The distributor of the restaurant of the Auberge du Château de Vaite (Doubs) -

Auberge du Château de Vaite

  • The season of frog legs begins.

    It runs until the end of April.

  • In order not to miss it, restaurants must be closed, the Franche-Comté establishment Auberge du château de Vaite in Champlive in the Doubs has invented a frog dispenser.

  • A system which thus supplements and strengthens its take-out sales.

If the French are frog eaters, they are also innovative.

The Franche-Comté restaurant Auberge du Château de Vaite, in Champlive near Besançon, has invented a dispenser of… frogs.

The family establishment, which for fifty years has been offering traditional cuisine, had, like the entire profession, to start selling to take away, and that from the first confinement.

For this new frog season, the semi-gastronomic restaurant has jumped into the pond and developed a system to strengthen its sales.

For three weeks, a distributor, imagined from the first confinement and specially designed, has been leaning against the entrance of the restaurant, by the roadside.

And since then, it jumps.

Customers follow one another, the media and social networks talk about it and the manager of the establishment, Béatrice Beauquier, keeps restocking the distributor's “lockers”.

Only a few traps are reserved for frogs for the moment, eight precisely out of the 48 in the device, because the season has just started.

While waiting for a rise in power, it continues to "feed" the distributor with the traditional dishes that the restaurant usually concocts, always from fresh products that they cook themselves, including those based on morels, another of theirs. specialties.

Frogs prepared by the restaurant of the Auberge du Château de Vaite - Auberge du Château de Vaite

Wild and local frogs

But that those who have a lot of imagination do not worry: no, the frogs will not jump in the face of the customers when the locker is opened and no, they cannot be eaten on the spot, even if a micro oven -waves are made available for other dishes.

They are prepared.

Not as usual in a restaurant, technical constraints oblige, but all the same.

“We offer them in two forms,” explains Béatrice Beauquier.

Ready to reheat and vacuum-packed, or cooked in yellow wine cream, in a casserole dish.

»Count the dozen raw thighs at a price of 11 euros, and 16 euros per dozen cooked.

Red frogs, in the wild, small, which are found especially in the region.

Frogs prepared by the restaurant of the Auberge du Château de Vaite - Auberge du Château de Vaite

Terrestrial, local frogs, which live in meadows and woods, and especially come to lay in ponds.

It is also only at this time, once the spawning has taken place because the regulations are very strict, that the fishermen of red frogs, professionals called raniculteurs, are authorized to take with traps these amphibians which will end up in the plates of all the restaurants in the region.

“People come from all over France to eat these frog legs.

It is very popular, it is a very luxurious dish, there are purists, great amateurs ”, underlines the restaurateur.

Just like the common frog, the dispenser is active at all times, even at night.

A sale that is also possible, but on order, at the restaurant counter and of course cooked differently.

This is also how last year, when confinement endangered the frog season, that the restaurateur was able to sell almost all of the stocks.

And this is far from anecdotal, because the sale of frogs "represents about 30% of the annual turnover of restaurants in Franche-Comté", underlines Béatrice Beauquier.

So if you want to support the local economy and indulge yourself, you only have a few weeks left, because the frog season ends at the end of April ...

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