An Irish Chef in France

Euro-Toques chef Martin Dwyer, is much missed in Ireland since he and his wife Sile sold their eponymous restaurant in Waterford and moved to France. They now live in the Languedoc, where they take guests - and feed them very well.

This month Martin enjoys the search for interesting old practical items in France, when out ‘Brocanting’

I suppose because France was historically a more affluent country than Ireland they have always embraced second hand goods. They have never felt there was any shame in acquiring other peoples cast offs.

This of course takes many forms.

At the top of the second hand tree are the “Antiquities” these are the antique shops which would have a place in the smart old quarters of the cities, would usually have a very few tasteful items displayed in their windows and can often be horrendously expensive. You are extremely unlikely to pick up a bargain here as these people know their stuff.
Next come the “Brocantes”, or what I suppose we would call Junk Shops.

These would usually be a dusty muddle of second hand objects, everything from retro items from the fifties and sixties (these do nothing for me as they are far too redolent of my childhood) to older bric-a-brac and then (what I am looking for) sometimes the genuine chance of finding a true antique.

A sort of parallel order of shops, and one that is still common in France, are the “Trocantes”. The Irish equivalent of these shops would be the Pawn Shop, very much a dying breed in Ireland since my youth. I remember in Cork when I was growing up there were several and all were decorated with their emblem of three hanging spheres.

The system in the Trocantes is that they rely on the public to bring in their old and discarded pieces of furniture or bric-a-brac. The seller and the shop then decide on a price (from which the Trocanteur takes a hefty percentage).

This price will then drop over the weeks the object remains unsold so if you really desire an object you have to visit the shop frequently hit the right moment to buy at the best price - or risk losing the sale.

But by far the best place to get a bargain are at the many fairs that happen all year around in rural France. It is here that you come across the bottom of the second hand tree, the “Vide Greniers”. This literally means the empty attic and this is often exactly what is for sale there.

Vide Greniers are usually manned by ordinary house holders and take place on a Saturday or a Sunday. They are frequented by people looking for a bargain for their house and usually would have stalls full of well laundered clothes, particularly children’s clothes, which the French see no shame at all in buying.

But what draws me to these Vide Greniers is that sometimes buried in the old clothes and retro bric-a-brac there is to be found a genuine bargain.

Just last year I saw a beautiful collection of a dozen cut crystal champagne glasses which I recognised as coming from Nancy in Lorraine. The stall holder looked at them doubtfully when I asked the price of the twelve and suggested twelve euro for the lot. Needless to mention I snapped them up, I would have happily spent about twenty five euros for each one.

Probably the greatest pleasure I get out of my “Brocanting” is that there can actually be a practical application to my great pleasure of browsing the markets. As the proprietor of a French Chambre d’Hote I can often use these purchases for my guests.

In fact all the glasses in which I serve the drinks to my guests are the products of Brocantes or Vide Greniers and it is satisfying to see that these glasses- and some would be a hundred years old - are still being used for what their makers intended.

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Martin Dwyer started cooking professionally over 40 years ago in the legendary “Snaffles Restaurant” in Dublin. After a time in a Relais Chateau in Anjou and in “The Wife of Bath” in Kent he opened his own much acclaimed restaurant, “Dwyers”, in Waterford in 1989. In 2004 he sold this and moved south to France where he and his wife Síle bought and restored an old presbytery in a village in the Languedoc. They now run Le Presbytère as a French style Chambre d’Hôte. Martin however is far too passionate about food to give up cooking so they now enjoy serving dinner to their customers on the terrace of Le Presbytère on warm summer evenings. Martin runs occasional cookery courses in Le Presbytère and Síle’s brother Colm does week long Nature Strolls discovering the Flora and Fauna of the Languedoc. 

Le Presbytère can be seen at: www.lepresbytere.net; 
email: martin@lepresbytere.net

Twitter: www.twitter.com/DwyerThezan