La Goret- Beaune, France

La Goret; The Piglet

France! One of the most interesting small towns I visited on my vacation in France this summer was Beaune (pronounced "Bone"). It is a small town in the Burgundy region and it was truly beautiful.  We were only in Beaune for one night, so we wanted to take advantage of it.  An online site lists 150 restaurants in Beaune and my Dad 

found one that we thought would be fun to go to.  It is currently listed as the top restaurant in the town but we choose it because of the description of the menu.  Like many of the restaurants there it is quite small and it is on a small side street, so you may have missed it.  Its name is "Le Goret", which translates as “the piglet.”  It was pretty funky and a great experience.

The restaurant definitely had the right name because literally everything on the menu was pork and the restaurant was themed around pork. Almost all of the decorative items were pigs or pig related: pig shaped lanterns, pig shaped bowls, pig shaped chalk boards with the menu, etc.  

This is the menu, pig-shaped of course!

When we arrived at the restaurant we quickly realized that NOBODY in the restaurant spoke English except us.  The place was packed and we thought that it was a good sign that it was filled with locals instead of tourists.  We were greeted by the owner, who is also the chef and it turned out also served as our waiter.  He was really friendly.  We used our limited French speaking skills and played a bit of charades with the chef to try and decipher the menu.  After several funny minutes we figured out that there were only three menu items.  We figured out one was a pork chop.  We also knew that sausage was one of the specialties but we had trouble figuring out the third dish, eventually figuring out it was pig cheek in a burgundy wine sauce.  Because we were with another family and my Grandma, we were able to try everything! My brother, my friend and I, as well as my Grandma all had the pork chop.  My Dad and my friend’s Dad had the sausage while my Mom, my friend’s Mom, went with the cheeks! With the language communication problems we really weren’t 100% sure about what all was coming, but when it came out it had definitely been worth the wait.

My Pork chop!

My pork chop was way better than I had imagined it would be. It had very little fat, was very tender and had great flavor. Now, I usually don't like pork chops because of their fattiness and their lack of flavor, but this pork chop was one that I definitely enjoyed. With no fat and a lot of flavor, I am happy to say it was definitely worth my time. It came with a side of fried potatoes, and those were pretty good, too! They were very crunchy on the outside, but fall-apart tender on the inside.  Pretty good, if I do say so myself! Everyone’s dish came with at least

some of the restaurant’s home-made sausage, which was also very good.

The Dad’s had actually thought their meal, which was called the “trilogy” was going to be three different cuts of pork.  Instead it was three types of sausages.  My Dad was a little disappointed that there wasn’t a chop with his, but the portions were so big that everyone was able to eat some of each.  I think the chops were everyone’s favorite.  The restaurant also served a pesto sauce on certain cuts of its sausage.  My family loves pesto, so we all thought was a great idea and gave an extra punch of flavor to the meal.

For dessert we decided to have ice cream at the restaurant, which was the only dessert they had.  I would say that there were about eight or ten different flavors, but since our French skills didn’t really include knowing the names of tons of ice cream flavors we had to make guesses about what they really were. I had the caramel ice cream, my brother had the chocolate, and my friend had the strawberry. When the ice cream came out, it looked amazing! Not only that, but it tasted great! Unlike all the caramel ice cream that has that fakey caramel taste, this

The Sausage "Trio"

actually tasted like caramel, and as a bonus, it had caramel chunks in it! Everyone else's ice cream was good, but in my opinion my ice cream was the best!

At the end of the meal my Dad asked the owner if we could get a picture with him because it had been such a fun, different kind of meal.  The owner said yes and shocked us by immediately grabbing a hat that looked like a big, pink, pig’s head and pulling it over his head.  He seemed really happy to take the picture and it was obvious that he had done it a lot in the past.  When we were trying to get the picture taken in front of the restaurant some local guy kept photobombing us – jumping in EVERY time we took the picture.  That was weird, but kind of funny too.

As always, I will be rating the places I go on my Cookie Counter Scale of Cookieness, with one cookie being old, burnt, stale oatmeal raisin cookie nastiness, and ten cookies being perfect, warm, gooey, chocolate chip (my favorite) cookie goodness! My Cookie Counter ratings for Le Goret are:

   Food: 8 Cookies
   Atmosphere: 8 Cookies

   Service: 8 Cookies