Au Petit Sud Ouest

For a final meal before mom left me to go back to Israel I took her for a lunch in Au Petit Sud Ouest to get a real French duck feast. This place specializes in duck dishes. Wasn’t the optimal to have a duck lunch rather than dinner but this is what we had so we shared one entree and one plate to avoid exploding in the middle of the day. Entering the restaurant, it looks like another epicerie traiteur shop, selling wine, foie gras and such. But in the back it becomes an actual restaurant! Homey feeling, toasters for self use in every table, wood chairs and tables, hosts that you will probably often find sitting together with regular customers and sharing their dish. The hostess was very understanding and had no problems with sharing our dish, an act that in a french restaurant can not be taken for granted. For example, in a fast food lunch place serving quiches and soups we were not able to order a quiche menu and share it. We were banned away for conspiring to do so. Next time we had to hide these intentions. It’s probably uncommon and unaccepted in french eating culture. This place, in the contrary, serves big portions of foie gras as the entree, it will obviously have to be shared otherwise people were dropping like flies. Actually sharing a plate of foie gras in the beginning of a meal is quite normal come to think of it.

Toaster with a bread basket on the table, ducks napkins

Can you spot the host sitting with the table in the front of the restaurant?

We took the pan-fried foie gras with apples as an entree

Mom loved it! I liked it too but I wished the apples were cooked somehow more than just cubed and steamed. It wasn’t too sweet but still sweet enough to match well with the crispy liver that was melting in the mouth.

For main course we took the Magret de Canard with Cepes mushrooms. The whole breast of fattened duck arrived to our table, sliced (after cooking) for our convenience 

After ordering I remembered I wasn’t asked for the degree of cooking, so I called out and asked it to be cooked rose hoping it won’t be too late. Fortunately I was told that this is how they cook it anyway 🙂 How it should be, without asking the customers what they think they want, I like it.

The duck was cooked on the spot. All the dishes were very simple but very french and south-west typical cuisine. Excellent duck, pink and delicious. The cepes were very meaty and a nice combination with the duck. I think it’s not the cepes season now so I guess they used frozen cepes but it was still working. We had this meal with glasses of white wine. We couldn’t even finish the whole thing so I took some lefovers home. Mom wanted to take it with her to the airplane but it was leaking when we got to my place so it just had to stay. Came up to about 60 euro for the both of us (but we did take the more expensive dishes in the menu). Good thing we had to walk back home…