Two Hours and Two Bottles of Wine

There's not a country in the world, perhaps in the universe, in which folks take food as seriously as they do in France. I suppose that the Italians and the Spanish and the Greeks might disagree, and to be sure the cuisines of those countries aren’t the only ones that deserve thorough investigation. But the French are just so gosh darn serious about it. From the epic and definitive (in its day) Larousse Gastronomique to iconic Julia Child and her revival through the efforts of that annoying Julie person, the French and those who treasure the French style have set the standard. It's idiomatic: If you haven't studied in France, if you haven't apprenticed in France, if you haven't cooked in France, you haven't made The Big Show.

For the less sports-minded among you, The Big Show – or just The Show – is how minor leaguers refer to Major League Baseball.

I don't mean to imply that there's no such thing as bad food or fast food in France. The French can be in a hurry and are not above eating on the run. But we're not talking about tuna fish salad stuffed between two slices of white bread. And, although McDonald's and KFC and others have made inroads physically if not culturally, French fast food isn't about drive-thrus. Thank God that abomination hasn’t penetrated into the Languedoc.

So what exactly is French fast food? Particularly in the cities but throughout France, you can see folks hustling down the sidewalk, sandwich in hand…one of those great baguettes, cut in half, sliced lengthwise, and containing a fresh lettuce leaf, a slice of cheese, and a taste of meat, just enough to flavor the loaf but not overwhelm it. Now that’s my idea of fast food.

But this post is about restaurants. Not the Five-Star variety, but the restaurants that you find in the small villages with menus driven by chefs with enough skill and enough capital to cook what they want to cook when they want to cook it. This can be a good thing or this can go wrong. Two examples:

The Hotel Residence in Nissan lez Enserune is owned and operated by Bernadette and Philippe SANS. It’s a perfect match. Philippe is an accomplished chef and Bernadette loves to decorate. Between them they are transforming the hotel from a working-class village’s commercial traveler stop to a destination location with rooms either filled with country French ‘antiques’ or rooms fully modern with wi-fi and hot tub. Our preference is a second floor room in the main house facing the pool. (First floor for Brits and Europeans.)

The menu for the restaurant can be found on the hotel’s website: http://www.hotel-residence.com. The fare is diverse, creative, and reasonably priced for the quality. A French –native friend who has spent a lifetime in the high-end food and beverage industry stayed at the hotel for a week at our recommendation as he toured the Languedoc with his American-born wife. He reports that he enjoyed the restaurant so much that they never felt the need to have dinner anywhere else. I can think of no greater recommendation.

Although when we first visited the Hotel Residence several years ago the restaurant was only available to guests for dinner, the restaurant now serves lunch and dinner and is open to the public. If you’re planning to visit the Languedoc and prefer small hotels in the midst of French village life, you really must consider staying with Philippe and Bernadette. At the very least, take a meal with them. If you see Philippe or Bernadette, tell them Monsieur Faro sent you.

Not every chef pulls it off as well as Philippe, though. Take the case of the restaurant in the Hotel Pressoir in Cazouls-les-Beziers. The establishment – both the hotel and the restaurant – are owned by the Furlans and I assume that Monsieur Furlan is the chef, a big balding guy with a moustache. When we first arrived in Cazouls, the restaurant was a simple neighborhood joint, as good as anything of its type in the area, serving a thick, earthy seafood stew, personal pizzas, steak frites, and the like. Then the place changed hands, the restaurant was renamed Les Agapes, and things are definitely not the same. The offerings became more diverse, the prices pushed higher, and the comparison to restaurants at that next level became less flattering. We ate Furlan’s cooking once in a large group several years ago and have not returned since. I’m not saying that the food was inedible; it just didn’t have the flair necessary to justify the price. Clearly, Furlan aspired to culinary heights to which his talents were not capable.

So how do you choose? Take the recommendations of those who know. Here are our favorites:

1.    Le Patio, Nissan-lez-Enserune: Also owned by the SANS, a delightful little place, less expensive than the Hotel Residence, to take lunch or dinner with friends. Fresh ingredients, well-prepared and thoughtfully presented. In good weather, dine on the patio.

2.    Le Provence, Capestang: Another of those local joints with a charming patio. The menu includes an earthy seafood soup for the brave, lots of appetizers and entrees to choose from, and personal pizzas (try the one with foies-gras).

3.    Le Terminus, between Cruzy and Quarante: This is a recent find, recommended to us by a Brit contractor in the area. New young owners have turned this former train station out in the country into a perfect spot to enjoy a couple of hours in the sun sampling authentic country cooking.

4.    Le Mewen, Narbonne: A couple of blocks from Les Halles, Narbonne’s comprehensive covered market, Le Mewen is an old-fashioned creperie without frills serving both sweet and savory concoctions. Try the apple cider instead of wine.

