Dinner Extraordinaire

We unpack and change quickly and head out to dinner. We are going to a place called Les Florets, which is another Inn that Scott has been wanting to stay at and usually doesn’t have availability (we are actually staying there on the way back). The drive there is truly amazing, the fields of green are filled with round bails of hay and those straight funny pine trees; it truly looks like something out of a Monet painting. Erin and I are aghast at the beauty and I am jittery with anticipation of a full on French meal with cheese cart! Yum. Of course we will now be launching into the food portion of our blog, I can’t stop myself with the food photos even in the super fancy restaurants. The dinner began with Scott and I having classes of Cremant de Loire, a delicious champagne-like sparkling aperitif. This was followed by an amuse bouch of fromage blanc that had been mixed with herbs and toped with a tiny half of a hard boiled quails egg; it was light and refreshing and I could have eaten a large bowl (in fact, it is the thing from that meal that I most wish I could eat again). Erin and I both started with an eggplant dish that had feta, tomatoes, tepenade and amazing pesto. Scott choose a smoked salmon filled with incredibly smooth asparagus mouse that had chunks of crab and was served with a langoustine; it was truly amazing. Scott chose the wine from an extensive list of Gigondas, Vacqueyras and Chateauneuf du Pape. The inn is actually in the town of Gigondas and the owners also own a winery. Scott chooses a 1998 Domaine Les Goubers, Cuvee Florence, a Gigondas from one of the best recent vintages in the Rhone Valley. The dusty bottle arrived at the table at the perfect temperature and when decanted and finally poured into our glasses it was a beautiful burgundy color. The taste was deep and rich had many layers of flavor and, just when you think it has, ended there is another burst of flavor before it dies away. Thanks to the bottle-aging, there was no harsh tannin, just luscious fruit. Scott’s joy was evident on his face every single time he took a sip of the lovely liquid. Erin had a nice white fish for her main course, that was the most “provincial” of all of our dishes: it was on a bed of bulger with olives and tomoatos. I feasted on Scallops with sweet potato puree and covered in this almost sweet caramel sauce. Scott had lamb two ways – grilled loin and grilled lamb rib chop with pureed garlic and some kind of rich sauce from the pan. We were all satisfied. Then came the cheese! The man arrived with a huge cart, with the cheese broken into sections – goat, cow and ewe. They were designated oddly by small ceramic animals. We each chose four different cheeses to taste – in essence we got 12 unique tastes – it was like heaven. Scott expounded on the superiority of unpasturized cheese and the idiocy of American laws not allowing it in. Erin and I thought of ways we could smuggle it in, and I thought maybe I could just learn to make it. Of course, my ability to make cheese that is the equal of the cheese produced by villages that have been perfecting their craft for hundreds of years may be somewhat in doubt. However, since my culinary self-confidence knows no shame, I figured at least I could give it a shot, I mean making any cheese has got to be some kind of accomplishment and I think Erin and Scott would both eat it without too much complaint even if they hated it. I called the waiter over to find out the name of the cheese I particularly liked, but I couldn’t understand him, so he wrote it down for me: Picodom (from the Drome area, a small village called Derier Le Fit). Erin’s best cheese was Saint Felicien from Grenoble. Dessert came afterward and was amazing, with all sorts of lovely tastes mingling and creating new tastes depending on what bits you ate together. The whole meal took about three hours. The restaurant apparently had many more guests than they had anticipated and managed to serve them all. The service was such that all of the waiters belonged to the whole dinning room, at any one time a waiter would show up and look at the ticket on your table, then bring out the next course, or someone would come and clean away your tables. The wonder was how in the world theses places make any money: you essentially book hour table for the whole night, they are not looking to turn it over – and really, with a dinner that lasts for 3 hours, how could they? The price was also not outrageous; this is something that I am really going to have to research. We drove home in a food coma and I almost forgot about the plague that was wracking my body.