For the Love of...: ...Brasserie du Grand Café de L'Opera (Toulouse, France)

Overall - 7.5/10
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Food - 7/10
Service - 8/10
Ambiance - 8/10

A year ago, we were lucky enough to have spent a month in France.  This summer we won't be travelling so we thought we would post on a few of our memorable experiences from our trip as a way to reminisce.  We hope you find these posts helpful if you plan on stopping by a few of the same locations or at the very least, enjoyable to read.  Toulouse is a beautiful city to visit.  We happened to be in Toulouse for Bastille Day and it was a fantastic experience.

Our luck with trains this trip seems to have run out and we have been been hit with multiple delays and cancellations. The trip from Tours to Toulouse was particularly bad. Right off the bat we were delayed three hours at the train station. Then just as we got underway we were told that our train would no longer be making the full journey to Toulouse. Instead we had to spend the night in a sketchy motel until the next train in the morning (we have to note that the train driver was very kind in making sure we had a place to sleep instead of waiting at the station in the middle of the night for 4 hours).

When we finally did arrive in Toulouse we thought a celebratory dinner was in order. We chose the Brasserie du Café de L'Opera which was located conviently around the corner from our hotel. Maybe it was the previous day spent eating pre-packaged sandwiches in train stations but we felt very lucky to be sitting down to a nice dinner even if we weren't necessarily wowed by the food.

Caramelized onions and cheese on bread 

We started our meal off with the beef carpaccio and the tomato salad.  The beef was sliced finely and quite fresh but nothing special. 

The tomato salad however was excellent. The tomatoes were perfectly ripe and bursting with flavour while the accompaniments of buffalo mozzarella, basil pesto and Parmesan cheese were very well chosen.

Or mains included a grilled red snapper dish with peppers and steak with caramelized shallots. 

The fish was well cooked, moist but somewhat bland. The steak tasted really good with the sweet caramelized shallots and is a combination that we'll be trying at home.

For dessert we chose an apple tart and the crème caramel. Both were well done and not too sweet. Again nothing particularly special but after the ordeal of the day before just being able to sit at a table with wine and enjoy our dinner made for a special evening!

Apple Tart

Crème caramel

Looking back at the pictures we are now wondering why we thought the food was just average, because it all looks pretty dang good a year later.  I think we were completely spoiled on this trip with the all-around fantastic food in France.  You don't have to pay much to get a good meal so when we came here, a fine dining restaurant, where the flavours were just as good as what you could get at a lower priced restaurant we felt slightly underwhelmed.  However, we definitely recommend L'Opera for the ambience and service.