So British, in Toulouse

 

I like to go into the city of Toulouse. I like to just wander. There are so many little streets that are wonderfully wanderable, and the sights I find still take my breath away, even after three years in France.

I usually have an exceptional sense of direction but here it is completely screwed and it’s something to do with the earth’s magnetic poles I think. In France, I am closer to the North Pole, with the sunlight being strongest facing south. In New Zealand we are (definitely) closer to the South Pole and our orientation for the sun is always northwards. So if someone asks me to face north here in France, despite some serious thinking and subtle re-re-figuring, I still get it wrong and face south. It’s very strange.

But the nice thing is that when I wander in the city of Toulouse, I go where my feet and my eyes take me. I could of course keep looking at the map, but that means stopping, taking my sunglasses off, finding my reading glasses and putting them on, working out where I actually am, etc, etc…It’s too hard for me. So, having a general sense of where I might be, or where I think place Capitole is, I just enjoy the experience of strolling past ancient glowing brick buildings, so beautiful and lived in, with centuries of stories to tell. I wish I could talk to the buildings and see into the lives of all who have lived there; that makes history come alive for me.

Being from new New Zealand (really, it’s such a young country), anything older than 150 years is ancient to me. When I was still in New Zealand in my 20s, I remember hearing of a school in England having its 500th anniversary. I was unswayably incredulous. It simply could not be possible. How on earth could an institution be that old, still functioning today, and have (no longer living) old boys who went to school there some 450 years ago? Pah! The sense of history here still pulls me up and I try to absorb it into my being, knowing that I probably won’t be a New Zealander in France forever (gulp, sniff)…

So, today, I went a-wandering. I had just bought myself a silk and cashmere scarf from rue Four Bastards (really!) and was ready for some lunch. I trod lightly and expectantly down a little lane, and a café caught my eye; mostly due to the British flag draped enticingly around the posts outside. In fact I had stumbled across a veritable British tea room (un salon de thé à l’anglaise) in the heart of Toulouse. Now there are several tea rooms in Toulouse and the focus is generally a light salad-y/savoury tart-y lunch followed by real tea from a real tea pot poured into real, and sometimes antique, china tea cups, served with a dessert to be found in the large, wooden and glass window-facing cabinets. There are many of them and they all look gorgeous – that is, tea rooms and desserts.

This salon de thé is described in the promotional bumpf for So British as 100% English.

Set in baroque décor with floral crockery, rococo tables and gilt-framed mirrors, you can taste the English specialties created by our chef, Jérôme Pascal, from Oxford. You can enjoy the tables and chairs of the café/restaurant setting upstairs or move downstairs to a cozy space filled with sofas and armchairs in the basement.

And here is what the Toulousians consider to be traditional English dessert cuisine: muffins, sticky toffee pudding, apple pie, cheese cake, scones, fruit crumble, shortbread, cup cakes and English sweets. Do you think they have missed anything, I wonder?

So, I ate my foie gras, raisin and walnut mesclun salad, served with a basket of perfect outside-crunchy, inside-soft and squishy French bread. I didn’t have dessert this time, but I did have a mug of hot chocolate. No, not powdered hot chocolate but real melted dark chocolate heated in creamy milk. I had to walk a bit more around Toulouse after that to put my conscience to rights.

Each week I am going to visit the city and see what I find. I’ll keep you posted.

‘So British’ is open Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm. You can get brunch on Sunday from 11am to 3pm. Yum!

So British, 11 Rue Peyras, 31000 Toulouse, Tel: 05.61.38.30.88