Montpellier

The cuisine of Languedoc, like any other Mediterranean cuisine, combines ingredients from land and sea. Above all, it is high in taste, aromatic, spicy and full of personality. It is more Spain-orientated than Italy, which is a reference for the cuisine from Nice and Provence. It is also more based on sea products, due to the large amount of seafood on our coasts, our wide sand beaches, our fish specialties and of course our famous salt.
Our knowledge in cooking was built on our greediness, and specially on memories of our youth. It starts with tastes from our home and gets enriched by our different travels abroad.
What we do is what we like or, more precisely, what we would like to be served in a restaurant.
You can make the art of cooking a continuous research, dare breaking the mould of classical cooking and look in your environment, your nature, your country, the whole world or in your own dreams the way to a style in constant evolution.

The celebration of good living wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the restaurant where Jacques and Laurent Pourcel, associated to Olivier Château, their indissociable friend.
“We have created this restaurant in the same way as we create our courses, first in our imaginary. We wanted a garden, we would like to celebrate the five senses. This garden in spiral surrounds the large dining room of the restaurant, entirely made with glasses, luminous, conceived like an amphitheatre, playing with space and pure lines. The space between tables, high ceilings, the opening on the garden, the basin and the fountain participate to give to this place, a spirit of well-being…” Extract of the book, Cuisine en duo, of Jacques and Laurent Pourcel – Hachette Editions - 1999

A good meal or a moment of pleasure would be nothing without the appropriate wine.
The Languedoc-Roussillon’s vineyards abound in great wines and some famous vintages have been discovered since the 90’s.
The foreign consumer has understood it before the French and it is often for this reason that some vineyards (often the best) export till 80% of their production abroad.
Maybe it’s for this reason that many French still think that this area produces cheap average wines of modest quality.
But today, it has to be understood that a good bottle from the Languedoc-Roussillon area costs a certain price and this price is the award of the efforts of grape culture, wine treatment, soil maintenance.
The people who raise and vinify these wines have to be supported and their work promoted in their country. This is what Le Jardin des Sens and the cuisine of Jacques and Laurent Pourcel endeavour to do...