Auberge du Vieux Puits

Nobody has given Gilles Goujon anything for free. On the contrary. In a bucolic atmosphere far from the mundane noise, in an austere building –sold by the tiny Town Hall– he has been progressively restoring for a decade, he has been able to captivate plenty of customers and reach the top of the French guides: 5 hats in Gault Millau and 3 stars in Michelin. We can say we are before a self-made man who had to fight and sweat blood to reach fame; a fame very few chefs deserve so clearly.
Gilles is a happy man who enjoys eating –eating a lot– and loves the landscape of the place he chose to live in. He is also a noble and genuine person, as we can see through his work and through the products he uses, always excellent and abundant. Generous, in life and at work, he always builds plodding and complex articulations. He transmits his passion for his job; a passion he started feeling in his youth working with Roger Vergé and which allowed him to win the Best Craftsman of France Award.
Get ready for a carnal and refined feast. This is abundance and succulence cuisine made with savoir-faire and passion. Powerful, elegant, virtuosic, full of traditional flavours that have been updated, redesigned and impregnated with a clear personal value.
First example of what we said before: the smoked belly pork foam with bean cream accompanied with a cheese toast, mushrooms and peeled beans; an expressive and distinguished construction. For more inspiration based on timeless values, try Mrs. Carrus’s egg (a soft-boiled egg in appearance) that, once broken in front of the guest by the waiter, bursts out liquidly, like a rotten egg, with black truffle; spectacular, amazing, laid onto a truffled mushrooms purée covered with melanosporum and accompanied by a lukewarm brioche to be chewed and a coffee cup containing the same mushrooms to be drunk; three delicious and complex spaces, full of nuances, all prepared with a refined technique. The big piece of roasted foie gras, fleshy, greasy and brimming with honourable flavour, is pertinently delightful. It is accompanied by a sweet shortcrust pastry with gingerbread, rhubarb with Swiss meringue, and some strawberries slightly soaked with balsamic vinegar. Let us insist on it: this is a spirited and incredibly deeply elaborate cuisine.
Another stunning testimony of raw materials and execution is the gigantic Gillardeau oyster, very shortly heated, raw and hot, covered with mullet caviar and arranged onto a green and exulting rugula and watercress purée and served under a extremely fragile caramel cover, the whole being coated at the last minute with caramelized cream. Somewhere else on the plate, you will find an oyster tartare with seawater foam and a pork tartlet. In short, majestic and greedy perfection. The immensurable tribute to bouillabaisse is a red mullet filet placed onto a potato cylinder stuffed with an onion brandade “en bullinada”, dropped on a fish soup with mussels, cockles, vegetables and toasted bread, and mixed with a rouille foam with saffron which melts when the broth is poured on it. What a delight! Another –very– great dish is the excellent kid proposal, with different facets of the animal: filet in a crunchy leaf with herbs; grilled kid chop, caramelized shoulder, brochette of kidneys and heart, together with a great morel stuffed with meat and enhanced with some thyme flowers juice; sublime.
The raspberry macaron, the cancelé and the full chocolate tartlet are colossal. All the other desserts have the same line and level, like the strawberries with caramelized black olive, lemon thyme sorbet and honey shell-shaped cookie; or like the cocoa cones stuffed with Guanaja chocolate and perfumed with violets, Szechuan pepper and raspberries.