Home Sweet Maison

When Lucia Watson, chef and owner of Lucia’s Restaurant in Minneapolis, wants to get away, she heads to Tréguier, a tiny village on the Côte de Granit Rose in Brittany in northwestern France. It is here, an area known for its rugged pink-hued granite coastlines, tranquil beaches, fertile farms, and mysterious moorlands, that Watson and her friends Mary Feidt and Eddie Lewis have found their maison-away-from-home.

Brittany is due west of Paris on a spit of land that juts out into the English Channel. Of all the country’s provinces, it is the least “French.” Fiercely independent, spirited, and loyal to their families and traditions, Bretons share the Celtic heritage of Ireland, Wales, and Normandy. It wasn’t until the fifteenth century that Brittany officially became part of France, an alliance that remains uneasy to this day. Road signs are in Breton (a Celtic dialect) as well as French; Roman ruins and aqueducts are tucked into the far hills; and menhirs, tumuli, and dolmens—giant stone monoliths erected between 4500 and 2000 BCE—dot the landscape. The clear, soft light drew Gauguin and fellow painters of the Pont-Aven School, and later Picasso and Matisse. And, as in Ireland or on the coast of Britain, it’s never too hot, the nights are always cool, and there are no bugs.

Brittany is a food lover’s paradise. In the great salt marshes of the Guerande peninsula, the famous fleur du sel (sea salt) is harvested, and the surrounding bays and estuaries are plumbed for oysters, scallops, shrimp, mussels, and langoustines. In its rich soil grow artichokes, leeks, lettuces, potatoes, and cauliflower, as well as sweet grasses for grazing the cattle, goat, and sheep that produce Brittany’s distinct milk, butter, cheeses, and lait ribot (buttermilk).

Designated a Cité de Caractère (city of character) by the French government, the sixth-century walled city of Tréguier is a port for sailboats, small fishing vessels, and yachts from around the world. Located on the Jaudy River, it grew up around a monastery and served as a capital for the Trégor region. La Cathédrale Saint-Tugdual, built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, stands above the city and is a masterpiece of Breton religious Gothic architecture with a magnificent cloister of forty-eight arches and three spires. It houses the tomb of St. Yves, the patron of lawyers, known for his honesty and defending the poor and outcast. The town’s maisons à colombage (brightly painted houses of wood beams and plaster) from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and hôtels particuliers en granit (residences constructed of granite) from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are fine examples of the region’s character and style.

Watson, Feidt, and Lewis discovered their home in Tréguier thanks to Lewis’s brother, a Washington, DC, resident who owns the home next door. He became smitten with the area twenty years ago and called his brother when the property became available.

Maison de Granit, Watson’s home, is a maison, or town house, while Eddie’s brother’s is a manoir, a slightly larger house with a tower. Located fifty yards from the port, and steps away from the stone towers of the city walls, the traditional structure was built in stages beginning in the fifteenth century. It’s constructed of thick stone walls to keep out the Atlantic storms that ravage the coasts, and the attic is made from enormous wooden beams that are numbered and notched. Each of the ten rooms has its own fireplace. The home’s lovely back gardens, framed by stone walls, provide privacy, quiet, and the perfect place to read or listen to the cathedral bells that chime each quarter hour, as they have for centuries.

In remodeling and updating the building, the homeowners created two separate houses that can be made into one by opening interior connecting doors. Each half of the house has its own bathrooms and full kitchen, outfitted with Euro-sleek appliances. A mixture of centuries, Maison de Granit offers modern-day conveniences, including digital Internet service, amid handsome French antiques.

In Brittany, as in all of France, food is a serious topic. Each town has a weekly market with live chickens, artichokes (as tiny as golf balls or big as softballs), homemade cassis jam, caramels, fresh seafood, and lovely handmade Breton lace. The most popular purveyors travel from market to market—Watson’s favorites are those who sell cheese and sausage. The cheese truck offers a selection of more than 200 cheeses from all over France, and before a customer makes a purchase, the purveyor asks when the cheese will be served, to insure its ripeness and flavor.

Wednesday is market day in Tréguier. After a morning of shopping, Watson buys lunch from a market stall, perhaps sausage, potatoes, and apples sizzled with hard cider and finished with salt and rosemary, or a traditional galette de Breton—a thin, savory buckwheat crepe, the size of a large pizza, that’s cooked on a round griddle, filled with mushrooms, spinach, or seafood, and served in a paper cone. For dessert, who can resist a traditional crepe, laden with chocolate, apples, ice cream, or jam?

“Everything is so very fresh,” says Watson of the market food. “The artichokes are picked and the oysters harvested the day you buy them. I’d hardly call making dinner cooking. Everything just tastes naturally good. On a summer night, when it stays light until eleven, we linger over supper in the garden. But during those dark winter months, we huddle near the fire for casual dining. Come morning, we run across the street to the bakery for fresh croissants in our PJs while the coffee is brewing.”