El Celler de Can Roca

El Celler de Can Roca is the musings of three brothers, Joán, Jordi and Josep Roca (executive chef, sommelier and pastry chef, respectively) who took over an old family business in 1987 and turned it into one of the best restaurants in the world. The food is whimsical, evoking landscapes of memory and their stated goal is to “generate states of mind while trying to find the perfect match between the sensory and emotional description of all the ingredients that make up the dish.” Recently, the restaurant moved into a new space – a minimalistic glass and wood wing attached to a beautiful old stone house, enclosed by thick greenery to cushion the diners from the world beyond. But that outside world is exactly what you are expected to bring along to the meal.  Can Roca invites each diner to realize that the process of sharing a meal is only communal in that moment, but that every ingredient and flavor and smell has a different association for each person. So, to share my experience at El Celler de Can Roca, you get a memory with each course – a 11-anecdote escapade across my two decades of life.

Snacks: Black sesame cracker, caramelized olive, anchovy bone, cucumber skin soup with smoked eel and morels with foie and Pigeon bon-bon with Bristol Cream.

1. Fish soup with brioche of tuna and wasabi. My mom filled a thermos of miso soup for me almost every day in third grade. She got up early to cook it for me, and recently she told me it was one of her favorite morning rituals. She sliced some scallions and tofu, tossed in some wakami and dashi flakes and zipped it away in my lunchbox. While I slurped down the contents at noontime, I gazed longingly at the Lunchables and ham sandwiches surrounding me.  I knew nothing about the antioxidants and fatty acids and vitamins packed into my fishy broth but I did know no one else was eating it, and to an eight-year-old girl, not much else matters (even though I really did love the taste.) There was one place that I can remember being proud of my palate for Japanese flavors. Every Saturday morning my grandfather cooked Japanese breakfast. He was a seismologist and spent a good deal of time in Japan, and while my visits to him in Colorado were not all that frequent, this was always a much-anticipated part of the trip – no judgmental third graders in sight.

Here, the brioche, tuna and dashi flakes were perched atop a write grate over the bowl of soup. All of the rising aromas seeped into the spongy brioche, so I ate the tuna and brioche, floated the dashi into the broth and cradled the bowl in my palms to slurp away (see Japanese soup drinking etiquette 101.) The warm broth helped ease the chill of the rather cold dining room.

2. Charcoal-grilled oysters with citrus marinade and leeks. There is a modest, rusty Weber grill in my backyard. Grills are made for fresh ingredients on sticky summer days – and because there are not too many oysters floating around in the Missouri River, my grill normally saw the likes of vegetables, turkey burgers and the occasional salmon filet (okay, not really a Midwest local either). One day our neighbors put a gas grill out on the curb with a sign that said it worked perfectly and it was free. Perhaps our bag of charcoal had gotten soggy in the rain, or maybe it just looked spiffier than the decrepit old Weber, but we took it in. It only took one episode of burgers infused with the essence of propane to confirm my allegiance to charcoal grills. To this day I am a staunch advocate of charcoal and eating this oyster reinforced every basic tenet of my philosophy. It is absolutely impossible to get that genuine smoky flavor without real charcoal. I have been fooled by the guises of molecular gastronomy before – but on a tour of the kitchen later that night I was very pleased to see a big, black, gunky pit of charcoal cinders – it is simply the only way.

The individual pods of citrus pulp added wonderful flavor and acidity without dominating my mouth and the big, meaty yet tender oyster was phenomenal.

3. Charcoal-grilled king prawn, king prawn sand, king prawn essence, velouté of prawn head juice. Please reference above for my fanatical love of charcoal grilling. Next, my love affair with beaches. This dish was a beach. And it was just as fun to play in it – the “sand” stuck to the tines of the fork like granules between my toes. First feel on the tongue is the really soft sand that is enjoyable to dig your heels into, then it mysteriously melts away leaving a prawny-aura lingering behind. The velouté was almost mushroomy, and I dug even farther to get all the good juices out of the head of the prawn.

Beaches in Missouri are a little bit lackluster. The close ones are manmade to say the least, and normally on the edge of muddy lake water. Many people I know have houses at “the lake” – a body of water that needs no specification for most Missouri residents. However, I was never an Ozarker. My childhood beach memories are on the sloped banks of the Fire Island – a sliver of an island a short ferry ride away from Long Island. I spent (not quite enough) summer nights on the back deck of the beach house with fresh fish on the grill and sunburned shoulders waiting for the respite of nightfall. I do not think I ever ate the sand there, but I was a master at building “beach faces” and using the same greenery flecked on this plate to make wild locks of seaweed hair.

