Versailles,
By Joe Ray
I may be a knight, but nobody bothered to tell me that the king’s garden closes in November.
I will remember this the next time I want to bring my mother, an award-winning gardener, to Versailles.
The Potager du Roi – a garden designed for Louis XIV so the Sun King would have fresh vegetables – closes for the winter on November 1. Oops.
Hungry – which, in this case rhymes particularly well with angry – and needing to win back a few points, I couldn’t take bringing Mom to one of those restaurants that ring the chateau’s entrance advertising ten kinds of pizza on a Plexiglas sign.
I ask a the gardener who’s very gently told us we won’t be getting in (and even if we did, our feet would get muddy), who sends us across town to l’aparthé, a restaurant and tea room tucked away next to the Notre Dame church.
Pulling aside the big velour curtain that kept the cold, wet day outside we were greeted with the buzz of French locals.
We split a ‘five vegetable’ soup, a beet and mozzarella salad and a big salad with lardons, potatoes, Roquefort, apples and sun-dried tomatoes put to surprisingly good use.
There’s a solid wine selection, twenty teas (Mariage Frères, bien sûr) and coffee comes with a Carambar candy.
“C’est une bonne adresse,” confirmed a local woman who later sat next to us with her family, probably wondering how we lucked into finding the place.
They’re not reinventing the wheel, but finding a place you’d like to have around the corner from your apartment when your primary concern is just getting something good is a real treat.
Lunch for two and peace of mind for 37 euros.
L’aparthé, 1bis rue Ste Genevieve Versailles 78000. France +33.1.30.21.26.57 Map
Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting
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