Lunch at La Maison Jaune, St Remy de Provence

Lunch at La Maison Jaune, St Remy de Provence 29 June 2011
11.5 x 16.5", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

One of the things I really enjoy about France is that you can go into a restaurant - on your own - for a four course meal like the one that you can see above - and nobody thinks you are the slightest bit odd.

However they might look twice when you pull out a sketchbook and proceed to sketch every course before you eat it - but that's what I like to do!

I particularly like going to restaurants with Michelin stars and it's an absolute rule of mine that I'm not allowed to visit France without eating in a restaurant with at least one Michelin star.

Which is how I come to have this post about Lunch at La Maison Jaune, a restaurant in St Remy de Provence which got its one Michelin star in 2008.  (This is the link to the Menus)

This is out of sequence re France but as I said this week I'm trying to get all my sketching of meals posted before I do my review of the year!

Back to 29th June - Sarah and I got up early so we could leave the house at 7am and get Sarah to Marseilles Airport by 9am for her flight home.

And then there was one!

Those who know me well will know that one of my perennial preoccupations while travelling and sketching is with visiting the places where people draw or painted.  That was the grand plan for this Wednesday.  I was to have a Vincent Van Gogh in Provence day with a nice lunch in the middle.

I'd already decided that it was stretching it to try and do both Arles and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in one day so I opted for Saint-Rémy this visit as I'd been to Arles on a previous visit.

Hence the plan was to drive north from the airport, across the Crau Plain and the Alpilles to the town of St Remy de Provence where Van Gogh was committed to an asylum in the Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole in 1889.  He  painted frequently in the vicinity of the hospital in the year or so he was in the hospital.

I wanted to drive across the Crau Plain because this was the place where Van Gogh did so many of his reed pen drawings of the farming of the countryside which I so admire.  I wanted to see if it was as I remembered it and whether one could see its potential for drawings.  Here's an example - Harvest - The Plain of La Crau, 1888 reed pen drawing by Vincent Van Gogh - done while living in the Yellow House at Arles.

Then I crossed the Alpilles - the white mountains which so often feature in Van Gogh's paintings while he stayed in this area eg in the background of his painting of cypresses ( see below ) which he painted while in the hospital

Wheatfield with cypress tree by Vincent Van Gogh
- the Alpilles Mountains form the pale blue background to this painting

View from Van Gogh's bedroom window in the Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole

No sketches or photographs en route from either of these places as the road was not conducive to stopping - however as you can see I could take photos of the Alpilles from the Monastery.

One of the reasons I chose St Remy was because it was market day (closing at lunchtime).

I visited the Market, took lots of photos of yet more provencal food and flowers, had a lovely lunch (see sketch at top of post), visited the Van Gogh Museum in town and then visited the monastery hospital, St Paul de Mausole where Van Gogh lived for a year after becoming ill in Arles.

I'm going to deal with the visit to the Monastery in another post - so this is all about markets and food!

Here are some of the sights of the market.  Then I'm going to give you the menu for lunch.

La Maison Jaune, 15 Rue Carnot, 13210 Saint Remy de Provence 

Table setting on the Terrace

and so to the tasting extravaganza I had planned for the middle of the day.

I got to sit on a shady terrace with a tiled roof slight breeze in the hottest part of the day as I worked my way through five courses and listened to the market packing up - and then music being played down in the square.  It was very peaceful.

Lunch was extremely leisurely as I sketched, ate and coloured my sketches of the different courses - which were all stunningly good.  These were:

• Mise en Bouche - an appetiser (top left) gaspacho with mint, goats cheese and ham and an egg.  This set the tone for the whole meal given the level of attention given to each item
• Braised artichokes with Lomo Iberico and  air dried tomatoes - a wonderful combination and a chance for me to taste the wondrous loin of the Iberian Pig
• Roast Pigeon with Apricot Chutney Marmalade with a side dish of Fennel and Fresh Almonds - this was beautifully cooked and a wonderful balance of flavours,  Plus since I watched Masterchef recently I now know how fresh almonds are prepared!
• a selection of fresh and aged goats cheeses and ewe cheeses and rhubarb marmalade - I like goats cheese but there wasn't quite enough of a variation for me to make this the same standard as the rest of the courses.  Subtle rather than wow!
• Roasted Pineapple with ginger and vanilla, an amaretto granite and nougatine  This was wow! the variation in the tastes and textures was amazing and provided a deeply satisfying note on which to finish.

I was also rather pleased with the fact that I'd left enough room to get the whole meal on one double page spread.  No mean feat when you don't know what's coming or what it will look like!