4. Herring smoked caviar omelet. I had caviar for the first time during a Christmas visit to my uncle’s apartment in New York. As a gift for my younger cousin Aaron we bought the game Don’t Eat Pete – the basic premise is you cover the game board with cheerios, one person closes their eyes, the rest of the players decide which square is “Pete”, they open their eyes and pick cheerios to eat one by one, until they are about to eat Pete and then everyone screams DON’T EAT PETE!!!! The first round ended in tears, Aaron couldn’t quite figure out why everyone was yelling at him and that was the extent of the game. After Aaron had gone to bed and I was given special on-vacation-big-kid privileges to stay up late, the adults changed the rules a bit. Instead of cheerios they used shots of vodka and bites of caviar to cover the board.

I dug out this picture of Ron in the mischievous act of eating Pete

With droopy eyelids I remember nibbling my first taste of the salty eggs. I already knew they were considered a delicacy, and the novelty of the ingredient was very appealing to me. To this day, I cannot eat caviar without seeing Ron -my uncle’s wife’s dad (got that?) – animatedly choosing a square with the same innocent fear that his selection might set off a cacophony of pleas for Pete’s sake.

The architectural design of this omelet was very intriguing. The elongated football shaped egg case appeared to be a mini omelet, until it was cut open and the milky colored middle spilled out. The egg layer was actually quite thin and the herring caviar insides were delicate, concentrated and absolutely delicious.

5. Catalan cod pot-au-feu. This is a traditional Catalan dish, normally made with meat, but re-adapted here to a fishy theme. My initial reaction was –fancy tuna casserole – the presentation of the fish and pasta was nice and the buttery fish consommé was delicious, the cod was fine but not remarkable

As you may have noticed, the “to be continued” was starting to look permanent at the bottom of this post. I have been sifting and sorting through my brain for some memory I could even closely tie to some of the remaining dishes. So, maybe that is the point also – I made some new memories here. Had I been catalan I’m sure this Cod would have sparked all sorts of nostalgia, but I have no strong associations with the fish.This whole trip was almost an overload of new memories. Had I not been taking notes, much of the details would have been lost. I will likely never had a Catalan Cod Pot au Feu again, but if I do, my memory will automatically jump to this meal of amusement and awe.

6. Sea Bass, Olives, Capers, Pickles. I am notoriously a pickle fanatic. As Dave Chappelle once said: “some people say cucumbers taste better pickled” – I definitely side with the picklers on that one. Last summer I discovered the Mecca for pickle-eaters. Guss’ Pickles, on the Lower East Side, is the home of barrel upon barrel of every possible pickled production (say that 10 times fast): new pickles, half sour, quarter sour, fully sour, kosher, spicy pickles, pickled green tomatoes, pickled ochre and more. The briny salty memory of this establishment lingers in my taste buds and I wish daily I could find a pickle that even came close. While I enjoyed the pickled, briny, caper aspect of this dish this fish itself was not outstanding. The creamy sauce underneath balanced the olives and capers. The olive was not an olive, per se, but a reconstructed liquid ball that looked like an olive, exploded with olive flavor and then melted away – no pesky pit involved.

7. Lamb, bread, tomato. Catalan pa amb tomàquet - is a traditional dish of bread rubbed with tomato. Here, tiger tomato was used, and even though it was soaked into the bread the flavor was outstanding. Apparently, this dish originiated during the Spanish Civil war and the tomato was just used to moisten stale bread. However, it caught on, and the brothers at Can Roca stepped it up a few notches and made a delicious dish. The lamb had an interesting flavor on the first few bites, one I was not familiar with, but I acquired a taste for it quickly and finished this dish absolutely loving it.

8. Goose à la royale, peach compote, foie sauce. I did not know what went into a Royale preparation while I was eating this. I did know that the goose had the most interesting, dark, rich sauce ever. This mysterious potency comes from the goose blood in the sauce. The yin yang of beige and orange around the base was a wonderful peach compote and a goose foie sauce- they balanced sweet and savory, complementing opposites creating a greater whole, just like the shape they were plated in.

