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📍 18 rue Sainte-Colombe, 33000 Bordeaux
💰 Lunch formulas: €20–€25 | Dinner: à la carte
📞 +33 5 56 38 16 47
⏰ Mon–Tue: 12:00–15:00 | Wed, Thu, Fri: 12:00–14:00 & 19:00–21:00 | Sat: 10:00–21:00 | Closed Sunday
From farm to plate by lunchtime — 20 km, not marketing
Les Récoltants begins with a small shock: crates of vegetables like a street market; at the back, a dining room under a glass roof.
The story does the cooking. Mélia Roger and Thibaut Toulon — ex-Paris, marketing and finance — left it all in 2020 to build their farm in Macau. With chef Jean Leproux (15 years on the line), they shaped a Bordeaux idea with Bordeaux roots: grow vegetables 20 km from the restaurant and serve them the same day.
Bordeaux’s smart lunch — €20/€25 formulas that deliver
Weekday lunch formulas:
- Starter + Main + Dessert: €25
- Starter + Main or Main + Dessert: €20
Dinner: à la carte
For context: most places around here charge €25–€35 for ingredients that often aren’t as carefully sourced. Here, produce comes from their own 6-hectare farm or trusted partners within 30 km. If you’re after an affordable restaurant in Bordeaux, add Les Récoltants to favorites.
What you’ll eat today — a short, seasonal menu
The menu changes every week. Here’s a snapshot of plates you might meet:
- Starter: Summer-veg tartare from the farm, Dordogne feta cream, apricot vinegar gel from Lot-et-Garonne
- Main: Beef carpaccio, pickled peach condiment, fig-tree oil or Creamy polenta, summer vegetables, herb ricotta
- Dessert: Gin baba, confit peaches, lemon gel
Jean Leproux cooks in the open kitchen. No microwave. No sous-vide. “We cook à la minute with what we harvested.”
Beyond the plate — on-site farmers’ market & zero-waste loop
The integrated farmers’ market
The market space stocks the farm’s produce and nearby partners’ goods:
- Organic vegetables of the day: €2–€4/kg (often cheaper than supermarkets)
- Eggs from their hens: €3 for 6
- Farmhouse cheeses: €15–€25/kg
- Sourdough bread from the neighborhood: €3–€5
- House preserves: €6–€12
A small detail I loved: the big tables in the dining room are made from the same wood as the farm’s chicken coop. “We waste nothing,” smiles Thibaut.
The Macau farm — the people and the soil
Six hectares of former vines, ready for organic certification. Market gardener Suzanne Aubert grows roughly 40 heritage varieties on about 2,500 m² (as per available sources).
Their charter on the wall spells the promises:
- Food with real TASTE: flavor and quality first
- Living soil farming: organic, peasant, durable
- 100% seasonality: only in-season products
- Total transparency: origin and provenance shown
- Fair price: for diner and producer
- Respect for life: sustainable livestock practices with partners
- Saving know-how: working with local artisans
Kitchen waste goes back as compost to the farm. A real circular ecosystem.
By removing middlemen, Les Récoltants shows that local organic can stay fair. “No purchasing center, no sales rep, no margin on things we didn’t grow,” says Thibaut.
Result: a full three-course lunch at €25 with standout products — a match for menus at €40–€50 elsewhere.
Verdict — the anti tourist-trap you’ll recommend
Les Récoltants sits in our shortlist of Bordeaux’s best for a reason. In a city where tourist traps multiply — five-language menus, reheated plates — this is the antidote: a true neighborhood room feeding people with vegetables grown 20 km away.
It’s not just a “cheap restaurant in Bordeaux.” It’s proof that real cooking, with real products, can stay accessible. The €20 weekday formula (starter+main or main+dessert) is, honestly, one of the city’s best deals for 100% local organic.
Beyond price, go for the full experience: shop from producers, lunch on vegetables harvested that morning, enjoy bread from Levain Le Vin (literally down the street!), and support a project that makes sense.
In a Bordeaux where “farm-to-table” often runs at €60 and tourist traps sell tinned ratatouille at €18, Les Récoltants shows another path. Fairer. Truer. Urgent, even.
Good to know — booking, payment, access
✅ Booking: by phone only (+33 5 56 38 16 47) ✅ Payment: cards, cash, meal vouchers ✅ Parking: tricky — use the tram (Hôtel de Ville) ✅ Accessibility: wheelchair accessible
Les Récoltants
📍 18 rue Sainte-Colombe, 33000 Bordeaux
💰 Lunch formulas: €20–€25 | Dinner: à la carte
📞 +33 5 56 38 16 47
⏰ Mon–Tue: 12:00–15:00 | Wed, Thu, Fri: 12:00–14:00 & 19:00–21:00 | Sat: 10:00–21:00 | Closed Sunday
🌐 www.lesrecoltants.fr
📧 Instagram: @les_recoltants
Last visit: July 2025
Cécile Corchia
Anaëlle Meudec