crab and langoustes are plentiful in this part of the coast, and in the St. Malo fish-market I saw a number of boxes of sardines in salt. At one time the sardines deserted this coast, but I take it that they have now returned. Very sweet little Slips come from the bay, and one of the delicacies is fried Equilles, the little eels which are dug out of the sand. They are dug for on other sandy beaches, but are, I believe, usually used for bait. They are rather oily, but quite pleasant morsels. Of the many very cheap restaurants which are near the landing-place, and in the main street at Dinard, that Des Colonies in the largest of the streets is the tidiest and most airy. The lunch there is a 2-franc one. The Dinard Clubs