The word gourmet was something I learned at a very early age. My mother had a subscription to the magazine thusly named that was devoted to food, culture, and travel. Although I might not have been able to read the words, there were plenty of pictures of delicious looking meals served in exotic locations to keep me interested. On Sundays we were often treated to a special lunch created from recipes found within those pages. One of our current neighbors used a similar-sounding term, gourmand, to describe our experience last week at a restaurant and an overnight stay in Narbonne. She insisted that it was not an insult despite our association of the word gluttony with it.

According to the Académie française, that I think of as the word police for the French language, gourmet means one who knows wines and how to taste them while a gourmand loves good food. Neither of those sound bad at all but what we hear in common use adds food to the first definition and includes wine in the second. When Bill suggested that we go to dinner at Les Grands Buffets—notice the letter s to indicate more than one—I felt for sure that this was going to be a gluttonous evening lacking fine food and wine. A pleasant surprise awaited us.

Our dinner reservation was for 7:15 PM but knowing that the 500-seat restaurant is full nightly, we arrived early and went to their English pub-inspired bar, Private Bowling Pub, to enjoy a bottle of champagne at the reasonable price of 29€. They had plenty of snacks but with the potential of 5 hours of eating ahead of us, we were content with “tasting the stars” as French monk Dom Pérignon reportedly exclaimed about the sparkling wine in his glass.

In the pub we were given a skip-the-line token that gave us immediate access to the restaurant at 7:15 PM ahead of our fellow diners waiting to enter. We then saw the choice of dining rooms:

• Salon Doré Jean de La Fontaine—the company that helped restore Châteaux of Versailles and Chambord created this palace-like interior including 18,000 gold leaves.
• The Royal Tent Jean Baptiste Nolin—an homage to the nearby Canal-du-Midi and to Jean-Baptiste Nolin, cartographer of Louis XIV.
• Ann Carrington Room—with an original painting by this English artist who is also on display at the British Museum.
• Max Le Verrier room—a statue by this French sculptor evokes art deco of the 1920s, where our table was already reserved.
• Hervé di Rosa Garden—an outdoor room decorated with the artist’s sculptures.

Comfortably seated it was time to get back up and make the first of dozens of choices for the evening. The buffets included:

• Hors D’Oeuvres—9 types of foie gras, suckling pig, oysters, clams, crab, shrimp, lobster, salmon
• Rotisserie—duckling, more lobster, prime rib, veal, fish, frogs legs, escargot, quail
• Cheese—all from France, 111 in total, including Camembert, St-Nectaire, Comté, Salers, Cantal, Laguiole, Morbier, Reblochon, Brie, 4 varieties of Roquefort
• Desserts—huge chocolate fountain, 50 types of homemade cakes and pastries, chocolate mousse, crepe suzette, and an ice cream palace
• Wines—70 choices, many available by the glass with the bottles sold at the vineyard price including our favorite, AOP Corbières Boutenac.

With midnight approaching, we moved on to the second half of the evening before it became the morning. After that grand meal the 20-minute walk to the Couvent des Carmes, a former convent, was very welcome. We were in the Imperial Suite, complete with a 4-poster bed, that I doubt was in use when the building opened in 1262. A few hours later we were at the nearby boulangerie picking up some just-baked croissants before heading off to the train station for the quick trip home. 

If you go: Do stop in at the pub for a drink and to pick up your token to jump ahead of the crowd. Thank you Jon for that suggestion and for pointing out that while everyone tends to go first to the hors d’oeuvres buffet, you can avoid the rush by initially visiting the rotisserie while it’s not busy, get a plateful of starters after that, and then return for more roasted meats before moving on to cheese and dessert. The cost per person is 57.90€ before wine.

Les Grands Buffets: https://www.lesgrandsbuffets.com/fr

The Couvent des Carmes: https://anciencouventdescarmes.fr/

Photo note: Instead of trying to take photos while enjoying our meal, today we are using photos from the Grands Buffets website, thank you. The same applies for the Couvent des Carmes.