La Terrasse

Back on our first tour in May, the quintet had our debut lunch together at La Terrasse, in the village of Grezels, a bend of the Lot away from Puy l'Évèque. It was a wonderful and leisurely meal spanning hours, putting us all on notice that this was not going to be a typical jazz gig.

The husband and wife owners of La Terrasse are also its only employees. You don't order off a menu. Instead, you eat whatever is on for the day: every diner will enjoy the same fare, the same courses, delivered to the table on platters "family style," as we say around here.

For our February return to the Quercy, Gretchen brought us back to La Terrasse. This time we knew what to expect: as soon as the tureen of soup arrived at the table, several folks said in near unison "Oh yeah, remember this?!" And when the soup was nearly finished, a few around the table engaged in the medieval Quercy practice of le chabrol: splashing some wine into our bowls and slurping up every last drop of wine and soup...

As before, we left stuffed. I could have made my entire meal off of just the wonderfully varied cheese course and would've considered myself a lucky man -- but we also had the soup and duck and salad and dessert and lots of Cahors wine, of course.

As we were leaving, I thought to myself "I could REALLY get used to this. Especially if I could buy some looser pants..."


Tom, Fritz, & Gretchen


Grezels in winter

From Here You Can't See Paris

After our May tour last year, I picked up Michael S. Sanders' From Here You Can't See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and Its Restaurant, at Gretchen's enthusiastic recommendation.

Knowing nothing about the book, I expected something along the lines of a Quercy-centric version of Peter Mayle's Provence books: a diverting light read about the occasionally infuriating but always charming French, their glorious cuisine and their enviable lifestyle.

Sanders' book is nothing like A Year In Provence. Instead, it's a deep and beautifully written account of how a small French town is changing and adjusting, to the degree it can, to modern developments: its young people are abandoning village life and agricultural work, seeking careers in far-away cities instead, while occasionally clueless foreigners are moving in, attracted by a lifestyle their very presence is threatening.

These changes are recounted over the backdrop of one year at La Récréation, an important (and glorious!) restaurant in Les Arques. (I've written a bit about our lunch there, here and here.)

From Here You Can't See Paris covers the history of French village life, offers an unflinching look at how foie gras is made, describes the unexpectedly cutthroat world of the truffle auction, and the occasional tension between natives and ex-pats -- all while detailing the prosaic behind-the-scenes planning and preparation that lead to a magical meal at a French restaurant.

And, with all that, I've barely scratched the surface of what's in the book! I loved the book and enthusiastically recommend it to anyone with an interest in food, restaurants, or French culture...

Le Marché Beauvau

As if the Marché d’Aligre weren’t enough, with its blocks of stalls, manned (occasionally womanned) by vendors shouting for your attention as you walk by, hoisting these amazing cherries that you’d be NUTS not to buy, or MY GOD, LOOK at these LEEKS -- as if all that abundance and cacophony were not quite enough, there’s the covered Marché Beauvau, one of the oldest surviving covered markets in Paris, right at the heart of it.

You couldn’t find it in the Marché d’Aligre?!? Really?

Okay, here you go:

Le Marché d'Aligre

Our friends Paul and Lucy have an apartment in the 12th arrondissement on the rue de Charenton, not far from the Gare de Lyon. The 12th is a part of Paris I wasn't familiar with, a pie wedge in the southeast corner of the city that begins at the Opéra Bastille, cuts east through la Place de la Nation to the city's edge at the Boulevard Périphérique, then south through the Bois de Vincennes to the Seine, which forms its southern border.

While the 12th is not a "touristy" part of Paris -- I've seen it described elsewhere as "working class" and "residential," and that seems about right -- Deb and I fell in love with our little quartier, thanks to the Marché d'Aligre, a wonderful outdoor market anchored by one of the last covered markets in Paris, the Marché Beauvau.

On our first morning in Paris, while I navigated the complexities of our shower (whose confident Space Age appearance belied its nervous tendency to leak a small but significant stream of water out under the bathroom door in a furtive meander toward the apparently lower territory of the kitchen), Deb set out on a reconnaissance mission to locate pain au chocolat and a baguette.

