Tuesday evening at Le Goret

On Tuesday evening, the others went over to Volnay to see Vincent Perrin, while I got caught up on my reading material - the New Yorker and Lucky Peach - at the gite. We then met up in town and headed over to "the pork place" aka Le Goret. Googling it just now, apparently it's the no.1 restaurant in Beaune on Tripadvisor. Could this be because our cousins from over the pond like large portion sizes?

We certainly enjoyed the experience. The decor is quite basic, with wooden tables - a dog stretched out under one of them - and the menu scattered about on various blackboards. The chef/proprietor, who clearly enjoys his food, explained our options to us - basically it's sausages or pork. Or jambon. That's it! We chose the pork, and he disappeared to cook it. A few minutes later, an absolutely enormous piece of pork arrived for each of us, about 5 cm thick.

It was slightly pink in the middle and the chef explained to us that it was supposed to be like that and was nothing to worry about. I see this debate has cropped up today, article in the Observer here. None of us got food poisoning so this guy knew what he was doing. It was very good, but defeated me - I think I ate about half! To drink, we had a Moulin-a-Vent which was the perfect accompaniment to this sort of food. The total bill for three, including wine and a pre-prandial was 115 euros so about £35 each. Overall: hearty, rustic, pleasurable.