Le Gandoyau - Chinon

Our group of six decided to dine here as we were staying in the hotel and did not want to go far. We had a lovely meal. The menu is not long but had enough variety for even our most reluctant eater. The chef proprietor does it all in this small quaint restaurant. He takes your order then goes in the kitchen and prepares it. His English is good and the menu was available in English. Highly recommend a stop here.

There are lots of places to eat in Chinon and we tried different ones each night after looking at all the reviews and found them very mediocre and some had poor service too. Although we were staying at the hotel next to la Gandoyau we had not seen any reviews.well we wish we had tried here first. It was a lovely romantic setting( we sat in the courtyard as it was a warm night) with candlelight and the service was excellent. My husbands steak he says was the best he has had in years and my marinated beef was delicious. The desssert of the day wa a delicious pear almond and chocolate affair and was melt in the mouth. If you are staying in Chinon I definitely recommend you try here.

Simple local dishes cooked with excellence. Friendly no nonsense service from the proprietor who knew his stuff. Lovely local wines. Just a brilliant relaxed evening!

We have eaten here on more than one occasion and it is perfectly situated, if you are staying at Hostellerie Gargantua. The patron is hospitable and welcoming and the service is efficient. As an aperitif the 'aperitif maison ' is recommended. Our starters were okay and the lamb was good, as was the goat 's cheese and the chocolate mousse. Unfortunately the chicken was dry and the vegetables not up to the standard we have enjoyed previously. On this occasion our meal was not as good as those we have had previously. This restaurant 's standards need to improve, if it is to remain competitive, as there are a growing number of other good local restaurants.

We chose this restaurant because the menu looked like there was plenty of choice and the setting was very pretty. Got off to a good start. Waiter (owner? was pleasant and we ordered a lovely bottle of rose from the Tours area. My husband ordered an entree of pork confit with honey and it was very good. Then things started to go awry. Husband ordered a beef stew and I ordered the cockerel. The beef stew was not hot, served in a watery sauce and there was not a vegetable to be seen in the sauce. Furthermore the meat was dry and chewy and the dish had little flavour (I would be embarrassed to serve it to non paying guests at my home . I had the cockerel that had a tell tale taste of being pre cooked, refrigerated then finished off in the deep fryer. While mine was well below par I ate the bits of meat I could get off the bone. Some were so dry and overcooked I could t remove them with my knife. The real problem started when the waiter seeing my husband had left more than half of his stew asked him if he didn 't like it. Seems he didn 't like the answer it was chewy, dry and bland (understandably he didn 't know the word bland so we said it had zero favour as we tried to get him to know what we meant . While we were direct we certainly weren 't rude or angry about the meal. We were just responding to his question (I made no mention of what I thought of my meal . He immediately got defensive and said 5 other people had ordered it this evening and they were all happy and stormed off. Next thing we knew the bill was brought to our table without any opportunity to order dessert or coffee. It was akin to being kicked out. My husband discussed this rudeness with the waiter inside the restaurant away from all the diners. We felt his behaviour was totally rude and unpleasant, uncalled for and not a way to treat guests. I have read back over the reviews on TripAdvisor and many people have liked this restaurant. However I was gratified to read that we are not the only ones who felt this way about the meal.. Below is a quote from another TripAdvisor entry I then had what was described as a local beef stew with Chinon wine. The beef was cut far too thin so it was completly dried out (perhaps its such poor quality meat thats the only way to get it to cook . From recollection the stew had a few carrots in and er, that 's about it. No other veg that I could discern and if it had wine in, it didn 't make its presence known. Very salty also. Just awful and comfortably the worst food we 've ever had the misfortune to have in France over many years of visiting. [hidden link]