Jacky Dallais’ La Promenade restaurant

Emmanuel Tresmontant-2010-03-03

There are some restaurants beneath the media’s radar that are surprisingly constant, enduring and delightful and, though you wouldn’t think so to look at them, part of the national gastronomic heritage. One such restaurant is La Promenade in Le Petit-Pressigny, a charming village of Touraine bathed in a very pure light, between Tours, Poitiers and Chatellerault.

 

It’s here that, for 25 years, Jacky Dallais has been producing straightforward cuisine with very clean flavours, where the technical mastery inherited from Robuchon goes hand in hand with pleasure and excitement. This wholesome cuisine relies essentially on good produce from the region such as succulent Géline de Touraine chicken, vegetables and apples, game, delicious butter from Verneuil-Sur-Indre and, of course, cheese: Pouligny Saint-Pierre, Sainte-Maure de Touraine, Valençay, Selles-sur-Cher…

 

When you cross the threshold of La Promenade, you enter a large, bright, plain dining room with well spaced out tables. The menu immediately impresses with its prices, a traditional menu coming in at €40 and a taster menu at €85!

 

The wine list, designed by the chef together with sommelier Xavier Fortin, is renowned throughout France. Naturally, it places a heavy emphasis on the great wines of the Loire, but also of Burgundy and the Rhône Valley, all at incredibly affordable prices (even lower than wine merchants’ prices).

 

As for the food, it’s a pure joy with, for starters, a carrot bouillon with broad beans, savory herb and bacon that will put a smile on any diner’s face. All the vegetables are organically grown by a local gardener who supplies exclusively to the Dallais family. The grilled baby leeks in vinaigrette is amazingly melt-in-the-mouth and would be fine as a meal in itself, except here the chef combines them with egg yolk ravioli stuffed with truffles for a starter that really hits the spot!

 

Poached Géline de Touraine with baby vegetables, roasted wild turbot in carrot juice and old-style mustard … The products are refined but never overly pretentious or fashionable.

 

Refined and straightforward are two words that spring to mind on tasting Dallais’ cuisine. This generous, rural chef is ticking along nicely with one Michelin star under his belt, proclaiming nothing other than the pleasure of giving pleasure. A lesson from which many should probably take inspiration…

 

11, rue du Savoureulx

37 350 Le Petit-Pressigny

Tel: +33 (0)2 47 94 93 52