Elbon the Table, 2chef, and Yountville too, which I never wrote up on the blog: lately I’ve been going to Western restaurants a lot. Not because I particularly love Western food and was dying to try them, but because I kept picking places to suit whoever I was meeting. Life has phases like that. Still, I can’t say I’m not starting to get a bit tired of it.
This time I went to a fairly upscale French place in my own town. The interior is on the modest side, but the service and the cooking are the real deal. Since I went for dinner, the prices were high enough to sting a little. Still, you have to go once just for the experience.
Ginger ale
I had to drive, so I started with a soft drink. If you ask whether ginger ale goes with French food, it doesn’t… it’s just a middle-aged guy’s taste.
Today’s starter: anago (conger eel) terrine
Pretty and made with obvious care, though it’s a touch short on flair. Nothing trendy about it, but the anago was high quality and it had that elegant, properly French flavor.
Bread
I think bread is best plain and not too heavy. Honestly, I’ve grown tired of fancy breads. Of course, plain or not, it still has to taste good.
Pea soup
It takes an almost excessive amount of care to make good French food. The texture was wonderfully smooth and it really stuck with me.
Shimane wagyu steak
When it comes to steak, wagyu is the one. It’s different from the moment the knife glides through. For the pure joy of bursting juices and tender meat that melts away, I don’t think anything beats good-quality wagyu. This is what blew my budget, but even so, I couldn’t not order it. And yet, however delicious the wagyu and however much it was the best steak I’ve had lately, eating steak after steak does get old, no way around it. Maybe someone like me is just destined to eat whale meat. So on that note, Western food is banned for a while.
Dessert
The dessert fell a bit short. The trouble with the countryside is that there are no places that do dessert well; fruit fills that role instead.
Orange juice
And so I had a good meal. After that, work got busy and I ended up holed up for a while…