Since acquiring two little boys and their accompanying paraphernalia we’ve tended to use the shooting brake (ok, our VW) to travel to our holiday destination in the South of France. As a consequence – and also because of the sometimes frequent stops required by said little boys, one of whom has a tendency to carry his latest meal rather lightly – we’ve got to know French service stations well, at least those on the way to and along the autoroute de Soleil.
Overall, there’s not a lot in it between French and British motorway services. One exception is all those ‘aires‘ you get in France. Every few miles there’s a sort of layby-park where you can stretch your legs, get the kids’ inner ears rebalanced and take care of other bits of business. They must be very expensive to create and maintain – but then you are paying to use French autoroutes, and rather a lot too.
I don’t believe that all things French in the culinary world are axiomatically better than all things British, an argument that might have had some merit in the past but no longer. And this is true even of service stations. You can eat well at a British service station – no longer do you have to put up with a flaccid banger accompanied by soggy chips or a bowl of bland slop (though you can usually find these if you fancy them). The arrival of M&S Food outlets at some of them is the latest step in a steady improvement – they provide fresh food of a quality you can’t get over there. Then there are those Westmorland stations, which are supposed to be brilliant, being family-run and even having a farm shop.
But France does sometimes score a stunner, pull something off that outshines anything I’ve found in the UK (however, I haven’t had a chance to stop at Westmorland yet). In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that there’s one Autogrill meal that offers up one of the culinary highlights of the whole trip (at least for me). It’s nothing fancy, just smoked ham with frites (not chips – these are thin and crisp). But what smoked ham! It’s positively ambrosial.
You’re presented at the counter with an entire freshly baked ham, from which is carved a couple of generous slices as you wait, tray in hand. It’s lightly crisped on the outside and is meltingly tender – so light and moist it has an almost gelatinous quality. It’s not too salty and is smoked to a delicate piquancy. I always have it with the sauce à la moutarde (there are other accompaniments): creamy but light and containing grains of the Dijon mustard that, quite literally, comes from a couple of hours down the road.
So where can you find this simple and satisfying dish? It’s served at Rheims Champagne (accessible from Sud and Nord), which with wonderful serendipity is arrived at around about lunchtime from both Provence and Folkestone if you start early enough. The consistency is pretty impressive too. We must have stopped at this place at least a couple of times a year for about four years now and I’ve never been disappointed.
This year was no exception. If anything, it was even a better experience on the way back as it was rounded off by a couple of packets of Mentos’s new Rainbow chews in the car afterwards. I’d recommend trying to engineer your turn to coincide with the quite remarkable watermelon flavour which appears about half way down the packet. Heston, eat your heart out.
Heston probably would eat his heart out, if it was medically viable. With anchovy ice-cream or some such.
Be honest, Gaw, are these family ‘holidays’ really just an elaborate excuse to eat Autogrill ham and chips? Nothing wrong with that…
Surely nothing can be more delicious than a refrigerated Ginster’s ham and cheese slice?
In Australia they have the nadir of road food- the Chico roll. A deep fried spring roll consisting of cabbage, which has normally been sweating under a heat lamp for days. Mmmm
In Britain I find the M4 has much better services than the M5 or M6.
I sometimes get a strong fried chicken craving when heading south, but last time I availed myself of the KFC at Michaelwood (M5) my original recipe chicken and ‘hot wings’ tasted of literally nothing.
Blimey. You can’t even get a decent cup of coffee in a motorway service station. As for tea, we’re having a laugh, obviously. Something should be done! (egg en ronay, yeah, what happened to him?)
Those family run places sound more promising – I think I heard there might be one going up on the M5, quite near Michaelwood. Michaelwood don’t like it.
I note that Waitrose are following M&S into service station territory.
Top service station snack tip: Marks and Sparks do a very good vegetable samosa (which Waitrose have also copied.)
What about those folks who sit in the service station carpark and get out the thermos and homemade sarnies? A dying breed?
Yes – probably literally. They’re now only found sitting on rain-swept seafronts in the more dilapidated resorts.
That was a treat for my grandparents. Drive down to Southsea in the Triumph and watch the sea through the drizzle-specked windscreen.
Suede had a song called ‘Picnic by the Motorway’ which amused me.
It’s no joke in France, of course, where the aires are full of les pique-niquers.
Brit: I get the impression this post has hit a bit of chord with you! The strange allure of the motorway service station…
Holidays as a pretext to eat Autogrill ham and chips? I’ve got to say I really do enjoy the trip. Not doing a lot of driving the rest of the time it retains some of the thrill of ‘motoring’ (though the ham and chips obviously plays a large part too).
My UK service station tip is the Aberdeen Angus burger at Burger King (there’s one near Newport on the M4 and another down near Exeter, I think) – not only is it less sickly sweet than McDs, it actually tastes of good beef.
Worm: That Oz thing sounds disgusting to an almost unimaginable extent.
