Maison Pic (*) in Valence: Exceptional wine, good food, terrible bread

10 course dinner menu.

Highlights: the wine list. Perhaps the best priced fine dining wine list in France, and worth a trip there alone. The lobster dish with melon and an almond milk veil was one-of-a-kind. Lamb and pigeon were great, as was the matcha pasta course with mountain cheese. The tempura sardine with seaweed crisp was delicate and flavorful.

Not so good: the bread course, which had the texture and look of monkey bread, was terrible. No flavor, just a mealy, gritty, cold buckwheat focaccia. It was a standalone course (red flag) and there was no additional bread offered throughout the meal. The tomato dish was not for me — a cold foam of tomato with tomato’s inside that had the texture of day old chipotle pico de gallo. The pacing of courses was very inconsistent. Super slow, then super fast, on-and-off, on-and-off. Would have preferred consistency.

On another note, Valence was not a very nice city to visit. Would recommend training from Lyon, we stayed the night and there wasn’t much there.