Business travel has its ups and downs. Traveling alone can be deathly boring, especially once the other restaurant patrons start whispering to each other after they have noticed me talking to myself. It’s generally safer to read a book between dinner courses, or perhaps send a friendly “Nyah, nyah, I’m eating in Paris” e-mail from my BlackBerry (a tactic that does not work quite so well in, say, England).
Given the zeal with which Europeans collect and zealously guard their holidays, I was concerned that my dining options on Palm Sunday in rural southwest France would be rather limited. I was prepared to “dine” in the hotel bar if necessary, but was instead invited to dinner with two associates from work. It was to be a dinner “in the country.” Oh dear, I left my hat and riding crop at home.
Picked up from my hotel at the suitably continental hour of 7:30 PM, I was driven from the already rural Figeac to an even more rural location. All I know is that we turned left at the ruins of the aqueduct. After that it was a blur of twist roads, and a “driveway” that apparently was never rebuilt after the war (the first one). This is what we refer to in business travel jargon as “charm.”
Upon arrival I was directed to a small farmhouse, and greeted by a man who seemed to have worked a million years, only to be just warming up for the real serious labor. Hand suitably crushed from a shaking that I can still feel a week later, I sat down at a small wooden table in front of a massive stone fireplace. Exposed beams and rough stone all around me, I inquired as to the history of the house. “This was built in 1511” came back, which left my head spinning for a good 10 minutes. It’s a little mind-boggling to sit in a room that was built 19 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue, especially since I hadn’t stood in a queue for 45 minutes and paid 8 Euros to enter.
Settled in for dinner with my companions Yves and Eric, I basically let Yves decide what we would eat. While I had been eating well on my journey, the meals had never been huge, and all my clothes still fit despite the lack of modern exercise equipment and TV monitors blaring CNN International. Well that was about to change. When Eric’s eyes bulged out of his head, and he uttered a quiet “oof” before we had been served a morsel I knew I was in for a treat. Going over the wine list (incredibly long for a “restaurant” with 3 tables and no evidence of anything approaching a pretense) I basically said “Cahors” and let Yves decide on the specific bottling. He selected a 1998 Chateau Lagrezette.
I like foie gras. I especially like foie gras when I am in France. It’s even better when that duck I dodged while driving into town ends up on the plate for dinner. This particular place has been making their own foie gras for some number of years that exceeds the lifespan of all my relatives (living and dead) that I am aware of. So when the plate with a chunk of foie gras about the size of a softball (no exaggeration) showed up at the table I was not shocked. Glasses of sweet wine from the Jura also appeared, and we settled in for trench warfare with our grenade of duck liver. Never has the significant shortening of my expected lifespan tasted so good.
Well that was really good. I’m stuffed. Thanks for dinner.
Uh, no there’s three more courses.
Oh. (loosens belt)
Breakfast for dinner. That was always something I enjoyed as a kid. So the prospect of an omelet sounded inviting. An omelet with mushrooms sounded even better, as I have a Hobbit-like appetite for fungi. The arrival of an incredibly warm omelet bursting with cèpes nearly brought a tear to my eye. Tasting it did. Describing taste is an exercise in tautology. It doesn’t do any good for me to say that the omelet tasted like eggs and mushrooms because it was eggs and mushrooms. But I had never tasted eggs and mushrooms like this before. The depth of flavor, the concentration of flavor and the persistence of flavor left me nearly speechless (my poor skills with French finished the job).
Sated. Utterly sated. But wait there’s more duck. Like a trip to a Chinese restaurant where the Peking Duck arrives course by course, I am now treated to the most sublime confit of duck I have ever eaten. Some confit is too salty for my taste, while some indifferently prepared confit ends up tough and chewy. This was neither of those things. Melting from the bones and rich in both texture and flavor, this was utterly superb. The food, the wine (rather youthfully fruity & modern in style but still predictably tannic) and some enjoyable, non-work conversation (I can speak wine in French.) made for an evening I shall not soon forget. My sense memory will keep it with me.
Oh, there was also cheese. (loosens belt again)