9. Charcoal Grilled. Wild mushroom consommé, charcoal grilled mushroom ice cream. My dad’s former studio partner was a etched and stained glass artist. Every year for their holiday sale she hand-etched dozens of delicate glass bulbs. I was always mesmerized by her gentle movements with the bulbs – taping and sandblasting and untaping and drawing and sandblasting, layer by layer, until she took off all the tape and revealed the beautiful ornament. Sometimes she would let me help tie the ribbons to the top or put them in boxes. My hands were shaky I was so nervous about shattering one of the paper-thin bulbs.

I initially hesitated to send my spoon crashing down on the sugary bulb on this dish. But, I could see the smoke swirling around inside and I knew it would be worth it. With one tap, the bulb cracked open and thin fingers of charcoal smoke came snaking out. The wonderful smoky smell was reminiscent of the dishes from earlier in the meal. This was a very savory take on dessert, but I will never complain about creatively used mushrooms. The mushroom ice cream was smoky and earthy. The consommé was equally potent and then when all was said and done the residing flavor was sweet – the dessert aspect sneaks up at the very end.

10. Orange chromatism. This word means abnormal pigmentation, or an illusory visual perception. This dish was all about the color orange, combining orange ingredients to create the impression of eating a color, but it still tasted lovely. Carrot compote, egg yolk, iced orange, apricot liquer and mandarin sugar. The carrot compote on its own tasted like a shot from the health food store. When mixed with the egg yolk it became creamy, sweet and delicious. The iced orange was tasty and the mandarin sugar added a nice little crunch. I suppose my biggest association with orange food is the wooden crates of clementines that pop up all over grocery stores in the winter. They take over my house, the find their way into my christmas stocking, sometimes they are small enough you can almost eat them in one bite, occasionally they have a few bothersome seeds.

11. Milk Dessert. milk caramel, sheeps milk ice cream, curd cheese foam, yogurt and a lactic cloud (milk cotton candy). I love almost every manifestation of milk except when it is poured in a glass. Cheese, ice cream, yogurt – I’m there, in large quantities. The only time I use milk in its element is over my cereal and in my cup of coffee. This dish milk to its full potential. It was fun to eat, exploring through the elusive layers of lactic cloud to discover the dairy delights below. The guava added just a taste of fruit, but left the dairy to do its thing. We were advised that if we hit the spoon on the bowl we could hear the cow bell. Indeed. Except this was ewe’s milk, so the visual of Bessie in her grassie field with her big bell was a little bit misleading. Maybe a more appropraite association is the Wallace and Gromit’s sheep fiasco in “A Close Shave,” which just made me realize that the lactic cloud looks a bit like a sheep was sheared over the bowl.

12. Chocolate: passion fruit, praline (which exploded all the way down my throat like pop rocks), raspberry, palet d’or, jasmine.

After dinner we took a tour of the restaurant and the wine cellar. From the outside, the walls were constructed of wine crates. Inside, more sensory experiences awaited. The cellar was organized by region. A remote control operated spotlights and TV screens in each station and on a pedastle in the center of each cove was something representative of the region at hand. A bowl of silk in the German Riesling section, complemented by a video with pictures of German wine landscapes, Velvet sacks of varying weights for red Burgundy, a bowl of metal “bubbles” for Champagne.  – Touch, sight, and all that was missing was a small glass to smell and taste from – with over 40,000 selections, this might not have worked.  The multimedia cellar experience was a fun way to end the night, and was a reminder once again of the creativity and passion the Roca brothers put into their work. The staff was gracious and service was pretty crisp. If it faltered at all, it was towards the end when we had a card down on the table to pay and multiple people walked by and did not acknowledge us (a fairly negligible error). I would absolutely return to El Celler de Can Roca purely to see what kind of creative dishes they conceive for the next menu and I’m sure by then I will be equipped with all sorts of new memories to associate away with.

La Cuina de Can Simon

Spain’s Costa Brava is a place where the idyllic fishing village is alive and well. But recently, places like Tossa de Mar have seen an increase in tourism. People are drawn to the rocky and rugged coastline of Tossa de Mar that dramatically drops off into pebbly beaches with see-20-feet-down clear waters. During the day, hundreds of bronze bodies flock to the beaches and once the sun goes down a vibrant but relaxed nightlife takes off.

