The 2017 edition of the Tour de France kicks off with an individual time trial in Dusseldorf Germany on Saturday July 1 and finishes on the Champs Elysée on Sunday July 23th.
Café Presse will be showing every stage on the big screen over the bar beginning at 7am when we open.
Check our out Weekly Event Calendar for full schedule.
Slow roasted pork ribs, salad of red oak leaf lettuce, corona beans, shaved fennel, bing cherries and roasted fennel purée
Check out the new dishes that Le Pichet chef de cuisine Dave Cooper has recently added to the menu for early summer!
Crispy semolina fried beef tripe served on a ragout of artichokes, escarole, garlic and white wine.
Smoked pork heart, thinly sliced and served on butter lettuce with sauce gribiche.
The Columbia River crayfish season has started and we have them at Café Presse!
This freshwater delicacy is usually more closely associated with the bayous of Louisiana than with the Pacific Northwest, and the Colombia river season is short. But the cold waters of the Columbia yield up crayfish that are particularly sweet, firm and fresh tasting.
Today at Café Presse, we are offering them in a simple and traditional French: poached in a court bouillon, then served cold as an appetizer with lemon-tarragon mayonnaise.
Available while the supply lasts.
When the thermometer is topping 90 degrees, its way to hot to cook! Instead of turning on the oven,why not let us do the cooking? Most of the items on our menu are available to take home including our famous roasted to your order Poulet Roti.
Give us a call and we will have your bird ready when you arrive. Choose with frites or plain, maybe even add a salad and a nice bottle of rosé to round out your meal.
Or even better, grab a table and enjoy our air conditioning!
Join us for a cafe-style celebration of the Fête du Quatorze Juillet!
Special menu of Paris street food. Live Music.
No cover charge. No reservations. Everyone welcome!
A classic Basque combination: sheep’s milk cheese, cherries and piment d’Espelette
Special today at Café Presse:
First of the season Burlat cherries, with Brebis de Pyrenees sheep’s milk cheese and piment d’Espelette grilled baguette slices.
The Burlat cherry is an early-ripening varietal similar to a Bing. Maybe not quite as sweet as a bing but more fruity, firm and delicious. These organic cherries came from todays Farmer’s Market on Broadway.
In the French Basque countries, sheep’s milk cheeses are traditionally served with cherry comfiture, sometimes enlivened with the kick of the famous Basque ground chili, piment d’Espelette.
Very simple and quick dessert: faisselles with home-made red muscat grape jam.
Fromage blanc a la confiture is one of the simplest desserts there is and to my mind one on the most satisfying. The frequency with which one finds fancied up versions of Fromage blanc a la confiture on the menu at high end restaurants throughout France testifies to this dessert’s ability to evoke memories of childhood. Its like chocolate pudding for us…you just never grow out of it.
Consisting simply of fromage blanc served with seasonal jam, honey, or, in a pinch, with a spoonful of white sugar, the success of this dish is clearly dependent on the quality of the cheese and of the garnish.
On a recent visit to Lait P’tits Bearnais, an organic dairy outside Orthez, a container of faisselles caught my eye. Faisselles, like its cousin fromage blanc, is a simple, fresh cheese made by adding bacteriologic culture to fresh milk, waiting for the milk to curdle then draining some of the whey. Fromage blanc is often made using a mix of whole milk and cream, resulting in a higher fat content cheese that has a smoother, richer mouth feel. Faisselles is usually made with just whole milk, resulting in a slightly curdier cheese that has a slight acidic bite. Why not try using faisselles a la confiture?
As there is no AOC for faisselles (or for fromage blanc for that matter), the exact method for making it varies from dairy to dairy. At “Les Petits Bearnais”, whole milk is used. The fresh curds are scooped into perforated cups and sold while they are still draining. One arrives home with four cute little cheeses and half a cup of whey in the bottom of the container (I save the whey and add a little to dried beans or grains when soaking them before cooking. The extra action of the live culture makes them more digestible).
Organic faisselles from le Ferme Lait P’tits Bearnais.
