Nice Surprise in Concernau

We left Crozon peninsula on Monday morning and drove straight to Concernau, without realising that a nice surprise was waiting for us there.

My friend and work colleague Stephanie knows Concernau very well because it is where she spends her holidays. Now that we have seen the town, we think she is very lucky! She suggested places for us to visit here and walking routes which we may like to follow. She particularly recommended a place to eat, you will have to read on to find out more about this.

Concarneu is a town located on the West coast of France, 83 kilometres from the borders of the South Crozon Peninsula. It is still an important fishing town with a large port and fish processing factories. Within the port on an island, sits the old town, the Ville Close.

We arrived at 13.00 and after having a bit of lunch in Dora, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the port. The port was closing down, the staff was tiding up the catch of the day and packing up. Shame!. We would have liked to see the place in action, cleaning, treating and sorting out the fish just caught that day.

Outside, there were left over fishes to be thrown away. “Bit of a waste”, we thought. They could have been used for feeding farmed fishing, like salmon or mackerel. We found really bizarre that no birds were around the rotten fish, feeding from it. Later we noticed a pet food company, surely, this could have been used there.

We were now two hours away from dinner. This gave us enough time to walk around the Ville Close and visit a fishing museum. You reach the Ville Close by a serious of bridges and being walled, once inside, you are fairly unaware of the surrounding water.

The medieval town used to be a stronghold of the area protecting the coastline. Now it is quite touristic, but as we are thankfully travelling outside the peak season, the little village was almost deserted for a Tuesday afternoon and most of the trashy tourist shops were closed. Quite joyful, we like being away from the crowd.

The Fishing museum focuses on the history and development of fishing techniques from the Palaeolithic era to date. It was quite interesting, even though it was all in French.  The French language is not far from Spanish in terms of structure, and with my limited vocabulary and the help of the drawings and pictures on display, I could understand it. Very educational.

However, the highlight of the museum was the  visit to Hemerica, a real-life fishing boat active until the 1980’s. It was anchored in the port and you got to it by an opening through the town wall. With this boat, the museum demonstrated what the life of the fishermen would be like forty years ago. They used to spend weeks at sea and come back only for a few days to see the family. Interestingly, they were so used to be on the water that they got really  sick whenever they were back on land!

It was already 19.00, time to pick up dinner from the Cas’alise, the place that Stephanie recommended. Not having a good map, we were find it difficult to locate. We went to the tourist information to seek assistance. Although helpful, the staff had not heard of it. After ten minutes of searching the internet, she had an address. Initially, she thought it was in the town but eventually realised that it was not so central. Actually, it was in a small residential area to the north of the town. Too far to walk, Dora would have to come with us.

We eventually found it. The place was a small take away restaurant. We were quite disappointed as it was closed. It looked like dinner had to be postponed until the next day.

Just when we were about to leave, we noticed a piece of paper with my name on it on the shop window and ‘from Stephanie to Susana’ written underneath. “What has Stephanie been up to?” we wondered. Perplexed and intrigued, we decided to come back at lunch tomorrow instead.

The next day, we arrived at 13.00. As soon as we introduced ourselves, Alise gave us a warm welcome. I couldn’t speak French, she couldn’t speak Spanish or English but we managed to have a conversation. She knew our plans for the next year. She even had the link of our blog. So sweet!

She was originally from ‘La Réunion’ island which is located in the Indian Ocean, about 200 kilometres southwest Mauritius, and has brought her cuisine to Brittany.

The piece of paper which we saw the day before on the window was actually a postcard written by Stephanie back in August, when she was on vacation with his family.

Realising that we had found the restaurant, Stephanie was quite happy that we would be following her suggestions and, therefore, eight ‘accras’ and a bottle of ‘plateaur’, a drink made out of pineapple, bananas and other various tropical fruit and – the main ingredient– rum, was on her. We were incredibly surprised and pleased that someone had spent so much time in arranging this for us.

