Restaurant
With chefs like Gérard Goetz, Alsatian gastronomy is a constantly renewed celebration. At the restaurant Julien in Fouday in the upper valley of the Bruche, each meal is a festive and convivial moment.
Latest edition : 26 April 2020
It is thanks to the Tour de France that the beautiful Julien establishment in Fouday exists! Gérard Goetz willingly recounts this episode enabled his parents to move forward.
“My parents had bought the station bistro. But they had no money. As the Tour de France was to pass in front of the bistro, they took out tables, beer barrels and barbecue. The proceeds allowed them to buy kitchen equipment, furniture, table napkins…. ". Julien and Yvette work tirelessly just like their children.
At 12, Gérard knows how to prepare cabbage dough, gut poultry. "During my apprenticeship, I dreamed of working in great restaurants, of going to Canada...". Dreams that come to an end: his father disappears far too soon and at only 18 years old, Gérard returns to Fouday to help his mother. “By the time she sold her business, I had no desire to end my life as the boss of a truck driver at the bottom of a valley! »
But then ? "So I met Marylène - and I stayed," smiles Gérard Goetz.
In 40 years of hard work, Gérard and Marylène have transformed the trucker's bistro into a magnificent hotel-spa with a beautiful table. Like the beautiful hotels visited in the Black Forest. But no one believed it. : A luxury hotel wedged between the railway and the national road. But in 1980, the Goetzes were able to launch the first works. Over the years, the establishment grew, as did the reputation of its restaurant, attracting a loyal clientele.
For two years, Gérard Goetz has been trying to retire slowly. “With Jean-Jacques Klein, I have an excellent chef.
It brings a bit of modernity, you have to evolve, but gently. We will always do cooked cuisine, very classic but also open to the world. »
But Gérard Goetz is much too modest when talking about his cuisine, which certainly gives pride of place to regional products and classic recipes, but which also leaves a nice place for creations. This is how the menu displays dishes such as a warm kougelopf of snails with garlic butter, a cassolette of kidneys and veal sweetbreads sautéed with chanterelles or a sauerkraut with dumplings of liver, white and black pudding a Thai-style prawn tagine.
“The butchers in the valley prepare the sausages according to my father's recipe,” explains Gérard, who bought the equipment from Fouday's last bakery. This allows the people of the village to be able to continue to buy their bread on the spot.
Four rooms invite you to sit down to taste Julien's generous cuisine. It's hard to choose between the Auberge d'Yvette and its Vosges farmhouse decor, the warm Kaminstub, the elegant dining room and the mountain Schirgoutte, named after the small village stream.
The two daughters of Gérard and Marylène Goetz, Éléonore and Hélène, as well as her husband Gaston, have joined the family business.
Gérard Goetz has just published a very beautiful book devoted to Alsace, its essential recipes, its products and its producers. Through his stories, reports by Jean-Paul Frétillet and photographs by Louis Laurent Grandadam, an Alsace full of flavors and curiosities emerges. A beautiful book that is much more than a simple cookbook.
Julien, Route de Strasbourg
67130 Fouday
Restaurant open every day from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.,
7 p.m. to 9 p.m. except Tuesday and Wednesday.
Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening only the “pension” menu (5 courses) at €40 per person.
Phone. 03 88 97 30 09
Alsace, a gastronomic landscape, Gérard Goetz
ed. The Martiniere, €45.