Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons

Veggie garden salad

24 Sep 2010: We love staying at Le Manoir in Great Milton, Oxfordshire, UK. It’s one of these unique places that combines quintessential English charm and French excellence. It has this most meticulously tended vegetable and herb garden that produces the most delicately flavoured vegetables! We took the suite called Lavande which has a fireplace in the sitting area. Naturally, we took advantage of this and with a glass of Madeira in hand, it felt almost surreal!





Hen's egg ravioli



My first course was a vegetable garden salad – just a most delicious salad, beautifully dressed, surrounded by a medley of steamed garden vegetables, including carrots, beetroot, turnips, green beans, as well as baby tomatoes of different colours and artichokes. Really delicious! Richard had the hen’s egg ravioli, filled with spinach and mushrooms, with pan-fried girolles and a parsley sauce. While the filling of spinach and mushrooms was quite delicious, the ravioli itself was far from delicate and it was dry around the edges. (In fact, I had the same 2 evenings later and the result was the same and mine wasn’t even lukewarm – it was barely above room temperature.) For this course, we had a half bottle of 2007 Meursault Les Luchets, Roulot. Fabulous nose of citrus, lime, mineral, smoke, vanilla, spicy oak. Delicately creamy texture, with refreshing acidity. The wine needed aeration to round out. Would recommend decanting. 17.5/20



Delicious grouse

Piglet dish

For main course, I had the grouse, which was probably the best grouse dish I’d ever had! The meat was so moist, tender and full of flavours. The bread sauce with cabbage and bacon was a great accompaniment, as were the bruised berries. An “incontournable” dish! Richard had the piglet, which was tasty but did not have the “wow” factor!

Petrus 1970
in excellent condition

Our red wine was a 1970 Château Petrus, which had been quietly waiting in the same cellar since 1973, when it was first bought. The level was remarkable. A medium ruby core. Complex and perfumed nose of violet, rose, blueberry, cigar box, mocha, with a hint of sweet burnt cream. Fully integrated oak character, still showing some fine-grained but much mellowed tannins. Balanced and poised. Initially a hint of madeirisation was detected and the wine tasted a little dry on the finish. After 2 hours of opening, the wine completely transformed. All we could say was one harmoniously aged wine of real class, with a lingering sweet finish. Drinking at peak now and will continue to do so for another 10+ years. 19/20

We had a small platter of cheese, including some maroilles, fouget, an English cheese that tasted like Ossau Iraty and munster. A tip here: munster is just so disastrous with red wine! The Meursault was great with the fouget, as would be a racy but elegant Chablis!

We returned to Le Manoir after a wedding. For our second evening, our focus was a 2007 Chablis Les Clos, René et Vincent Dauvissat. Initially very closed, stoney, mineral, citrus and a hint of cashew. We had the wine decanted. After about an hour, the wine showed some tropical fruit character, pineapple, as well as some greengage and apple, and a touch of smokiness. The wine also took on some weight from the aeration, giving a much more rich and rounded character. It went very well with the stinking bishop cheese that Richard organized for later! 18.5/20

Cocotte of fresh veggies

We both had the same salad as first course.  For main course, I had the ravioli and as mentioned earlier, it was a rather disappointing dish. Richard had seabass with langoustine in a red wine sauce. He said the seabass was delicious but could not quite see the need to include the langoustine and the red wine sauce was appropriately lighter than the version at L’Atelier de Robuchon. However, where the restaurant really impressed us was the two cocottes of freshly cooked garden vegetables – just the sweetest and juiciest vegetables I had tasted: sweet corn, turnips, carrots, green beans and spinach soaking up all the jus and olive oil at the bottom! Almost a meal in itself!

Seabass and langoustine
in red wine sauce

Richard would always have a bit of red. So to finish off the evening, we had a half bottle of 2008 Gevrey Chambertin Vieilles Vignes, Frédéric Magnien. It tasted very young, bursting with ripe red fruit.

Le Manoir is just the perfect place to relax and indulge. It has this special charm that makes you feel at home almost immediately. Don’t miss out on the afternoon tea….even if you are not too peckish….a pot of tea comes with a couple of slices of this most divine lemon cake, so lightly iced at the top and so refreshingly citrus! Breakfast is quite an affair and there is such a choice of fruit at the French buffet, an oxymoron in itself! I had a most delicious sausage and mushrooms and Richard said the haddock with poached egg and spinach was just the perfect start to the day, complete with well cooked toast!