Just outside the fortified old town we found Restaurant Can Simon, housed inside a rustic stone building built in 1741 – Like walking into the home of the Spanish grandmother I never had, this family establishment took us in and delivered modern twists on all the best of Tossa de Mar’s classic seafood dishes. The proximity to the bounty of the sea was obvious: a tasting menu of fresh, well-planned, marine-inspired dishes made for a wonderful evening by combining the slow pace of the fishing life with the contemporary buzz of culinary art.

Our napkins barely unfolded, a cocktail and “something to nibble” were delivered to the table. The nibbles were surprisingly modern looking against the almost bucolic setting of the dining room – A black rice crisp, cheese crisp and sobrasada sticks. Matt knew sobrasada was a familiar word, but could not quite place the ingredient – to avoid a potential translation meltdown the older woman serving us brought out the whole sausage (cured pork, paprika and salt).

Veering even more into the 21st century, the olive oil came out in small chemistry lab looking droppers that made the floral, porcelain plates anachronistic. The bread was exactly what I had hoped for – I seem to prefer the super crusty breads of Spain.

Seeing that we were so near Penedes, it seemed very appropriate to order Cava. They brought us a bottle off the list, which I promptly failed to record the name of, and have since forgotten. But, it was crisp, with good acidity, citrusy fruit and a tiny bit of yeast. For 20 euros, it cannot be beat, and went well with the light fishy meal.

Mushroom cream with oysters and lemon.  The cream and the foam were both a little bit watery, not as full of a flavor as I had expected. The oyster completely made up for it with full, meaty texture and fresh citrusy flavor.

It was always interesting to see what nationality we were perceived as (even without opening our mouth). When in Spain, people tended to think Matt was French, as was the case here, so the meal alternated between them speaking French to us and Matt responding with his small arsenal of Spanish (to his credit, he did quite well here).  I suppose it is a relief not to pop out as the bumbling American tourist we all fear becoming – so just to throw them off, we tossed out a few “merci’s” every now and then. Sorry for the deception, Can Simon, you were very good to us.

Small sandwich of tuna, dehydrated olive, red pepper water and herb water. Once again, even in tuna salad form, the fish was great – take that Chicken of the Sea.

First course: Baked Mackeral served with asparagus, baked peppers and seasonal salad. The charred oil under the fish made for delicious mouthfuls that coated the palate, the salad was nothing exceptional but the tomato most definitely was – a huge burst of flavor from the tiny nightshade.

Cuttlefish and peas. The Costa Brava is celebrating its 100th anniversary, and this is the official centenary dish. Nice presentation with a dramatic black ink stripe across the plate. The cuttlefish had the texture of a root vegetable in some parts, and good chewy squid in others. This crunch went well with the soft, flavor soaked peas and pits of tentacle mixed in.  I think cuttlefish are beautiful mollusks – although my experience with them is only through aquarium glass. In the wild, they are like chameleons, constantly changing their color to blend in. But on this dish, the white meat did no such thing and the flavor popped out as quite memorable.

“Cimitomba” A fisherman’s dish made with thornback ray. These little rolls of ray were served over a garlicky mashed potato with onions. The small, darker piece on the left hand side is “ray foie” a potent and delicious bite of the fish’s liver. The dish could have used a little more acid, but the sweet onions compensated and balanced things out.  I would be interested to see the traditional preparation of this dish, but this seems like a good representation of the ingredients.

For the next course, Matt got the listed chicken while I substituted for the rabbit so we could taste both dishes. Loin of rabbit with snails, and lightly seasoned rabbit stock. The presentation was not breathtaking, but the flavors were, which is what really counts here. A bounty of snails covered the rabbit and there was a sundried tomato and breadcrumb salsa that was very tasty. This was an earthy change of pace from all the sea fare, but good nonetheless.

Roast free range chicken with prawns from Blanes. The chicken was roulade-ish with top notch mushrooms and perfectly crispy fried potatoes around it. Perhaps Blanes is running short on prawns these days, because we only got one, but Matt tells me it was quite good.

Cold hot chocolate- chocolate water, chocolate gelato and icy flakes in the gelato. The foam was a bit watery  (haven’t quite mastered the foam technique here) but the chocolate concoction was great.
Frozen sangria – marinated fruit and frozen wine.  We mixed a little of our Cava in (turning it back into more liquid sangria) for some refreshing fruity spoonfuls.

