After almost four months on our Dutch replica Piper barge “Karanja”, cruising the Canal de Garonne and enjoying our home port of Moissac, it’s almost time to fly south for the winter. Before we go, here’s a tribute to an interesting local restaurant with a unique heritage – Le Kiosque de l’Uvarium.
It’s located literally three minutes’ walk from our mooring, on the esplanade that leads along the bank of the Tarn river to the Hôtel Le Moulin.
I have the editor’s distrust of the word “unique”, but this time it’s warranted: Moissac is the only town to have an uvarium, meaning a place that provides a grape-based health cure. (The Latin word for grape is uva.) Back in the 1920s, people would come here to “take the grape”, or to undergo a grape cure, specifically the sweet and juicy local Chasselas table grape.
In 1971, the Chasselas grape became the first fresh fruit to have its own AOC – Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée. Click here for more about its arguably fascinating history.
According to the cute diagram above, the detoxifying Chasselas grape regime cured disorders of the liver, the kidneys, the digestive tract, the urinary tract, gout, arthritis, constipation and more.
Le Kiosque de l’Uvarium is described as a real Art Deco treasure. Since I took the above photographs in the summer of 2014, new leaseholders have installed a prefab kitchen next to the kiosk and are currently serving up far better fare than the previous one did. What’s more, they’ve opened an alfresco music venue called Spik Easy that operates on Friday and Saturday evenings until late.
Our first meal was lunch with Roy’s sister Lyndsay and her husband John one day in June, when we had a run-in with a rude waiter.
Second time round was dinner with daughter Wendy, who charmed the stroppy sod into smiling affability. (Carpaccio de magret canard for Wendy and me to share, and excellent gazpacho for Roy; then tartare de veau for Roy, côte d’agneau for me and cabillaud (fish) for Wendy, along with a couple of bottles of Uby – a red and a white.)
Third time round, when Roy and I popped over for dinner, the same waiter was again having a bad day. When he came to take our order and I asked for two minutes to look at the menu, he then refused to come back and serve us, merely repeating a palpably untrue “j’arrive” each time I caught his eye. After 20 minutes of this crap, I went to find someone else, who then served us perfectly. (La salade du terroir for me, veal tartare and fried potatoes for Roy, a shared café gourmand and a bottle of delectable rosé from Provence.)
So I published a truthful review on TripAdvisor, which you can read here if you like. To my surprise, the manager came back within a couple of days to apologise, promise improvements, and ask us to return soon.
That we did last week, our fourth visit being with friends from South Africa, Michael and Karin, who had been touring this part of France for almost a month. Errant waiter was having a day off, but the other staff somehow recognised us as the authors of the review, gave great service, had a sympathetic chat with us and threw in a round of Armagnacs after the coffee.
All’s well that ends well!
Wonderful Verne ! It was a special day xx
Yep, they can have their good days and bad days. But nothing better than sitting in the dappled sun with a cool drink looking at the River Tarn.