La Cave du Centre – A Must-Visit Venue of Aaron Ayscough

We had been looking forward to visiting Aaron’s bar and restaurant in Chagny ever since he opened La Cave du Centre. We had met him on a number of occasions over the preceding years throughout France, especially at natural wine salons and natural wine bars.

On our visit to Burgundy this year we were able to achieve this aim when we visited friends in a nearby town and we joined them for lunch at Cave du Centre.

We loved the venue from the minute we saw the wooden facade looking out onto the street in central Chagny.

It is relatively small with some of the space including the left hand wall as you walk in devoted to the display of his excellent selection of natural wines. Immediately we could see that we would be more than happy with the wine selection on display.

Our friends had eaten here a number of times before and recommended everything on the menu, so that is what we decided to do – order everything!

We liked the look of the offerings that included tortilla, anchovies, salad de fenouil, gulyas, ratatouille, yaourt au miel and peche avec chevre frais. Photos of some of these dishes are shown below.

To drink, Aaron recommended a Fantasie from La Liquiere in the Languedoc and then an Ouverture Aligoté from Arnaud Chapuis which was absolutely delicious. Both of these were natural wines as we were certain that they would be.

We need to remind readers that we seek out venues that serve natural wine for a fairly simple reason. We only drink natural wines because they have not been sprayed with dangerous agricultural sprays which are widely used in the wine industry throughout the world. Aaron has always been a strong advocate for natural wines and his selection in La Cave du Centre reflect his commitment to these wines.

And speaking of delicious, as the dishes started to arrive at the table we were more than impressed with the quality of the the dishes that Aaron was sending out. Not only is he an expert regarding natural wine, a very good writer, and a good winemaker, he is also a talented chef!

All the dishes were very tasty and had us looking forward to the next dish to arrive at the table. Everything we ate was expertly prepared.

Here are the two wines we enjoyed:

And now for some of the dishes:

Oh! And here is the wine wall at Cave du Centre!

Overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable time that we spent here. The wines were excellent, the food was cooked beautifully and the company was fun.

We should also add that the coffee here is sourced from our favourite coffee venue in Burgundy – Saint Romain Coffee by Matt McClune.

We look forward to our next visit.

It is always a good ideas to check the opening hours which you can do on Aaron’s Web site here.

If you haven’t heard of Aaron’s excellent work, you can subscribe to his regular newsletter on Substack here. You would also benefit by buying his excellent book entitled “The World of Natural Wine” where he explains what natural wine is and what it isn’t, where it is found and how to enjoy it. It is well worth sourcing a copy for this excellent read.