This article was also published in the Financial Times.
The spectre of the recent French strikes hung over our long-planned trip to the restaurant of Régis Marcon in St-Bonnet-Le Froid, high in the far eastern Auvergne in southern France, until the very last minute.
Then, like a cloud, it disappeared. Eurostar to Paris was on time as was the TGV to Lyons. Slight delays on the A7 meant that our arrival in Annonay coincided with the onset of sunset that, in turn, only made the steep climb through the forests and our arrival into what has become 'Marconville' even more memorable.
The forests on either side of St-Bonnet-Le-Froid hold the key to Marcon's inspiration because it is at the base of these trees that the wild mushrooms lurk, the mushrooms on which he, and now his son Jacques, have established their culinary reputation. Régis Marcon is the King of the Wild Mushrooms.
This symbiosis was a running theme throughout our stay. Jars of many different kinds of prepared mushrooms are for sale on the shelves opposite the reception desk in the hotel that incorporates his three-star restaurant. By the entry to the impressively quiet kitchen, of which every diner is given a guided tour, is a poster with all the edible wild mushrooms clearly labelled and displayed. One of the petits fours is a large, thin biscuit in the shape of a mushroom while the butter at the refined breakfast buffet the following morning had been patted into the shape of a mushroom. The staff wear mushroom pins and the seven-course mushroom menu we ate comes with a calendar of which wild mushrooms are available in every month of the year.
Marcon has developed this particular knowledge highly effectively. Having inherited the original bistrot that his parents opened in 1948 – the surrounding countryside is as appealing to walkers, cross-country skiers and golfers as it is to mycologists – Marcon now runs an extremely popular cookery school, a bakery and a wine store in the village as well as Les Clos des Cimes, which is now the less expensive of his two hotels. The main restaurant with 10 luxurious bedrooms and views to match migrated to the top of the hill two years ago.
The restaurant has more obviously benefited from this transition because it is perched above and to the side of the bedrooms that have been built partially underground. The transition from the light above to the darkness underground once past the reception is somewhat sinister, almost as though you are being escorted to meet the villain in a James Bond film. That aside, the modern interior with shades of Scandinavia and Asia is highly attractive.
This is in stark contrast to the ultra-traditional manner in which Régis and his wife Michèle run the restaurant, while Jacques never seems to leave the kitchen.
Michèle, petite and caring, came to see us twice, once while we were having our aperitif and then right at the end of the meal to make sure that everything had been satisfactory. The rest of the evening she sat by the reception desk.
We saw Jacques three times other than when he was in the kitchen calling the orders and casting a beady eye over the trays the waiters were carrying. He toured the dining room twice and he also came to welcome us while we were in the bar – although on this occasion it was as the bearer of bad news.
'It hasn't been a particularly good year for mushrooms around here', he explained. 'We didn't have enough rain over the summer and it has turned cold quite early. We had our first snow here on 17 October.' When I asked him what effect that would have on his menu, he replied 'None. It just means we have to go hunting even further afield.'
And so it was to prove because even before Marcon had come to our table, all four of us had chosen the menu entitled 'Between Velay and Vivarais' that concentrates not just on the best of this region's ingredients but also on wild mushrooms, with different varieties at each course.
What ensued was a lesson in how, in expert hands, one vegetable can be transformed into so many different and exciting flavours.
We began with the comforting combination of chestnuts and wild mushrooms in a soup alongside slices of raw mushrooms. Then an adventure with Sparassis crispa, a tissue-like mushroom, that came wrapped in slivers of cabbage at the bottom of duck pot-au-feu. A dish of a grilled slice of cep alongside, and almost the same thickness as, a plump scallop preceded a dish of three different varieties of chanterelles with a fillet of red mullet. Sautéed wild mushrooms accompanied a slice from a fillet of venison that had, naturally, been rolled in diced ceps. This was not to be the mushroom's final appearance as the last peitit four was a square of chocolate infused with ceps.
Marcons and wild mushrooms aside, the other stars of the dining room are a young and highly enthusiastic waiting staff and a sommelier who, in contrast to so many of his colleagues in other top French restaurants, actually listened. He applauded our choice of a Domaine Florentin 1999 from Saint-Joseph as our red and then proposed the 2004 white from the same property. At 80 and 45 euros respectively, both were as memorable as the mushrooms.
Régis et Jacques Marcon, www.regismarcon.fr