Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Dog Days in the Dordogne

Friday, August 19

The main thing - the only thing, really - on today's agenda is lunch at La Chassagnette. This will be my third meal here, and I'm salivating at the thought of it.

After picking one of PB's pooches up at the dog groomers we head out into some rather bad traffic around Arles and then out into the lovely Camargue to Sambuc, arriving just past 12:30. Greetings all around and we choose a table indoors, though everyone else is seated in the garden, because we've encountered mosquitoes the moment we exited the car. So we have the entire restaurant to ourselves essentially.

If you've been here, or read about it, you know that there's no menu, just a neverending stream of culinary offerings that the chef Jean-Luc Rabanel dreams up with inspiration from the vast organic gardens that make up the property and the best offerings from provençal markets.

We get started with a cumin-laced chickpea spread and toasted baguette slices. Next, more toasted baguettes dipped in olive oil and covered with a layer of sardines and freshly shaved garden vegetables. Then we are brought a basket full of vegetable tempura - zucchini, zucchini blossoms, and pumpkin (the pumpkin are outstanding) with a sweet-and-sour sauce and another soy-based one. Finger-licking good thusfar.

While we're dipping and munching and murmuring in delight, a French family walks in. The father is wearing a dirty blue T-shirt and baggy pants and a baseball cap, the son is wearing Hawaiian-print bathing trunks and a T-shirt, and the mother is equally badly dressed. The first thing the man does is look around and say to the waitress who greets him - "Oh, Americans! Just give them cheap wine and lots of pastis and they'll be happy." The waitress, and we, are a bit stunned, and after she has seated this family in the garden, she runs over to us and says "You're Americans, aren't you?" We say yes, and she looks horrified and runs to the kitchen.

Next comes a huge platter with little glass jars filled with cream of sweet yellow pepper, a beet sashimi with crunchy diced vegetables inside, and a courgette filled with a cod and potato mixture. There's homemade baguettes and tomato-herb bread to go along with it, and a pot full of herbs that we are instructed to use as a napkin to freshen our fingers. Oh, and miniature sine carafes filled with a creamy tomato gaspacho topped with a nasturtium leaf and presented with a straw for easy drinking.

Then a large skillet filled with braised mussels, squid, and chorizo. T at first says he doesn't like mussels, but by the time the waiter has overheard him and run to the kitchen to bring him a nice braised piece of sandre, T has already downed an entire bowl of the mussels and squid.

Dessert is a licorice ice cream topped with a crunchy cookie, but PB doesn't like licorice, so the waiter brings her, and then T, a fig tiramisu. Lovely!

It takes a good two hours to get through all this, but it's not heavy, and at the end of the meal we are perfectly sated but not feeling weighted down.

Out in the lobby, Jean-Luc comes out to say hello, opens a bottle of champagne, and pours a glass for all of us. We discuss Patricia Wells'recent damning review of the restaurant, and he says it was a "stab in the heart" to him, especially as she finished her meal there sitting in the lobby with him, her head on his shoulders, telling him how wonderful it all was. But, he says, he's got more customers than ever before, so no problem, Then he tells us there are some he'd rather not have anyway, like the "clochards" outside who made fun of Americans. Can you imagine, he says, coming to a restaurant dressed like that and then sneering at other customers? It's appalling, he says.

Then he whisks us into the kitchen and shows us the dough he's preparing for the tomato-herb bread and the little corner of the garden he has now reserved for people who show up without reservations. He serves them a big anchouiade that he makes right there on the spot with whatever freshest from the garden. The diners there give us a thumbs up in approval.

We leave just after 3 pm and drive back to the moulin. PB gets out a ladder and T climbs up into the almond tree to pick the last of this year's crop. Then we walk down the lane to a wild fig tree and pluck a large bagful of sticky ripe figs. Then into town to do a quick errand or two.

No one's hungry for dinner but T, who has a cheese sandwich. We watch silly British TV again while the wind picks up outside and a few rain drops fall. Then to bed. Our time in Provence has expired and we're off to Lyon tomorrow.