Fresh cheeses in their mold or ‘faisselle”.
Having secured some good cheese, all that’s left is to select your jam. I picked one of the last jars of red muscat grape jam from a batch I made a few years back. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.
Can you believe that Café Presse is turning 10 years old? That’s right, we opened our doors to the public for the first time on June 20th, 2007. To celebrate the occasion, our Chef’s Dinner this quarter will feature dishes from our very first menu.
What: 5-course family-style dinner
When: Tuesday June 20, at 6:30pm sharp
Where: The back room at Café Presse
Cost: Dinner including beverage* $70
*your choice of paired wines or non-alcoholic beverages
For reservations, please telephone at 206.709.7674
Les hors d’œuvres
Croque monsieur bites
Falafels with sauce blanche
Steak tartare on toasted baguette with tomato chutney
Plateau de charcuterie
Artisan and house-made charcuterie including jambon de Bayonne, gâteau de foie de volaille, rillettes de porc, saucisse a l’ail, langue de veau and saucissons sec.
Salade au chèvre chaud
Local arugula and curly endive, mustard vinaigrette, warm goat cheese croutons
Poulet rôti, pommes frites
Free range natural chicken roasted to order, served with pommes frites and grilled Washington State asparagus
Gâteau de riz « grand-mère » et ses frais de notre région
“Grandmother-style” caramelized rice cake served with fresh cream and Washington State strawberries.
Cafe Presse and Le Pichet will both be open regular hours on Memorial Day, Monday May 29, 2017.
Cafe Presse open from 7am to 2am
Le Pichet open from 8am to midnight
Stop by and see us!
If you leave the old center of Toulouse, crossing the Garonne via the pont Saint-Pierre, you will arrive in the left bank quarter of Saint-Cyprian. Less picturesque and with fewer sites to attract visitors, this side of the river offers instead the charm the of a French town quietly going about its daily routines.
Located on the pocket sized Place de l’Estrapade at the center of the Saint-Cyprian, Les Temps des Vendages is at heart a cave or wine shop. The walls of the tiny front room are lined with bottles that reflect owner Eric Cuestas’ passion for organic, biodynamic and natural wines, what he calls Vins d’Artisans. By virtue of a tiny kitchen at the back and 10 small tables tucked in between the cases of wine, the cave becomes cave a manger at lunch time. Each day, the kitchen offers a short menu of seasonal dishes that look simple but surprise with their depth of flavor and technical accomplishment.
On a day in late May, one starter was a golden-yolked farm egg baked en cocotte with cream, raclette cheese , parsley and peas. A main course featured half a roasted chicken served with a salad of red feuille de chêne lettuce and potato puree. Very simple dishes both but perfectly executed. As each plate was delivered, the server chatted amiably about the various farms from which came the eggs, chicken and raw milk raclette,
A cheese course we ordered was composed of a drippingly ripe Brie de Meaux, a cow’s milk tome from the Ariege hamlet of Bethmale and a herb crusted sheep’s milk cheese from Corsica. The owner selected these from a small but very packed display case full of cheese and charcuterie at the back of the room. Are these today’s cheeses, I asked? No, he selected these to match the bottle of red wine from the Clos de Tue Bouef in the Touraine that we had been drinking.
By the time that a dessert of goat’s milk panna cotta with gariguette strawberries (a specialty of the region) arrived, it had become clear that this simple little cafe and wine shop is anything but. Instead, it offers something that is rare these days. Impeccably sourced food and wine, prepared and served with skill and an amazingly humble sense of the virtues of a job well done.
Afternoons finds the pleasant terrace out front filled with tables of friends sharing a bottle of wine and a plate of charcuterie or cheese. Neighbors pass by to purchase a bottle and some cheese or rillettes to take home. Just another day in paradise.
Lest Temps des Vendages
Address: 9 Place de l’Estrapade, 31300 Toulouse, France
Tel: o5 61 42 94 66
Reservations: Lots of space on the terrace, but if the weather is bad, reserve on of the 10 tables inside.
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