“memories of your childhood” traditional biscuits – if our server is the Spanish grandmother I never had, these must have been the memories I missed out on too. Hopefully my next life will land me with a childhood full of these morsels – an ice cream sandwich, a sugar cookie with strawberry ice cream and a chocolate chip cookie. Sure, all of these things can be found in the Midwestern USA, and if forced too, I could summon a memory of a hot summer day with an ice cream sandwich. But, the flavors are not even comparable to this. An impressive plate of chocolate petit fours followed.

Can Simon had a lot going for it: fresh ingredients and thoughtful presentation combined with unpretentious service and a relaxed dining room. The walls were covered with awards and certificates, a reminder that we were far from the first people to discover this little nine-table gem of a restaurant. The service staff was very gracious, the older woman running the show with her younger, male helper close beside. On the way out they gave us a wine bottle top aerator as a gift. I cannot quite express how comfortable and wonderful this night was. The food, except for a few (VERY minor) inadequacies, was incredible. We were able to totally relax into the meal, which was very reasonably priced for the caliber of ingredients.  As seems to be a common final thought – I would definitely go back. In fact, when walking past the next night, we caught a friendly wave from the young man, and were almost tempted to do so. But paella was calling our name, so we trekked on. I think next time we will go for the full gastronomic menu which has prawns, red tuna, snails, sardines, razor clams, foie gras, langoustines, AND oxtail stew – if you can put together a better line up than that, by all means, invite me over to eat it.

Osteria Francescana

A newbie on restaurant magazine’s top 50 list, we thought Osteria Francescana  was definitely worth a try. We had posted up in Florence for a few nights, so it was a bit of a drive to Modena and then a little bit of a hassle finding somewhere to park (this will be important later). We wandered to the restaurant (also important later) and walked into a modern dining room decorated with Edith Piaf-esque head shots of women with high cheekbones and wavy bob-cut hair.

What would be a very impressive showing of bread started with a basket of wheat and white, hard crust, soft middle and a dish of very smooth extra virgin olive oil. After an amuse bouche of Adriatic fish tempura with salty ice cream (good crunch of the fish bone and intriguing creamy salty topping) came a basket of little rolls – fennel, rosemary, olive, sourdough and some long crispy breadsticks – all very tasty.

Raw grouper, tomato water gelée, frozen mozzarella, smoke from the grill. The smoke was scooped up into your face when the servers removed the dome lids on the plates and immediately sent my little olfactory bulb to the Weber grill in my backyard – but the illusion of a smoked fish was contrasted by the delicate, raw piece of grouper. I have seen mozzarella in the full gamut of textures – very chewy balls to very creamy burrata – but never frozen. Somehow these little crumbles managed to keep all their mozzarella-ness even in icy form.

For the white wine we followed a suggestion to try the 2005 La Stoppa Ageno Emilia. Ortrugo, Trebbiano and aromatico, this was a VERY interesting wine. It was a peachy-amber color and huge floral bouquet off the nose (kind of like the massive vase of pink lilies at the server station next to us), it had a little orange and more flowers on the palate, almost sweet but finished pretty dry. This unusual wine definitely fit our request for something a little bit adventuresome. Despite its bold personality, it adapted very well to many of the dishes to come.

Codfish, extra virgin olive oil, fried skin, cream of chickpea, onion sauce. This was a very fun play on textures, the creamy codfish looked more like what I would have expected from the chickpea puree. The chickpeas were very smooth but looked a little bit more solid in the bowl. The onion sauce was a little bit like a really good French onion soup and it was all set off by the crunch of the friend skin. I was thankful for the collection of bread at hand because this deserved some serious bowl scraping.

Rice: black and grey. Ostrich water, black ink, beluga caviar. This is the best rice I have ever had. Hands down. The first bit took a little bit of acclimating, but once my mouth was accustomed to the fishy salty mix I was in love. This was a precarious dish – if not done just right it could have been a big mushy bowl of salt and fish, but the rice was cooked perfectly and the ink and ostrich water were perfectly balanced.

Black cod, turbot and black ink broth, burned vegetables and herbs. Testament to my inner unrefined palate I can really appreciate burned, salty food. The broth was phenomenal and the vegetables were like a whole bowl of the best little crunchy pieces left stuck to the pan. In a great feat of self-control Matt held back the urge to go face first into the bowl and lick every drop of the salty broth.

Leek and black truffle tart, cooked with black truffle juice and shaved summer truffly pieces, topped with fleur de sel. All served on a spoon. I don’t know how one spoonful could be much better than this.

