In Toulouse we tried several restaurants plus two different Belgian beer bars. Le Point D’ogre – Eric’s colleagues took us here on our first night, and it was Leandra’s first 3+ hour French-style dinner. This is a fairly small family-run restaurant with a wood-fired oven in the middle of the room and a small menu of six meats, three sides, and three desserts.

   
view of the dining room; placing our order on an ‘antique’ iPad :)

We both ordered the Echine de Porc Noir de Bigorre grillee, a grilled pork loin from Black pigs (found nearby in the Pyrenees). Unfortunately, Leandra’s pork was rather fatty and undercooked (raw pink in the middle – not good), but Eric’s turned out perfectly; based on the rest of the table it appeared that Leandra just had bad luck. The garlic mashed potatoes were quite tasty, and the goat cheese risotto was also good. Thankfully, this giant basket of meat and veg arrived before the meal so Leandra didn’t leave the place hungry at least.

The Winter Garden – Eric had been here on a previous trip and made sure we visited on this trip. We were seated by the window with a nice view of activity on the street. Our servers were great, very personable, and as is the custom in many restaurants, they explained each item on the menu. It seems you can’t go wrong with just about anything on the menu… (click on the right image to enlarge) Eric ordered the chicken special, which had chicken rolled around ground parsley and other herbs with an amazing sauce, plus the potatoes au gratin (sinfully buttery), while Leandra went for the Tournedos Rossini foie gras mi-cuit; basically, steak with a melted foie gras on top!

Reservations are highly recommended, as this restaurant fills up even during the middle of the week. Le Petit Rajasthan – after several days of French food we wanted a change and decided on Indian. While tasty, it wasn’t quite as good as Eric’s first trip had been in 2013. Eric ordered the Plats Nepal, a curry with lychee and mango, which was a little sweet. Leandra ordered a different red curry with lamb which was fine. As a bonus, English is easy here, and after dinner they gave us a tasty (and free!) rose water liqueur drink to make up for the fact that our naan bread arrived as we were finishing our meal. Overall, a decent experience.

L’Ancienne Belgique –  A tiny bar with a respectable Belgian beer list on the wall opposite the bar (we didn’t notice the wall list at first so we were trying to look at the bottles in the fridges behind the bar). It definitely felt like a local place, we stuck out quite a bit here. However, they did serve Bush (aka Scaldis) beer in the proper glassware. We definitely preferred la Lune though.

Le bar de la Lune – Eric found this bar on a previous trip and made sure he returned on this one. Quite cozy, with interesting artwork and jazz music, it is a comfortable space for conversation. The first night Eric tried a small bottle of the Queue De Charrue Brune, a pleasant medium-sour Flanders brown that was new to us. We liked it enough that we ordered a larger bottle to share on our last night. We also tried Zatte Bie (a Belgian strong that was good if a bit sweet), a Kapittel Watou and Bavik Ezel Bruin.