Tabl'O Gourmand and the five stages of hunger

This weekend my friends and I went on a quick trip to Nantes, a beautiful city on the margins of the Loire River. The region is close to Brittany, home to delicious crêpes and apple cider. The result was a majorly gastronomic experience, and we were all so happy about it.

On the second day, after getting to the center from our hotel (which was far, far away – a little logistics mistake), we decided to go to a part of town that we hadn’t explored yet, so we headed west (I think). I should just mention that it was Sunday and in France NOTHING works on Sundays. NOTHING. It’s incredible, but it’s true. So, it was raining, so cold and everyone was hungry. But we ended up heading, inadvertently, to the fancy side of town, where all the (closed) shops were. All we could find were sandwich and fast-food places, which had no inside seating – thus no heating.

After a good hour of walking (which later turned into dragging our bodies) around, we found a small little café called Tabl’O Gourmand with several choices on the menu. We walked in, all kind of half dead from starvation, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited a little more.

And when we were about to get up to leave, the waitress came. After taking our orders and cleaning our table (which had been disgusting for the half hour we waited), she disappeared. While we waited (again) for our food, my friends and I came up with what we called The Five Stages of Hunger:

Stage 1: Acknowledgement

That is when you realize you are hungry. Your stomach does a little rumble, which is pleasant in a way, and you get really excited about eating. You start thinking about your options and mentally picking what you are in the mood for. That is the only pleasant stage of hunger.

Stage 2: Denial

That’s sometime after you’ve realized you’re hungry, but hasn’t been able to grab anything to eat yet. Since you have been feeling hungry for a while, it’s like your body gets used to it and you deny your hunger. It’s the famous phase: “I’m not even that hungry anymore.” – don’t fool yourself.

Stage 3: Hysterics

That’s when you start to get a little crazy from being hungry. All of a sudden you get really restless and can’t concentrate on anything. Your stomach starts doing very long, loud rumbles. Like my friend says, “you feel like it’s eating itself.” If someone tells a joke, you start laughing and you can’t stop. You have little fits of laughter from desperation. You find every action in your body very hard to control.

Stage 4: Depression

In this stage, your energy is out of the door, into the train, waving you a long goodbye. You’re so hungry, you’re just sad. You almost feel like crying and whining like a little baby. This is the lowest stage of hunger. You’re miserable, and so is life. Some people also get VERY grumpy in this stage (myself included).

Stage 5: Fulfillment

This is when the food arrives. It’s funny what happens then. You barely even register what you are eating, how does it taste, what’s its texture. All you need is food, so you can get out of the sadness you were feeling five seconds ago. When I am in stage four and the food arrives, I always try to eat slowly so at least I can taste whatever it is I am eating (of course, it doesn’t always work… sometimes you’re just too desperate). After fulfillment, the world is a better place and your life does not suck anymore. Life is worth living again, and all your problems will solve themselves.

Well, let me tell you that at that little café in Nantes I went through every single one of these stages to their depth and back, until I could get something in my belly. Since the service was terrible, we had to wait an eternity to get our orders taken, and it didn’t get much better afterwards.

I ordered the Traditional Breakfast, which consisted of a hot drink, bread, a muffin, an apple and raspberry juice and honey. To accompany the meal, we had jars of homemade or just unique spreads of different things: we had strawberry jam, a weird jam I can’t remember the name now, hazelnut chocolate spread, dark chocolate spread, white chocolate spread and butter biscuits spread (a.k.a. heaven).

My hot drink of choice was a Nutella Belgian hot chocolate, which was divine. The muffin did taste good, though not incredible. The bread was freshly cut (right next to us) and delicious, as only bread can be. However, we did have to remind the waitress that hey, we need bread, and water, and napkins, and the honey that was supposed to come with our food. We never got proper silverware and we just ended up not bothering to. 

Although the service was terrible, the food was amazing. Everything was fresh and delicious and seemed to be very high quality. Still, it was an hour and a half long meal that could’ve been waaay shorter. Granted, the waitress was alone to attend all the tables in the small café, which sat no more than 30 people.

The price wasn’t so bad, but a little more to the expensive side. We ended up paying 9.20€ each, but I just attributed the cost to the amazing hot chocolate and bread with spreads.

After we left the café, the day had become sunny and people were in the streets (which was a pleasant, but enormous, surprise). The rest of the day was mostly dedicated to sightseeing and picture taking. There is still one more place we went to though… just wait until the next post!

City: Nantes, France

Restaurant: Tabl’O Gourmand

Food: Great

Service: Poor

Price: €