Les 9 Caves — Restaurant in Céret

Les 9 Caves in Banyuls sur Mer consists of a group of winemakers, 3 apartments for tourists and visitors, and a restaurant with a wine shop. While sharing the building they are largely independent of each other. So let's start off by clarifying that this review is for the restaurant.

A couple of months ago a new chef took over and there's a brand new menu, in fact the menu changes almost every week according to the chef. The food is a welcome change from the uniform offerings of the restaurants and bars along the main boulevard.

The menu is a bit small, but offers something for everyone. There is a fish, meat and vegetarian option for starters and main courses. Especially if you are looking for a good vegetarian dish, this is almost the only option in town. If you're not sure what to pick you can opt for the chef's menu, which offers a selection of various courses from the menu in smaller amounts. Each dish looked amazing and tasted even better. I would definitely recommend the chef's menu.

If you, like me, are not a wine expert you can rest easy knowing that the sommeliers have got you covered. The restaurant and shop almost exclusively (maybe even completely) sell natural wines, mainly from regional wine makers including the ones at Les 9 Caves. Each wine that was suggested tasted great with the food and should you ever find one not to your liking there's always something else the sommeliers can recommend.

All in all it was a great culinary experience. Amazing food and wines in a casual setting, with friendly and...

I feel like I really had to write this review and to post the pictures of my experience in order to give potential customers a more accurate idea of the food/price ratio you get there. For the fête des vendanges, we had the unpleasant surprise to see that this restaurant (where I had eaten well 3 years before) served only a fixed menu, which cost 39.50 euros. We decided to go with it because it was already late and there was supposed to be a lot of food. You can judge for yourself.

We received : about 50 grams of « sardines rillettes » (very basic: sardines and mayo), again maybe 60 grams of « magret de canard » (no sauce, and the duck was barely cooked), with a « gaufrette de canard » (the kind of pastry you can get for 2 euros at a supermarket), un « plateau de fromage » (which was in fact only one small piece of cheese per person and a salad with only a bit of oil and dirt to go with it), and a desert (which to be honest, was the only good thing we had there). Oh, and I almost forgot: the duck was accompanied by two (small) potatoes.

A complete rip-off. If you ever find yourself to be in the area, and if you’re hungry, save yourself 20 euros and pick any other place, you’ll eat...

We went back to this place, because we had initially a good experience. We asked for a wine testing on Sunday and the owner, a Dutch guy, was kind enough to make it happen, mentioning that on a Sunday is not usually doing it. We made the wine testing and from then, we bought 8 bottles. 2 bottles of old Muscats around 25/30€ per bottle, 2 bottles of old banyuls around 25€ each bottle and 4 bottles of regular banyuls around 15€ per bottle. When we arrived at home, what a surprise to discover that the two old bottles of Banyuls around 25€ was replaced by young Banyuls...! Despite my calls to the shop and the kindness of one employee, the owner never call me back to offer me any kind of compensation. Long story short, i Recommend you to avoid this place the owner is a fraud despite his...