Le Forum <def>: a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.
Locals know what’s good and what’s not. We always take the risk, ask the locals and take our chances.
More often than not we’re delighted. We’ve never been disappointed by asking locals.
Le Forum (website) is one of those delights. It’s like one of our Local Gems back home in the US, but for those who live in Orange, France. If it were where we live, it be on our most frequent list, like Sovana Bistro.
Similar to so many other good restaurants, Le Forum (FB page link) can be hard to get into at times. Like the Vetri Cucina Restaurant in Philadelphia, you have to have reservations, through Open Table. Since we were in Orange, France for 5 nights, it worked for us…the second night we wanted to go. While were there a group of three (walk-ins) was politely refused because they had no reservations. Every seat except one was filled that night.
Getting there
From our accommodations, the Hôtel Arène, it was an easy and fun stroll through the town of Orange, France, taking less than 5 minutes.
If you’re coming in from out of town, you’ll need to know there’s no parking at the restaurant itself. No worries though, the public parking available is only a short walk away!
As you’re walking on the main street that you approach the restaurant from, Rue du Mazeau, there’s a huge picture window and no apparent door in to the restaurant.
We quickly located the entrance off the side street (alley?) Impasse de la Cloche. Le Forum has a small sign on the side street, which makes the entrance kind of quaint, adding to the ambience.
It was nice that it didn’t take long to walk there, the streets are well lit, and that it was easy to find.
The place itself
You walk in and there’s an L-shaped small hallway with a coat rack, the red chef (what? we were too afraid to ask…), and a bar that was utilized as a serving station. The kitchen was on the right and the dining area on the left.
There’s only 26 seats in the entire restaurant. They open at 7pm, and only have one seating. Any restaurant with this type of set up has to be good and lives off of word of mouth. Based on our experience and what we viewed of the restaurant the night we had dinner there, Le Forum has definitely well earned their good reputation.
We sat down and observed the surroundings while we were waiting for the wine we ordered. It was quaint, had good atmosphere and they even feature some interesting historic photos on the wall. The photos depicted how the town buildings looked years ago. Everything had kind of a modern feel, but still was homey at the same time.
There were other tables/people close by, but it didn’t feel cramped.
The Ambience
After watching the interaction of everyone dining, it was quite obvious the restaurant met the definition of its name. Also obvious were the local regulars versus those of us who were passing through. Even though most of those dining were regulars, we definitely were made to feel comfortable.
The owners are a married couple. The wife is the hostess, server, and sometimes even the busperson, and the husband is the chef. They have a system and it works well. Every course we had went smoothly, on time, and was cooked to perfection.
With a full restaurant, you’d expect the noise level to be pretty high. It wasn’t. In fact, it was so quiet you could easily have an intimate dinner with your special someone, and not feel like you had to shout to talk.
The Food
Their food selection was right up our alley. We had the opportunity to choose between a number of excellent offerings. It is a prefix menu of 31 Euro ($35 US), so it wasn’t very expensive considering the food we ate. Each item we selected was delicious.
In addition to the great food, the service was perfect and the atmosphere was relaxing. A home run.