The gourmet meeting place returns to Orléans. The Food and Wine Fair, 31st edition, takes place from this Friday, November 22, and until Monday 25, at the CO’Met exhibition center. More than 25,000 visitors are expected around some two hundred and thirty exhibitors who present local, regional and national products, a large market and an opportunity, obviously, to taste these products. The Department of Loiret will offer a pop-up restaurant, 45 à table, with a menu almost 100% “Loiret.”
Goat cheese and beetroot mousse for starter, poultry from Beaune-la-Rolande, shallots and pumpkin for the main course, a dessert with Sologne honey, pears and apples. “We are 99 percent, 98 percent, products from the Loiret. We still have a lot of choice here, I didn’t even know that we made mushrooms like shiitake (produced in Bou, editor’s note). is a great challenge for me, for the employees, and for the company, it puts us forward and we need it in the integration sector” explains Cédric Taverne, the chef and technical supervisor at Saveurs et Talents, the integration restaurant which is responsible for ensuring the preparations and the service of this Signature Menu during the Show. “Not being from the region, it’s a little more pressure for me” smiled the chef. “But I am passionate, I am keen to highlight the products and the producers, I also pay attention to the employees, to the way they treat the product, and I teach them the process. We will later go and meet one of the operators, who provided us with products for this menu.“
“We have qualities, we have to use them, and that’s part of our attractiveness”
It has been more than two years since the Department of Loiret truly launched the creation of a signature menu, twice a year: one for the fall-winter season, one for the spring-summer season. The goal: to highlight local production. “We absolutely want not only local producers to do well, especially when we see the problem of agriculture in France, and that our children eat better” recalls Jean-Luc Riglet, vice-president of the department in charge in particular of the agriculture commission. But this Signature Menu, The whole “Eat Loiret” operation with the producers’ guide, is it bearing fruit? “The feedback is good, it’s not just the public side, there’s also the private side with the restaurants who have taken this menu into their own hands. Now, we can always say that this is not enough! So we are working so that the heads of colleges also participate“replies Jean-Luc Riglet.”We have many positive sides of agriculture in the Loiret. Beet is practically the leading European producer. We have qualities, we must use them, and that is part of our attractiveness. We are now waiting for all the tourists who absolutely want to eat this menu!“
But be careful, no reservation for the restaurant on 45 at the tablein the heart of the Salon de la Gastronomie et des Vins d’Orléans. First come, first served! For four days, seven services for more than 150 seats will be provided, which represents approximately one hundred and thirty kilos of pumpkin, one hundred kilos of shallots, and barely less mushrooms.
