Putting fish on your plate

A typical culinary specialty of the Loire Valley is the traditional ‘Friture de La Loire’. Unfortunately, it is rare as the smelt (any of various small, silvery food fishes of the family Osmeridae, of cold northern waters, as the North American rainbow smelt, Osmerus mordax*) is not available all year round.

The recipe is very simple. Toss the little fish in some flower that you’ve seasoned with pepper and salt. There’s no need to gut or scale them … there wouldn’t be much left if you did! Shake off the excess flower and fry the fish in small batches in hot vegetable oil. Serve as a starter with a lemon cut in half, a baguette, salted butter and a dry Sauvignon wine.

Having read about this famous ‘Friture’ we absolutely wanted to try it during our first holiday in the Loire Valley. Unfortunately, 1999 must have been a bad year for smelt as we never found a restaurant that actually served the ‘Friture’ although it was on the menu.

In 2000 we asked one of the waiters at our hotel whether he knew of a restaurant serving the fried fishes. He immediately told us about a little place called ‘L’Auberge de Porc Vallières’ on the main road between Tours and Langeais. The proprietor used to be a colleague of him and he proposed to phone the restaurant and book a table for us … assuring us an extra warm welcome.

The Auberge is in the hamlet of ‘Port Vallières’. You’ll find many of these places called ‘Port’ along the Loire River. In the old days they had little piers where the local fisherman would moor their typical river boats to land the catch of the day. In this case, the owner of the Auberge had cleverly changed ‘Port’ into ‘Porc’ (pig). There was large pig’s head shaped sign over the door, showing that the name of the Auberge was not a typo!

2009 - the Loire River near Blois

That evening, we were very warmly greeted indeed. Instead of showing us to a table in the backroom – which was the actual restaurant – our host had set two places for us at the large wooden table d’hôtes in the front room. The ‘Friture’ was very nice … once I had gotten used to the little fish staring at me with empty eyes before putting them in my mouth. As a main course we had ‘vol au vent’ (cooked pieces of chicken and mushrooms in a cream sauce, serve in a little basket of puff pastry). As usual, we finished our meal with a selection of cheeses.

In between courses, the owner came to chat with us. Being a former wine waiter he brought out some excellent bottles. While chatting and tasting we discovered that his parents had a restaurant in the town of Pont-à-Mousson in the Lorraine region. And guess what, we had had lunch at his parents’ restaurant the year before during our yearly Lorraine-Alsace weekend. It’s a small world, isn’t it?

By the way, the Auberge has changed hands since, and the large pig’s head over the door is gone. Today the Auberge is simply called ‘Auberge de Port Vallières’. We haven’t eaten there yet, so I don’t know whether the famous ‘Friture’ is still on the menu.

AUBERGE DE PORT VALLIERES
RN 112 - Lieu dit Vallières
37230 Fondettes

(*) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/smelt

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