Ian: I suppose the coffee judgement depends on whether you think Costa and Coffee Nation are ok (which I do). Michaelwood sounds like a presenter on Points West.
It’s true, as a youth I would weep in Little Chefs.
I do seem to spend a great deal of my life in service stations though. They are all the same but different. Perhaps I should write an Alain de Botton-style book: The Pleasures and Consolations of the Welcome Break, Newport Pagnell.
It is actually Michael Wood – I checked yesterday as I drove past.
I don’t drink much coffee these days, I find it’s too often served too hot and, unlike tea, the water shouldn’t be scalding. Then, not only have you an overly bitter drink, you’re sat there like a spare part waiting for the damn thing to cool down enough to drink it. (I once made the mistake of opting for a coffee during a job interview. The interview, a mistake, ended a good ten minutes before the coffee did. If the job description had required a small talker, I reckon I’d have got it.)
But we are supposed to be a great tea drinking nation, something which isn’t evident on the high street or in service stations. I blame the bag.
Good point about tea. I think people resent paying for tea because it’s so cheap to drink at home and at work.
Whereas shops can present coffee as a treat – ie. serve it scalding hot in a bucket with disgusting caramel gloop and charge you the same as a pint of beer.
Aren’t Westmorland the folks who run the really very nice services at Tebay (M6)? The food is definitely a cut above and the views — Shap Fell, the Lune Gorge, and the Howgills — must be incomparably the best in Service-Station Land.
I once had a sit-down lunch at a deserted M1 services on Christmas Day — an intensely existential experience, for Leicestershire.
Did you write a poem about it, JL? I feel sure I would have had to.
I remember stopping at Westmorland one Christmas day. Very atmospheric place. with heavy frost all around, and nothing beats driving on the M6 when there is less traffic than on a single-track road in Sutherland.
I was really impressed in the airport in Milan at a member of the catering staff cooking risotto in the proper way, gradually adding liquid. This member of the catering staff actually looked like a cook, and the risotto was very good.
When you say ‘looked like a cook’… are we talking Nigella or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall here?
If I didn’t have a bladder I would never, ever venture into motorway service stations in this country. They are nasty and expensive and have no redeeming features whatsoever. I just hate them. Given that I live in west Cornwall this is challenging and I often arrive at my destination starving and dehydrated. I have generally found French ones very good though – your find in Rheims Champagne sounds excellent.
My Dad keeps under his car seat a large empty bottle of Copella apple juice which he makes use of to avoid stopping at service stations on long trips. I’m not suggesting you emulate him though – apart from anything else, I think the choice of a receptacle that used to contain apple juice could lead to trouble.
What with this post and your Jellied Eel special, it seems that your food related posts are reaching the same level of commentary/interest (17 and counting so far for this one) as those which touch on religion. I always knew there was a connection.
One of the mysteries of blogging is why some posts attract more comments than others. But I suppose food is something that everyone knows something about and most people have decided views on.
Especially back in the late 70s when I was doing those Nord to Sud trips the food was so much better than motorway services.
Its impossible to imagine salivating over a UK rubber boiled ham and Kraft sarnie the way we did over those half baguettes full of luscious smoked ham and brie.
Oh and Gaw,I live on Mentos Fruits when I’m driving. But the new Rainbow and especially the ‘watermelon’ suck, as the American cousins would have it, ASS.
Is sucking ASS a good thing in this context? I really don’t know. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t.
My apologies Gaw. I’m becoming so submerged in the strange rituals and alien language that I forget that others are not so corrupted.
In this context, the sucking of ass is most certainly a bad thing. I though they were horrid.
Petronosh, the downfall of the travelling classes, I know nothing of such things, isolated in a Northern fastness, 100 kilometres from the M6. Happy I am.
Y’all remember now…………………
Und dann kam Pippa !
What’s the betting that she don’t munch in tarmac teahouses.
Just realised who Pippa reminds me of – the young Felicity Kendall, which is surely very high praise indeed.
In South West France the produits de la region on offer beside the motorway include huge plates of Marennes oysters. A very welcome break (though the loos are French too).
I’ve experienced only one ‘hole-in-the-ground’-style loo along the Autoroute heading down south. Nevertheless I feel I’ve let them off in this area.
As much as I love oysters I do wonder whether they sit comfortably with long car journeys.
Autoroute being the operative word. Once upon a time when the A1 and A6 were proper roads one could dive off for a few hundred metres and pop in to a Routier, sharing chicken and chips with les camions and enjoy food cooked as it should be. Turn left past Beaune and head over to Chamonix via Annecy using the back roads, lots of excellent small restaurants, the journey to the destination becomes as enjoyable as the holiday.
Now even the exhilaration of the peripherique is taken away from us, the Autoroute opening up east of Paris, plus ça change does not apply here.
Best petronosh in recent years…on the E40 between Aachen and Liege there exists a McDonald’s that serves not the usual gastroenteritis but a bacon and egg roll of towering culinary delight, the joint has become a legend throughout the Ruhr and parts of Belgium.