Ice cream of foie gras. Conceptually, this dish was genius, flavorfully it was a savant-liver apprentice to Einstein (it was really good.) The foie was cooked in a vacuum at low temperature. Inside was some Calvados and extra old balsamic and then covered with toasted nuts on the outside. The nuts added a nice crunch and even when they were stuck in your teeth did not overwhelm the finish of the foie – mentally it kept you chewing, something that doesn’t always happen with a smooth foie, and allowed for all the flavors to explode in your mouth. If only these came in the freezer aisle to be enjoyed on hot summer days.

Soup. Cream of raw potato, black truffle oil and jelly, bread crumbs, nuts, coffee, snails, sweet garlic foam. We were instructed to dig the spoon all the way down to make sure we got all the elements and it was fun to watch the colorful bubbles emerge and separate from under the onion foam. The hint of coffee added a tiny bit of bitter, the truffles and potatoes were earthy, the snails were chewy. Matt’s quote for this dish is “the story of a snail’s life, its journey across the yard and everything it encountered in its 200 meters of existence.” Well said.

Piemonte shell pasta, beef, foie foam, apple jelly and essential oil of nuts. To be eaten in one bite “if you’re able” which I think is actually a test of the diner’s prowess and bravery. Channeling all the machismo of David Hasselhoff (who seems to be a favorite on Italian television) I amped up to devour the shell. Don’t be fooled by the apparently messy ending – I conquered vini vidi vici style.

Now, there was only one other table in the restaurant this evening (Monday is a predictable slow night in Europe) but the sommelier seemed to be trapped talking to them about some fancy beer they were drinking. As the whole team of servers watched on, we waited a little bit too long to get a glass of red wine before giving in to temptation and eating the meat course. One of his colleagues noticed our wandering eyes and pulled the sommelier away to bring us a glass of a piemonte red (whose name I have forgotten) made from croatina grape (a relatively rare one grown in Northern Italy).

Cheek of veal, cream of potato, balsamic vinegar, peas and asparagus, apple jelly. Very tender meat, wonderfully smooth potatoes. I appreciate a simple-element main meat dish after all the revelry from the earlier courses. A wonderful combination of high quality ingredients.  And worth the little wait to be enjoyed with the wine.

Mix of legumes and vegetables cooked in vacuum and frozen – black and white beans, asparagus, peas, lentils, carrot cream, crunchy galette of peas. An adaptation of the now ubiquitous shmorgus board of individually placed elements it was a mix of sweet and sour. The sommelier even admitted it was best enjoyed with water. This mixed plate had an array of textures, temperatures and flavors but surprisingly left a final impression of sweet (fitting, because it was the first of the dessert section of the menu)

With the rest of the desserts we paired a Marco Sara un verdùz dal sîs.

A traditional dessert of the region “patzoulgo” (??) with a modern twist. Amaretto cookie, egg yolk foam, coffee ice cream and cookie crumbles, mascarpone foam meringue surrounded by Saba. Saba is the precursor to balsamic vinegar – a cooked down concentration of Trebbiano and Lambrusco grapes used for sweetening in the Greco Roman period. I loved this dessert so much I went back for a final spoon-scrapeful with pen in hand before I started taking notes on it. The cookie crumbles were perfect with the wine, the foam was light but tight and substantial and the coffee ice cream was phenomenal. Then Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” came on the music and the whole experience got even better.

Petit fors: (counterclockwise from bottom left corner) red berry jelly with cherry crust, Caribbean chocolate, caramelized orange peel, orange puff with pastry cream, chocolate coffee cake, bonbon of mandel (?), cacao and pistachio. With an exceptional Arabica grand cru espresso from India.
We were a little disappointed to find out that their chef was not in that night (apparently teaching cookies classes in the Amazon?), but props to the sous chef for putting out such an incredible meal. I hope that dining room is never so sparsely populated again, and if its up to me to ensure that, I’ll find a way to go back. Full and satisfied we got ready to leave, and realized that in our eagerness to get to the restaurant we had not really paid attention to where we had parked our car. We asked the servers if they could guess where we might find a parking lot near a church that had some construction going on. They offered to walk with us but after about a block we assured them we would be fine and thanked them for their help. Luckily Matt’s radar was in full form and somehow, after a few more blocks of wandering, our little red Smart car popped into view around the corner. Disaster averted, we relaxed into the drive home and watched an incredible full moon ebb and flow behind crazy finger-shaped clouds.