She returned to the apartment, stepping over the wet bath towels on the floor, with a wide-eyed report of an amazing outdoor market that started just a block up the street. "They have ... everything. It's huge. Anything you want. You've got to see it."

Rather than try to describe the glories of the place, I'll let some photos tell the tale...

Les Plats de Paris

I've been slow to recount the second part of our trip, our time in Paris, because I didn't want to say goodbye to the Quercy. Leaving there meant (means) leaving my friends in the quintet, leaving Gretchen and Fritz and the nice folks they introduced me to, and leaving Puy l'Éveque and the Hotel Henry, which wasn't a fancy place at all but which charmed Deb and me anyway.

Improbably, we had such a wonderful time in the southwest that I was afraid Paris would be ... a letdown.

It wasn't.

One big change: the way we ate. I've already rhapsodized on the glorious plates set before me in some very select restaurants in the Lot Valley. While we dined out occasionally in Paris as well (at joints not remotely in the same league as the fine establishments Gretchen had lined up for the group), most of our meals there we made ourselves, in the tiny you've-got-to-be-kidding-me toy kitchen in our apartment on the rue de Charenton, in the 12th arrondissement.

The simpler homemade fare we had there was a bit of a relief after the rich, foie gras über alles cuisine of the first week: generally more vegetarian (okay, at least let's say "duck free," which was a start), simpler, but very fresh, thanks to the glorious Marché d'Aligre right up the street (more about that later...).

As a contrast to the food porn photos I showed earlier, I thought I'd show some typical meals in Paris. The photo leading off this post was the typical breakfast: coffee, OJ, a petit pain au chocolat and a baguette from the nearby and glorious Moisan organic bakery, perhaps some fruit, some cheese.

In fact, more often than not that was nearly the formula for our dinners as well...

La Récréation & Les Arques

I've already mentioned my meal at La Récréation, a charming restaurant set in a former schoolhouse in the tiny hamlet of Les Arques, and probably my favorite among a group of very memorable meals. The food was marvelous, as would be expected, and we were outside on their patio on a lovely, flawless late May day in the south of France ... in other words: heaven.

The service was also noteworthy. From my seat at our round table I was perhaps the only person able to observe some of the behind-the-scenes choreography that brought the food to our group. Far from where we were seated I spotted a server with a tray of food for us, and he lingered a bit before approaching our table, which I thought a little odd, until I saw what he was up to: he was waiting for his colleague, who had his own tray for us.

Only when both were "in place" would the servers approach our group as a pair, striding briskly and taking opposite sides of the table, wordlessly (but with big smiles!) placing the appropriate dish in front of the appropriate person. They did this with absolutely no flourish at all, nearly invisibly, as if to call no attention to themselves but instead to encourage our focus on the plate and the drama to be found there....

After dinner, Les Arques was a sweet little place to take a walk. Back in the Thirties the Russian artist Ossip Zadkine bought a summer home there; today it's a museum devoted to his work. We couldn't get in (remind me why Mondays are the universal day off in the museum trade?) but we could admire some of his sculpture around the house and the church, along with the brightly-shuttered house itself and some of the nearby buildings....









Across the street from La Récréation, someone seemed to think the only way to compete with Zadkine was to paint their shutters a manically cheerful, nearly hallucinogenic blue, and I salute them!

Le canard dans tous ses états

Red wine and olive oil form the basis for most versions of the "Mediterranean diet." Locals in Quercy and the Lot Valley, in the heart of southwest France, point out that there's a third key component for healthy eating and long life: duck fat. It's entirely possible, even likely, that a meal without foie gras will kill you.

(As it turns out, duck is not the only specialty of the region's cuisine -- walnuts are another. So walnuts are also probably vital to life as we know it.)

I'll just say now that I have never ever EVER eaten as well as I did with my Blue Lake compatriots in the south of France. Ever. I've never experienced such a silky foie gras that just melted in my mouth like butter...

