Lovely evening, may not be to everyone's taste
The reviews of L'auberge are very mixed. We decided to take a chance on it for our wedding anniversary celebration and did not regret it. We had a lovely evening.
We were welcomed warmly by the hostess. There is a large range of kir royeaux aperitifs - my husband, intrigued, chose one with a cactus and chilli base - more subtle than you might think, and I enjoyed a more conventional wild strawberry. Both were excellent.
The highlight of the meal was the desserts, make sure to save room for these. The creme brûlée was wonderful, and the plates piped with an anniversary message. All of the food is fresh and nicely prepared, and brought to the table by the chef.
The hostess is very attentive and very knowledgeable about the menu and wine list. She suggested a cheaper bottle of red wine than the one we had initially plumped for, and it was excellent and complemented the main course very well, we also followed her advice and had a glass of crisp house white to go with our with our starters. Dessert wine, port and cognac were also excellent.
I can see why this restaurant is not for everyone. In some ways it is more like being a house dinner guest. The (charming) hostess joins in the conversation at the table, and is keen to guide choice on combinations of food and drink. The menu is limited but sufficient in terms of choice (we both found more than one option for every course which we were very happy to order), and there is a lack of ambience in part because there were only a small number of tables occupied. Food was delivered promptly, but with (as far as we could see) everything being done by the husband and wife team, there were a couple of times when we waited a little longer than we would like to get attention (this particularly related to the end of the meal when bills were being prepared).
In summary we had a lovely evening and enjoyed the company of our hosts and our meal. We will return.