Passage to "La Terre Des Templiers"

Restaurant : La Terre des Templiers 16 Chemin Neuf, 06410 Biot France +33 4 92 96 02 02

This is indeed a temple. A restaurant that lives up to its name in the original sense of the word, i.e. a place where you can restore yourself, recharge your batteries, heal and rethink. It is a temple of authenticity where you are captivated from the moment you enter.

Authenticity of a place, with thick walls and tables, like a protection against storm tides. White cotton tablecloths! Yes, yes! that still exists in 2022! Ceilings painted in soft colours and gentle curves, picture windows overlooking the surrounding forest at the edge of the village... It seems that time has not crept into this precious shelter, this place of retreat where, if you have lost even a few crumbs of your dignity, you find it intact.

Authenticity of the men and women of these places, where simplicity rhymes with truth and quality. It takes so little to feel happiness...

Authenticity of dishes. This is where you really eat. In the land of the Templars, you learn and re-learn the true taste of things and time. The food honours you as much as you honour it. It welcomes you like a beloved guest, lost from sight for long and perilous years. It seats you at its table, like Ulysses returning from a beautiful voyage, and who "returned, full of use and reason, to live among his parents for the rest of his age" (Joachim Du Bellay).

Here, food comes from the earth. There's no need to ask. The food is self-sufficient and bonds naturally with the others, pampered by the delicate fingers of a loving couple... and loving each other, it goes without saying. Harmony of gesture, harmony of silence. Appearance has no place here.

Authenticity of wines. Here, we really drink. The wine that greets you and takes the words out of your mouth with its big, flowery smile. You don't talk when you taste. To listen to what you're eating, you have to free your tongue from the frivolous letters and crazy ideas that fly around and obscure what's essential. Yes, it's the wine's turn to speak, and it knows how to take the floor and cut it off!

The Earth is in the name of this house, buried in the material and in the taste of the host, in the wide-open eye that welcomes you and in the dignified price that looks you straight in the eye and beckons you with its frank pupil: "Welcome! You're at home here!"

Do what you love and love what you do, that is perhaps, surely, the treasure of this temple...

An address to send to all those you love.

10th March 2022, Biot 

Nathalie AUDIN