[Brief aside: For about 15 years I was a committed vegetarian. There are certain things I'd never eat even today, even as I've lapsed beyond all salvation: veal for instance. And human flesh. (Unless it was prepared in some ridiculously scrumptious way...)

However, even when I was a committed veg, I became uncommitted during my trips to France. I tried once, long ago, on a visit to Paris, to be true to the vegetarian principles I held at the time. It sucked. I had to forgo so many of the things I'd learned to love as a poor pre-vegetarian college kid bumming around the city. I could think of plenty of sound ethical reasons not to eat, for example, a croque-monsieur -- but when it came right down to it, I ate it. When I got back to Minneapolis, I was once again a committed vegetarian. I can't really explain it either, but I am large, I contain multitudes, yada yada.

I don't think you can really "get" some place unless you eat what the natives are eating. For me it's a big part of the cultural experience of a place, and unique cuisines are often for me some of the most memorable aspects of travel. I *know* that foie gras is ... wrong ... I also ate it and was *astonished* by it every single day I was in the Quercy...]

Gretchen had lined up some memorable restaurants for our tour:

La Terrasse, in Grezels: This was our first lunch of the tour, and am I really remembering correctly that it lasted nearly 4 hours? (In fact, after a lunch like that, can *anything* be remembered correctly?) We didn't order anything: lunch is a set menu; once you arrive, the wine and courses start appearing. It's a beautiful thing. The only decision we needed to make was whether the water was supposed to go in the big glass and the wine in the small glass, or vice-versa. It was a test we'd fail over and over again during the tour.

It was also my first duck of the trip, but oy-vey it wouldn't be my last -- in fact, if you're a duck, please make it a point to consider the entire Quercy region a no-fly zone. I'm serious about this. Just don't risk it. Fly somewhere else. You *will* be eaten, and you *will* be delicious.

Auberge l'Imhotep, in Albas: Fritz and Gretchen discovered this place entirely by accident; they walked in one day to check it out and jazz superstar James Carter was playing on the stereo. This is an extremely unlikely thing to hear as background music in the southwest of France. Now, Fritz and Gretchen have a hardcore personal history with James, as do I -- in fact, mine is even harder and corer -- and it turned out James was the owner's favorite. Jazz is the music he loves, and it's what plays in the background -- if clients don't like it, they can leave, he says. After a marvelous meal (duck was involved), we played a little informal concert: Tom and I grabbed our horns, Matt hauled over his bass, Tim swung with nothing but a snare drum, while Steve fingered air piano with Cecil Taylor intensity. In a warm and wine-cheered post-meal haze we played, between burps, All The Things You Are and Bye Bye Blackbird. (Looking back now, I realize we should have played All The Things You Ate and Bye Bye Duck...)

(A little more than a week later, in Paris, I mentioned to Deb what a weird name "Imhotep" was -- I mean, I wonder where the hell *that* came from, what a strange and not very French word -- and she said "You mean Imhotep the ancient Egyptian chancellor-priest?" I replied, "Well, yeah, of course there's THAT Imhotep, I mean, DUH!, but still, you know, it's a funny word." This is what life is like with Deb, who is all-knowing and all-powerful, except when it comes to current events...)

Restaurant Claude Marco, in Cahors: this was, I believe, the first meal where I actually took a picture of the plate set before me -- it was just that beautiful. Now, I'll admit that I felt a wee bit self-conscious snapping a photo of the entrée: we were in a lovely and fancy Michelin-starred establishment, and I realized there was a danger that taking a shot of the food on the plate might make me look like one of the Beverly Hillbillies marveling over the "Cee-ment Pond," but it was so dag-burn purdy that I just couldn't help myself.



La Récréation in Les Arques: this was probably my favorite meal of them all. It wasn't just the food, which was transcendent: my entrée, the titular canard served every which way, is the photo that begins this post. The service, the setting, and everything else was magical.

Hostellerie le Vert in Maroux: it was our last night in the Quercy, and I felt like I'd cut enough of a path of destruction through the resident duck population, so I ordered the beef, saignant. Glorious.

After this night, Deb and I would be in Paris. We never had a meal that could match *anything* I'd eaten at these places. But still we ate very well...