Le Chat

58200 COSNE-COURS-SUR-LOIRE

13/20
Chef's Restaurant

Chef Laurent Chareau

Cooking French | Local | Traditional

Services Disabled access | Pets allowed | Privatization | Terrace

Price Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

25€ à 50€

Gault&Millau's review

13/20

Chef's Restaurant We always like to return to this inn in Villechaud, a hamlet near Cosne, a small corner of the Nivernais countryside. Sincerity, naturalness, generosity: Nathalie, in the dining room, presents the day's menu with kindness and benevolence, the €30 menu (to which you can add the cheese) prepared by Laurent. Alone in his kitchen, Laurent Chareau, whom we once knew alongside Gilles Choukroun, left Paris fifteen years ago, not to bury himself in a corner of the Nièvre, but to live and work as he sees fit, a forerunner of healthy cooking that helps and draws on local produce. On the plate, it's all about the real thing: marinated mackerel salad with fennel, tarragon and lemon granny, melting braised then pan-fried beef chuck with cauliflower and olive jus, topped with an astonishing "fromagée de chèvre" (goat's cheese) spread like a beurre maître d'hôtel. The meal ends with a rosemary-apple financier with fromage blanc ice cream, followed by a well-chosen glass from a long, virtuous wine list that eschews three-figure labels and shows those who don't know that, even in Burgundy, the Giennois and Pouilly, there are plenty of good wines for as little as €20 on the table.