Château Eza

Eze, the “ultimate perched village,” definitely stacked up (literally into the mountainside) to its reputation. We drove our beloved smart car up to the gates of the village and had it valet parked across from a stunning Rolls Royce and an SLR Mercedes – right in its element! Forgoing the mule ride option, we walked up the cobbled steps into the village and followed the signs to Château Eza.

We were seated on the upper level terrace for a glass of comtes de champagne rose served in cherub-esque stemware with an assortment of Asian snack mixes and olives. Earlier that afternoon the restaurant had hosted a Harley Davidson convention private party so while they got the dining room set back up for lunch, we watched the Harleys speed by the mountain pass across from the terrace.

The amuse bouche was little cones of gyoza with a chives and sour cream – a very champagne friendly dish.

After a wonderful, relaxing 30 minutes there, we went down to the lower terrace. As we walked down I said “ooh that looks like a nice table”, and much to my delight that was exactly where they were seating us. The terrace has a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea and a gorgeous rocky hillside, our table was perched right at the corner with a spectacular view of both. Several times throughout the meal people excused themselves to take pictures from behind Matt’s chair – the view was that much better. At this point they could have served me a bowl of fruit loops with rotten milk and I would have been so busy swooning over the view it probably would not have bothered me. Luckily they did no such thing and the rest of the meal followed in a beautiful succession of edible flowers and fresh flavors.

We chose to do glasses of regional wine and started out with a 2005 Chateau de Fonscolombe Cuvée Spéciale from Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence. This was very food friendly!!
Panna cotta of foie gras, salt of the world (brown and pink), salad (dill, sprouts, yellow flower, delightful vinaigrette), and brioche. The “all-together bites” took some work, but were definitely worth it, the salts were …. well, salty, but were incredible with the smooth, slightly sweet foie panna cotta.

Red peppers with salad soup (I’m sure there is a better name for this, but this was the best translation our server could come up with). The peppers were filled with little round pastas that poured out when cut open – this was a very fun play on the seeds of the pepper. An eating technique that worked well for this dish was to cut up the pepper and mix it all together and take spoonfuls of the rosemary, sweet and bitter pepper and an anonymous essence of green.

This may be the only restaurant we went to in France that did not pride itself on butter with the bread. In fact, there was no butter, which was fine due to an abundance of delicious sauces to dip in. The British people adjacent to us were not so complacent and asked for butter, which came out in a small packet (although I’m sure of much higher quality than the average butter paddy in the states). When he overheard us talking about his butter he cut it in half and offered us some. Immediately our server came over to offer us some butter of our own, but everyone’s bustle for butter was to no avail – we decided if they weren’t serving butter automatically we would be just fine without it – our arteries were not suffering butter deficiency on this trip anyway.

Lamb, pasta, white beans, tomato. A simple and delicious combination of flavors, if only spaghetti-o’s tasted so good (maybe Mr. Boyardee never made it to Eze). Sorry for the crude comparison, this dish deserves a much better association than that. Although the flowers had very little flavor, they were tremendously aesthetically pleasing. When the wind caught Matt’s flower and took it away, another one was brought out so he would not be lacking floral finesse.

For the red we had Ch. des Annibals Fesse-Mathieux Rouge, also from Provence. This is a biodynamic vineyard that boasts a carbon-neutral production. The sommelier shared the anecdote that, according the legend, Hannibal the Carthaginian was passing by the estate on his way to Rome, elephants in tow, hence the elephant as the symbol on the label. This had a big, red-fruit aromatic profile, smooth texture and a fairly long finish with a little bit of mineral – a good match for the lamb.

Tropical fruits and cream – star fruit, kiwi, pineapple, mango, guava, and some very tart seeds (even thinking about them from 5000 miles away makes my mouth pucker up). The fruits were pretty (kind of like flowers) but none of them were outstanding in flavor. The highlight of the dessert was the dome, which had a lighter mousse on the outside, an ice cream in the middle and a sweet crunch at the bottom.

Chocolate lemon macaroon, apricot tart and a raspberry meringue.

This lunch was a serene relaxing reprieve from the overload of yachts and tourists we had just left behind in Monaco. The food was very reasonably priced (the two glasses of champagne cost as much as one of the meals). All of our senses were on high alert – from breathtaking views to aromatic sauces and tongue puckering fruits. It was quite hard to part with our little corner table, but next time I’m in the neighborhood I will definitely stop back by.