a café crème with a delicious filled baguette

In the city of Nottingham, where I live, we have a fair few restaurants and cafes that have a French appeal and I was delighted to see my favourite ‘French Living’ featured on page 17 of the February 2009 edition of the monthly FRANCE magazine. Did you know that they even have the only French street sign in the city!?

That's King Street by the way.

The owners of French Living - Stéphane and Louise Luiggi – are a charming couple and I met them initially in the late 1990s when I used to sell prints and greetings cards for the French company, Nouvelles Images. Since then I have been a regular visitor and have seen their business grow from strength to strength. Not only do they have a newly extended café on the street level including a selection of provisions to take away, but the restaurant in the basement is always busy and they have regular ‘discovery evenings’ throughout the year with regional food and wines.

Stéphane originates from Corsica and his wife Louise from England and in 2004 she wrote a wonderful book about their life and her passion for French food and naturellement, the style of French Living. It is published by Piatkus Books and is called Come To The Table. You can buy a copy online or direct by popping into the venue.

I have lost count of the amount of times that I have sat in their café listening to the French music and nursing a café crème with a delicious filled baguette and dreaming that I was in Bordeaux or Paris or Nice. Then I had to return to work – c’est la vie!