"This restaurant is housed in a beautiful old stone house in the centre of the superb Templar village of La Courvertoirade. It has a large stone ceilinged indoor dining room and a largish outdoor area surrounded by the village’s ancient stone houses and roofs. As a setting it is hard to beat and we elected to go for one of their summer musical evenings. The service was a little erratic at first, the waiters more interested in greeting and chatting with their friends than attending to those already seated. It took us a long time to get a first drink and, a personal gripe, both the two beers on offer were wheat beers, which I dislike. The menu looked fine, fairly typical of mid range restaurants in the area although the prices were a bit higher, understandable perhaps given the musical extras and the exceptional location. I had the ‘Tapas special’starter, it turned out to be three dips and some raw carrot. The dips were obviously homemade, two were OK, quite fresh and tasty, one was extremely bland. It was accompanied by a green salad, which consisted of elderly, over-large flabby lettuce. Tapas it was not and the presentation was very poor, dollops of food chucked onto a plate! Others had the plate of charcuterie, OK but the meat not top quality and more substandard green salad. For main course most of us had the Mixed Grill Gourmand. It was unimpressive, cooked on an open wood fire, but the pork sausage was not only rather nasty to taste but some was still raw in the middle. The lamb was tasty but tough and the beef brochette cooked to a crisp. The veg was a quite nice crisp roast potato and some tasty curried carrots but again it was all just thrown on a plate. We had an extra of Aligot, a local garlic and potato dish which has become very popular and which was fine but I suspect factory made. There was a largish selection of sweets, most of which sounded as if they were bought in. One of us had the home made patisserie which was a slab of rather solid, dull chocolate cake. I had ice cream which was standard good quality factory made stuff. Overall the food was average to poor, the prices high and the presentation very poor. The promised music did not start until after we had finished eating. When it came, the classical pianist was excellent (to my inexpert ear) and served to emphasise what a nice evening it could have been but wasn’t. Indifferent food poorly cooked and badly presented. I would not go again."
