Le Menestrel — Restaurant in Carcassonne

Live caterpillars in my salad!

We feel hot and cold about this restaurant. On the one hand, all of the food seemed fresh and hot. The white beans and duck in particular was awesome and could have been shared between two people. The chicken had good flavor but was on the dry side, and the pasta was fine.

The salad was so fresh that I found caterpillars! First a big, fat, green one that was munching on my cucumber, and then a smaller one that did not survive the dressing. I gave up trying to eat it after that second discovery. We brought the caterpillars to the server's attention who alerted his boss, and he in turn took the plate away with a look of disgust on his face. And then that was all we heard of it! No one commented on it to us. We paid the full price for the salad. It was as if nothing ever happened. Astonishing.

That said, the beans and duck were so good that I couldn't completely bomb the review here. If you have no other options in the walled city and must eat here, stay away from the raw dishes and order something thoroughly cooked.

Overall, for the cost and our experience, I will not recommend...

According to google maps there are two places, Le Menestrel and Le Marcou. However it appears that they are the same place under Le Brasserie. The menu we had was with the Le Menestrel logo even though we walked in the Le Marcou.

We got the 18.9 euro menu and it was a lot of food. We were more than full. The servers were friendly and happy.

I had the mixed green salad, Cassoulet and apple pie. While my partner had the Onion soup, chicken breast and yoghurt (which is listed on th menu as cheese).

The mixed green salad was amazing it had a really yummy dressing and lots of favour. The Cassoulet was good with tasty sausage and duck. However sadly by the end it had gotten a bit dry with all the beans and minimum sauce. Onion soup was alright however tasted a bit bland. The chicken breast with fires was disappoitning. The chicken didnt really taste or look like a normal chicken breast. The fries were also a bit sad. Dessert was alright even if...

The pizza margarita is not made how a margarita should be made. I ordered a margarita pizza expecting a well made Neapolitan one, with soft and crunchy crust, thin bottom, simple tomato “sauce”, fresh mozzarella cheese, topped with a few leaves of basil. What I got was a thick bottom made in nearly Detroit style. Their “tomato sauce” was blended into a smoothie, seasoned with the most random herbs and SUGAR?! No tomato sauce should contain sugar, only hand crushed San Marzano tomatoes and 1g salt for every 100g of tomatoes. The cheese was exaggerated making the whole pizza greasy. They even added three olives!? When did margaritas start to have olives? No you’re not fancy for adding a few olives, it doesn’t make up for the bad pizza. Would not recommend. If the pizza was labeled cheese pizza I would not have any problems, but you labeling it as a Neapolitan pizza is...