Love Restaurant Week--lunches for $20 and three-course dinners for $30. (Beverages, tips, and tax are extra.) Last night I dined at Vin Rouge in Durham--a Parisian-style bistro featuring shellfish but offering a number of other dishes as well. The Restaurant Week menu provided about four choices each for first course, entree, and dessert. I chose the Onion Vichysoisse with smoked bacon and tomato, sauteed trout with potatoes Lyonnaise, watercress, cucumber, spring onion, and green tomato remoulade, and lemon tart with whipped cream and powdered sugar. All extremely tasty. The trout wasn't very warm when it arrived at my table but I didn't send it back because it still tasted good.
I had a glass of 2010 DOMAINE DE LA PEPIERE MUSCADET SEVRE ET MAINE SUR LIE with the soup and trout. Lemon, saline, minerality, crisp, inviting, tantalizing, pleasurable. Almost ordered a second glass but I wanted to sip on a red wine after the fish and before dessert.
Ordered a glass of 2010 JEAN-PAUL BRUN BEAUJOLAIS L'ANCIEN. Nearly opaque. First impression is of warm cherries, perhaps awaiting a dollop of whipped cream or oozing from a pastry crust. Very easy sipping, even without accompanying food.
(Other choices for entree included the restaurant's specialty of Gratin de Macaroni with bacon and Gruyere cheese--I have had it before and it is excellent--Croque Madame, a salmon dish, and Beef en Daube Provencal with polenta, orange, Nicoise olives and roasted tomato.)
I stayed overnight in the Research Triangle Park area and will be having lunch at Saint Jacques French Cuisine in Raleigh. Another wine lunch at Zely and Ritz, Raleigh, next Friday (may dine at J. Betski's that night which features Polish and German cuisine) and will probably attend the Alsace dinner at St. Jacques later this month. Lots of opportunities for good food and wine in the Triangle area.