Notes from a broad

In celebration of Sister Number 2’s recent marriage, we all went to France without her.  It was infernally hot and my tan is minimal because I was forced to become the family’s unpaid chef for ten days, a role slightly more interesting that my normal position in the pack as unpaid lone voice of reason (self appointed).  One day, I made a courgette salad and Dad liked it so much there were some ‘hilarious’ jokes about another wedding.  In amongst the slavery, we had some pretty spectacular lunches.

 

Bruno, Lorgues

 

You know that joke about someone’s face proving that God has a sense of humour? Well I feel the same way about the existence of a restaurant serving six course lunches entirely consisting of truffles in the South of France. Bruno gets through a metric tonne of truffles a year, and the five menus only vary in the grade of truffles used on each course, and are priced accordingly.  As an amuse bouche, there were grainy, light brown summer truffles (aestivum) on toast. In the middle of the table, in case we were seized by a sudden craving, shavings of coal black melanosporum truffles interlaced on a plate, glossy with olive oil and crunchy with salt, like a tuber carpaccio.  The palate cleanser was a truffle ice cream.

 

The experience is so overwhelmingly truffled that Sister Number 4 broke down and wept as she was presented with, and I’m actually going to quote directly from the menu here, “A potato, simply cooked in the oven, served with a cream of white Alba truffles and topped with grated brumale truffles”. So simple.  It truly was the best of times and worst of times.  No quarter is given to the fact it’s 30 degrees outside, which you just have to admire.  As lunch progressed, Sister Number 3 remarked that it seemed to be the hottest day of the holiday so far. It actually wasn’t, and we were still sitting on a cool, mosaic-ed terrace shaded by mulberry trees, but the amount of energy we were putting into our bodies in the form of truffles and their accompaniments (apparently sweetbreads, foie gras, pastry, toast, beef and potatoes go best with truffles) had played havoc with our internal temperature controls. 

 

I have no idea why Bruno decided to open his homage aux truffes in the South of France, but I’m pretty glad he did.  You can also stay there, which I would suggest might be a sensible option since I didn’t regain full mobility for some hours afterwards.

 

Mirazur, Menton

 

What follows now is of course not compromised by the fact that the maitre’d gave me his card and asked me to look him up, but Mirazur is probably the best lunch I’ve ever had.  The chef, Mauro Colagreco, is an Argentinean cooking French food in the minimal, Scandinavian style, in the South of France a mile or so from the Italian border. And you thought Bruno was confused.

 

The first thing that made me love this place was that it looks like a film set for a 60s Bond film. The view is spectacular, and Sean wasn’t even there.  The second thing that made me love this place was the fact that the bread came with Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Bread, in French. A gimmick, you may cry, but you weren’t there and it worked.  The third thing that made me love it was that, despite the fact that it is very, very smart, the whole team were friendly and relaxed and didn’t follow you to the bathroom and then turn your napkin into a swan.

 

The menu Carte Blanche is an eleven course event, and everything we ate was tiny, clever and perfect. The flavours were clean and meticulous; fish caught that morning, clear tomato consommé, lemon verbena with onions, pigeon with coffee semolina, eggs filled with caviar, sage foam, wild mint, cherry and green bean salad, prawn crackers… it looks silly written down; a bit like Lewis Carroll has been at the opium again, but it was conceptual in the best possible way. Afterwards, we drove into the hills following Biggles and butterflies.

 

La Bastide de Saint Antoine, Grasse

 

This was probably the most traditional of the lunches, both in the Provencal style of cooking and also the clientele, who were Riviera to the max. Botoxed (but with wrinkly arms- why?! Why would you iron your forehead and ignore your arms? It looks like your head is wax melting onto the parchment of your body), tanned to a walnut hue, golden watches glinting in the sunshine from underneath bright Pucci silk prints….and that was just our table. Fabulous.  The food was old French, which I always think of as the amount of attention paid to the sauces. I had a ‘foie gras three ways’ starter (‘when in Rome’ I thought, as I wondered where to inject botulism into my body next)  and then pollack, which had been cooked to translucent rather than cotton wool, and was delicious with girolles and courgettes in a light sauce. It was also described on the menu as ‘le merveilleux colin’, which made me laugh. There was a sea bream with a thick, lemony sauce, something I’m going to pretend was a sea bass because I don’t know what it actually was in French, with a ratatouille, and scallops with tonka bean and truffles, which was probably the most inventive.  All the fish was cooked perfectly, and the lunch was light, pretty and classic.  Unlike our dining companions.