On our first day at the Focal factory, they took us out by the Saint-Etienne Airport to a unique little place called Les Domaines Qui Montent (which, I was told, roughly translates to "The land that goes up" or "the land of hills", which makes sense since the area around Saint-Etienne is so hilly). Domaines are the common term for estates where French wines are made. Some are bed and breakfast type villas.
Les Domaines Qui Montent was a newer building (sorry, no pictures - I left my camera back at the Focal plant) that housed a combination restaurant and liquor store. Their selection of French wine, I was told, was impeccible. A number of the guys in our group grabbed two or three bottles - some grabbed more to take home with them.
There was 16 of us in the group (our host, Dominic Baker, brought three of the ladies from the office with us) and they sat us at a long table in the back of the wine area.
Now, so far I've told you of some wonderful food that we had in France (and I've got many more places to talk about) but this one, we hit a stinker. Lunch consited of a small salad, then they brought out a bowl of egg pasta noodles and a warm pan of cooked salmon with a cream sauce on them. The salmon didn't taste very good to me, the noodles were kind of cold and the sauce on the salmon was sort of bland to me.
The salmon also was some of the most boney salmon that I've ever had in my life. One of my colleagues took the right approach - he just had the pasta.
The highlight was the wine - a good French cabernet and a wonderful French chardonney that was better than the cab. I like the fact that the French drink wine at lunch like it's milk or pop. I think we should adopt that practice here.
All in all, Les Domaines Qui Montent was a neat place to visit, but I wasn't impressed with the food. In fact, later that night I got sick. Now, I don't know if it was the flu or food poisoning - no one else in our group got sick - but the purging out of both ends had a strong fish smell. I was down and out for about 24 hours. And for the rest of the trip, I couldn't stand the smell of fish so I didn't order anything other than fowl or beef. Which is too bad because I really like fish.
That was the only bad meal we had on the trip to France.
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