France Voila travel and French tourism, canal cruisers, boating on the canal du Midi

Restaurant Review -By Carole and Miranda - July 2002

La Raffinerie

Beziers is not one of my favourite places and a friend who is working hard to convince me of its attractions suggested lunch at La Raffinerie, by the Canal du Midi.

Typically French in being hard to find, the restaurant turned out to be untypically adventurous in its cuisine and design. To find it, you have to go along to the southern end of the Quai de Port Neuf, and then a bit further, there is a map on their website. You can park easily on the canal bank and then just head for the tables and chairs laid out in the shade of huge old plane trees, the restaurant sign is probably only visible from the Canal itself.

It was a wonderful oasis of calm and verdure on a truly hot and airless day with a breeze in the trees and ducks on the water. The duck on the menu was a delicious crispy pancake stuffed with confit de canard, sitting on a heap of fragrant risotto and hazelnuts. Daurade on polenta flavoured with cinnamon was another choice.

Too inexperienced to pinch a menu I cannot go into great detail on the other offerings, but found all our choices to be excellently prepared with interesting and subtle flavours (no, I could not identify them all).

Another highlight was my daughter's warm chocolate pot with sorbet, which I will be compelled to order on my next visit there despite the rival attractions of iles flottantes with melon and saffron. The tables are so well spaced that it was impossible to eavesdrop, which is a great restaurant pastime, but the food is really entertainment enough here. - Carole

Hidden from the noisy "Beziers", the raffinerie a sweet 1950's style restaurant is a very pleasant place to have a shopping day lunch.

Situated on the canal du midi you can watch the bicyclists and the ducks go past while waiting for your meal. The service is very good and friendly. The "plats" are not very big in size but big in taste and very nicely displayed. The inside is big and spacious and the toilets are very big with weird pictures every where. But the best part is the pudding, I had a pot au chocolat which is made up of a cup of fromage bland ice cream and a little pot of half cooked chocolate covered of a nutty cinemmony sauce. It is DELICIOUS!! I really recommend it to you." - Miranda

La Raffinerie
av Joseph Lazare, Beziers
04 67 76 07 12
laraffinerie.com/

2 course meals from €15, good choice of local wines with an excellent value Rose at €9 a bottle