OLHABIDEA — Restaurant in Bayonne

I follow Chowhound for places to eat when traveling and several people mentioned not missing Maison Olhabidea in Basque France so we made a special detour to Sare enroute from St. Emilion to San Sebastien. ||||What a find! Beautiful, elegant, comfortable. It is run by a family who have owned the property for over a hundred years, father is a retired physician, mother decorated the home and provided flowers every day, one son is the chef, the second runs the hotel side, and a third runs an adjacent equestrian center. The rooms are large, decorated with comfortable beds, charming furniture, lovely textiles, and amenities that travelers need (reading lights, enough electrical outlets to charge phones, etc). The bathrooms are not as up to date but certainly large enough and functional enough to not be a major detraction. Dated tile but old fashioned very deep bathtubs, hand showers. The rest of the house is stunning - three guest bedrooms, a living/dining area where you gather for aperitifs, dinner and in the morning breakfast. Outdoor patio for aperitifs, playing cards, etc. A family of swallows had built a nest in one of the pottery pitchers on a sideboard and we enjoyed watching the parents bring food to the five nestlings as we sipped our drinks. Large grounds with a kitchen garden and many flowering plants to provide arrangements for the house. ||||The food is amazing although if you stay for multiple nights like we did, may be repetitive. However, the chef made sure that we had different amuse bouches or whatever course might be repeated so that we nearly always had different food each day even if the rest of the dinner guests were eating dishes we had already had. I was able to join the chefs in the kitchen to watch how they prepared the food and have a nice discussion about food and traveling via the assistant chef who spoke good English. We met the deputy mayor for cultural affairs for St Malo at this gite and he approved, saying it was very good. He also invited us to call him when we were in St Malo for a personal tour. So this is the type of place where things like this can happen. The rooms were only 79 euros/night and the dinner 39 euros. There were many more people who came specifically for the dinners (about 15-20) in addition to the guests. Excellent four courses, fixed menu, wine extra. Breakfast included in the room rate. Making reservations may be difficult, they do not have reliable internet access so you will have to call, fax or mail requests. Jean told us that the gite is a place to get away from the world so he does not plan to improve connectivity! ||||Basque France is a very interesting region and Jean was very good as advising us as to routes and places to see. I would recommend this area of France, particularly to contrast it with Spanish Basque country. Many lovely villages, mountains. Once again, a difficult place to find since there isn't actually an address you can put into a GPS and the web site is very basic. However, once in Sare, you can ask at the tourist center and they will direct you so make sure you arrive in time before they close. I hesitate to post this since they are so small and I hate to not be able to get into their gite again if they become more popular, but it was such a gem of a place I felt I had...

I follow Chowhound for places to eat when traveling and several people mentioned not missing Maison Olhabidea in Basque France so we made a special detour to Sare enroute from St. Emilion to San Sebastien. ||||What a find! Beautiful, elegant, comfortable. It is run by a family who have owned the property for over a hundred years, father is a retired physician, mother decorated the home and provided flowers every day, one son is the chef, the second runs the hotel side, and a third runs an adjacent equestrian center. The rooms are large, decorated with comfortable beds, charming furniture, lovely textiles, and amenities that travelers need (reading lights, enough electrical outlets to charge phones, etc). The bathrooms are not as up to date but certainly large enough and functional enough to not be a major detraction. Dated tile but old fashioned very deep bathtubs, hand showers. The rest of the house is stunning - three guest bedrooms, a living/dining area where you gather for aperitifs, dinner and in the morning breakfast. Outdoor patio for aperitifs, playing cards, etc. A family of swallows had built a nest in one of the pottery pitchers on a sideboard and we enjoyed watching the parents bring food to the five nestlings as we sipped our drinks. Large grounds with a kitchen garden and many flowering plants to provide arrangements for the house. ||||The food is amazing although if you stay for multiple nights like we did, may be repetitive. However, the chef made sure that we had different amuse bouches or whatever course might be repeated so that we nearly always had different food each day even if the rest of the dinner guests were eating dishes we had already had. I was able to join the chefs in the kitchen to watch how they prepared the food and have a nice discussion about food and traveling via the assistant chef who spoke good English. We met the deputy mayor for cultural affairs for St Malo at this gite and he approved, saying it was very good. He also invited us to call him when we were in St Malo for a personal tour. So this is the type of place where things like this can happen. The rooms were only 79 euros/night and the dinner 39 euros. There were many more people who came specifically for the dinners (about 15-20) in addition to the guests. Excellent four courses, fixed menu, wine extra. Breakfast included in the room rate. Making reservations may be difficult, they do not have reliable internet access so you will have to call, fax or mail requests. Jean told us that the gite is a place to get away from the world so he does not plan to improve connectivity! ||||Basque France is a very interesting region and Jean was very good as advising us as to routes and places to see. I would recommend this area of France, particularly to contrast it with Spanish Basque country. Many lovely villages, mountains. Once again, a difficult place to find since there isn't actually an address you can put into a GPS and the web site is very basic. However, once in Sare, you can ask at the tourist center and they will direct you so make sure you arrive in time before they close. I hesitate to post this since they are so small and I hate to not be able to get into their gite again if they become more popular, but it was such a gem of a place I felt I had...

We were booked to stay at Maison Olhabidea for 2 nights, with dinners explicitly reserved for both evenings. Our primary reason for selecting this inn was the wonderful things we had heard about the chef. We knew from other TA reviews and other research that the accommodations themselves were a bit rustic but thought it was worth that tradeoff for good food.||||We arrived at the inn on the late afternoon of a Tuesday, which was following a 3-day weekend. Neither of the 2 brothers who run the inn and restaurant were home, and we were greeted by their father, who speaks very little English. No matter; our French is rusty and non-grammatical, but serviceable. He explained to us that both of his sons were away, taking a break after the 3 day weekend, that the restaurant would be closed that evening, but that there were a few restaurants in town where we could eat. This was very dismaying. We then were shown to our room, which was in fact spacious (although with very low ceilings under the eaves) and furnished with charm, but with a bathroom in dire need of updating. We did in fact go into town that evening and had a perfectly acceptable meal, although not one that I would have driven 100 kilometers out of the way for.||||In the meantime, it was raining constantly and the rain was forecast to continue all of the next day -- meaning that there would be very little to occupy us during the day so we made the decision to check out the next morning. Before we left we did have a truly delicious breakfast at the restaurant, which gave us a glimpse of the culinary treats that might have awaited us for dinner. (And, the owners did not in any way protest when we told them that we were cutting short our stay.)||||We were baffled as to why no one emailed us in advance to alert us to their decision to close the restaurant on the evening that we would be arriving. It would have been such a simple...