You can see the menu proper (below) better on Flickr.  I found the restaurant and service to be excellent.  It was quiet at lunchtime but they apparently get very busy in the evenings.  I think I probably went at the perfect time for me. :)

Links:

• Four go Painting in Provence
• La Maison Jaune, 15 Rue Carnot, 13210 Saint Remy de Provence (location on Google Maps)
• Tel  04. 90. 92. 56. 14 | email lamaisonjaune@wanadoo.fr
• The restaurant is closed December and January.

Note:  Parking is in designated areas and the town is very busy on market day and it can be difficult to find a place to park.  The restaurant is right in the centre of the old town.  Hence if visiting one needs to park up and then walk to the old town - it's not far.

More from The Provence Sketchbook (2011)

Leadenhall Market - Hanging the Christmas Tree Lights

Leadenhall Market Christmas Tree - hanging the lights 14.11.10.
pen and ink and coloured pencils in Large Moleskine Sketchbook, 11" x 11"
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Today, the RWS Sketching Group were out and about in the City of London on a day which progressed from spots of rain to drizzle to heavy rain.

So I opted for sketching in Leadenhall Market where they were putting up the Christmas Tree outside the Brokers Wine Bar where one of my exhibitions was in March this year.  Apparently this week is the Winter Festival in the Market and the Lord Mayor of London is due to formally light up the lights on Friday 19th November at 5pm.

This sketch is of the lights being hung.  It was quite intriguing watching three blokes work out where they all needed to go!

I think I may well return and do a late afternoon/early evening one of the lights on.

Leadenhall Market

The next exhibition of the Drawing London Group will be at the Brokers Wine Bar in Leadenhall Market opening the end of March 2010.

I visited it last week to check out the venue last week prior to collecting my pictures from our exhibition at the Barbican. It's on the first floor with lots of windows overlooking the market buildings and is the sort of place where people meet up all day long!

A view of Leadenhall Market
pen and sepia ink in a Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Leadenhall Market itself is a splendid example of traditional market archtecture with enormous pillars, a wrought iron and glass roof and enormous lights hanging down from the roof. It used to be a food market but sadly has experienced a "Covent Garden" makeover and is now full of restaurants, pubs and wine bars for brokers and expensive dress shops for the female of the species!

I've been meaning to sketch in Leadenhall Market for years - without managing to do so. I'm really sad I didn't do so while it was still a proper market. However since it occurs to me that sketches of the City and Leadenhall Market might be appropriate for this exhibition - and since the market is under cover I'm thinking I might go back and do some more sketching this next month prior to the exhibition. After all the architecture is very splendid and there's an awful lot of people around to bring some life to a drawing!

You can see my first effort above right - the colours aren't right as I was working with my minimalist set of colours. However it's given me an idea for one view for a drawing.

Below you can find out a bit more about the market.

Leadenhall Market

The Romans built Londinium on the north bank of the Thames - just north of London Bridge. In about 140AD, the city is thought to have been home to about 45,000- 60,000 people. The site of Leadenhall Market used to be where the basilica and forum were. Apparently the forum was bigger than Trafalgar Square and is reputed to be the biggest Roman forum north of the Alps.

In the middle of the Roman town, the Forum was the largest marketplace building north of the Alps, measuring an almost perfect square 168 x 167 m. Two main building phases have been distinguished. The early forum, built after the time of the rebellion of Boudicca, had an open courtyard and several shops around it. The identification of this building as a forum has been disputed, and it has been argued that these were merely large warehouses. At the beginning of the second century the complex was significantly enlarged. The forum still had an open courtyard with shops around, but also a large Basilica. The forum was in use till around AD 300
Wikipedia - Roman London

The name of Leadenhall comes from a mansion which used to stand nearby.

The interior of Leadenhall Market in London
from the Illustrated London News, 1881.

This is what the City of London website has to say about Leadenhall Market - Dick Whittington was given the first leasehold on the Manor of Leadenhall! In Victorian times it had the reputation of being the best poutry market in London.

A meat and fish market occupied a series of courts behind the grand lead-roofed mansion of Leadenhall on Leadenhall street in the 14th century. It was an established meeting place of the Poulterers as early as 1321, whilst the Cheesemongers from the countryside were bound in 1397 to take their produce into the market of Leadenhall.

In 1408 the occupational leasehold title of the Manor of Leadenhall was assigned to Richard Whittington (the Lord Mayor of the time) and citizens of London, and the freehold was conveyed in 1411 to the City of London. The market continued to be used for the sale of fish, meat, poultry and corn, although in 1666 portions of the market were destroyed by the Great Fire. In 1881 the City's architect, Horace Jones, designed the present wrought iron and glass-roofed buildings.

Corporation of London - Leadenhall Market

Links:

• Google maps - Location of Leadenhall Market
  
• Museum of London - Roman London and Digging up the Romans and Town Life
• Wikipedia - Roman London and Leadenhall Market
• Leandehall Market - traders website - History