bread slathered
Here, you could taste how much care was put into cooking, from sourcing the ingredients to how they were served, and the Petit Bouillabaise Panisse – a filet of fish in a deeply flavored tomato broth topped with shard of grilled bread slathered with rouille, to the final course of Wood Oven-Roasted Sugar Plums with Grilled Fig Leaf Ice Cream, was outstanding. I forgot how good food could taste that had been made with vegetables from local farms, sparkling fresh fish, and cooked just perfectly oven an open fireplace. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Each course was better than the previous one and the star of the show, the Lamb Leg à la ficelle, a generous plate of house smoked lamb shoulder, grilled loin, and fresh shell beans with anchovy butter, was so good, I was a little sorry that I was so busy socializing (and drinking rosé) that I didn’t give it the full attention it deserved. I woke up this morning wishing that I had polished it all off and asked for seconds.
After dinner, when most of the wine was gone and people started leaving, I didn’t want to say goodbye. I just wanted to go back into the kitchen and pick through all the leftovers, especially the crisp bits of roasted lamb left on the counter, as pastry chefs are wont to do because we usually have to skip meals because we’re serving desserts when the rest of the crew is breaking their stations down, cleaning up, and heading home for the night. But instead, I gave Russ one final goodbye and hope to see him for his 40th anniversary when that comes around as well.