‘Accras’ were small pieces of what we think was salted cod, deep fried in a spicy batter. I couldn’t resist watching how she cooked them so carefully. Unfortunately, the batter had been prepared beforehand so I couldn’t get the recipe to try it at home. Maybe a bit of creativity and trial and error will be needed there. It was smelling delicious!

When we opened the box we found out that she had added an extra two ‘accras’ for us.

We wanted to try everything that Stephanie had recommended, so we also bought  ‘Poulet massala’ (chicken) and ‘rougail de saucisses’ sausages with ‘petit legumes’ (vegetables). However, the ‘accras’ we wanted to try now, while they were warm on the beach that Stephanie had also suggested.

The beach, as all French beaches so far had been, was absolutely fantastic. The sun had come out just at the right time, after a miserable and rainy morning.

It was a bit blustery, so we decided to have our long-awaited lunch inside Dora and go for a walk along the promenade afterwards.

Lunch consisted of:

‘Accras’ for main course (left hand side)

Accompanied by the ‘plateu’ drink and,

For dessert, what we thought it was ‘Gâteau aux pommes’ (apple tart), but Stephanie later pointed out that it was actually a tart made out of sweet potato, isn’t it amazing? I still think it tasted a bit of apple.

It was all delicious.

The ‘accras’, the batter was gooey but light, with a uniform distribution of small pieces of fish. The cod was tasty, with a subtle flavour which did not conflict with the spiciness of the batter. We thought a perfect combination.

The more ‘accras’ we ate, the hotter our mouth got. This was soothed with the ice-cold ‘plateur’. I usually don’t tolerate spicy food very well, so I had no other choice, I kept drinking  . However, you don’t need an excuse to drink this. The varied tropical fruit used to make this juice is sweet enough to mask the strength of the rum. This makes it dangerous as you don’t feel the effect of how much you have drunk until you stand up. Luckily we had an afternoon walk planned!

The tart was well set, moist and light.

We stood up, as best as we could, to go for our long walk to digest our lunch. We took the GR34 path which goes around the promenade, an urban walk this time. We popped into the Marinière, the world’s oldest institute of marine biology and the best aquarium in the region. We found this more educational than the fishing museum as we are more interested in sea life. Although we still couldn’t find out what the strange creature was that we saw kayaking at Morgat.

Gary does not miss an opportunity to enjoy his architecture and he may still do an architectural post later (you will have to put up with this, I am afraid).

As we arrived at Concernau port earlier than expected, we decided to continue our route on the GR34 to the other side of the town which meant taking a small ferry from the Ville Close.

Although the crossing was only two minutes, it was fun. The sea wasn’t very choppy though. Shame! This would have made the experience more entertaining.

After our walk, we left Concernau and headed towards an Aires close to Pont-Aven, a thirty minutes drive away. After settling in, we heated our second meal from Cas’alise.

This was far from your normal chicken, vegetables and a bit of rice. I am not a meat-eater but I couldn’t resist trying the sausages.

The vegetables were nicely cooked, not too soft, not too raw.The smoky flavour of the sausages went well with the sweet flavour of the tomato sauce that they were cooked in. The chicken was okay, slightly dry but it may have been because we bought it at lunchtime and we had to reheat it on the stove, as Dora lacks a microwave oven (she is a good motorhome but not very sophisticated, I am afraid, just a bit too old).

We paid €20.00 for this meal. Was it worth? Absolutely, considering that you might pay £10.00 to £15.00 for a pizza or Chinese. It was obvious from the flavour and texture, that these dishes were home-made, cooked that day, with fresh ingredients. Besides, very rarely do you have the opportunity of trying food from the Reunion Island.

Cas’alise appears to have very good reviews on local websites but not on Tripadvisor. We will put this right and post one in the next few days. We think she deserves it.

And of course, a big thanks to Stephanie for making this a really special experience. Stephanie, how can we possibly pay you back?

SM & GDR.