5.    L'Auberge de la Croisade, on the Canal du Midi, near Cruzy: This upscale restaurant is our special place along with the Hotel Residence. Your host is multi-lingual, full of energetic hospitality, and the food is to die for. There are those who say that the menu has grown a bit lazy, but we don’t visit often enough to notice.

6.    Hotel Jalabert, Ouveillan: This place is definitely NOT for everyone. A funky old restaurant in a backwater hotel with exactly zero ambience, the feisty old Madame will serve what she wants, when she wants. She’s got a heart of gold, though, even if she’s missing most of her teeth; she’ll take the time to cut the meat into bite-sized pieces for the ancient villagers who have been her customers since the year the cow had a two-headed calf. We love it. You’re likely to think I’m crazy.

Remember, in most places lunch is served beginning at noon and ending at 2:00 PM. And that doesn’t mean that you can show up at 1:45 and expect service. Dinner may start earlier than 8:00 PM but don’t count on it. CALL FOR RESERVATIONS, particularly for your evening meal. If you just show up, you may not be able to get a table, particularly as the weekend approaches.

DAILY MENU

Mobile Meat Counter, Cazouls, Market Day

Now that we've shopped, let's eat.

Breakfast

Cathey's day starts with coffee. Two cups. French press. Nothing, and I mean not one single thing, happens before the coffee happens. If she's lucky, the smell of the fresh-brewed coffee wakes me up.

I scratch, yawn, wash and brush, dress, and take the short walk to the artisan patisserie for my morning pain au chocolat, Cathey's croissant – when she chooses to risk the carbs and the fat, and the day's baguette or other specialty loaf. Yes, one of the truly wondrous experiences for any foodie living in France is having the smell of fresh-baked bread permeating the house every day.

Once coffee has kick-started the digestive and intellectual processes, we decide on breakfast. To a certain extent, the breakfast menu depends on the previous night's dinner. If we splurged, went to a favorite restaurant for courses and courses and wine to match, there is the distinct possibility that we're still full. Or we might be anticipating a lazy, grazing lunch. If either is the case, a simple menu of juice, fruit, and that flaky pastry that I just bought might suffice. If UK Sharon brought some fresh preserves – or if we bought some at the market – we might spread a bit on slices of our baguette.

If a greater degree of sustenance is required, add a one-egg omelet, perhaps with a bit of cheese. Beyond that, the choices are endless – a couple of links of merguez left over from the night before, rashers of thick-sliced smoked bacon, perhaps a few slices of smoked salmon; Europeans really appreciate smoked salmon and that particular section of the supermarket is a delight for this Jersey boy. (That's NEW Jersey, if you please.)

Lunch

When we're on vacation and money is no object (yeah, right) we generally plan to eat out once a day, either lunch or dinner. Most often, it's lunch. We're already out and about, often far from home. So many of the places to which we might want to go – specialty shops, vineyards – are closed for the lunch hour...or two or four. And the specials at good restaurants can be inexpensive and a good measure of what the dinners might be like. For instance, the 12 euro lunch special at Le Terminus, a picturesque dining spot in a beautifully redesigned old railroad station between Quarante and Cruzie, includes an amuse and three courses.

But more about restaurants in my next post.

The point is, if we're eating lunch at home, it generally means that we're either going out to dinner or cooking dinner ourselves. Either way, since we expect dinner to be heavy, lunch at home is usually light. Remember the wonderful deli and cheese counters at the supermarket? When lunch is light, we graze.

One plate holds a selection of cheeses – St. Nectare, something bleu, something hard, something goat. One plate features meats – a dry chorizo, salami – perhaps with a peppery crust, a country terrine, a coarse pate, thin slices of serrano ham. Side goodies might include a selection of olives for Cathey, perhaps some of those marvelous Mediterranean anchovies for me – although Cathey gets into them too, maybe a few slices of smoked salmon. Don't forget the slices of fresh baguette and the fine butter of Normandy or Dijon mustard.

And wine. Usually rose. Usually only 3 or 4 euros a bottle. Often from Caveaux St. Laurent in Capestang.

By the way, this setup can be packed up and taken along as a picnic lunch. Don't forget the sharp knife and the corkscrew, though.

Dinner

If we've eaten our lunch out, dinner is the grazing described above. If the dinner at home is to be the main meal of the day, wondrous possibilities present themselves.

Main courses in our house in Cazouls have included French lentils with merguez sausage, rabbit braised in wine, beef steaks on the grill, salmon steaks on the grill...

And speaking of the barbecue out on the patio, you should know that grapevine wood added to the fire imparts a distinct, delicate flavor to grilled foods that is unique. We've used it for grilling duck duck breast – complete with a thick layer of fat that kept the breast moist through the process, for smoking fresh sardines from the Mediterranean, and for mutton chops.

Starters might include salad with buttery fresh lettuce or leek and potato soup. Sides of fresh veggies (haricots verte or potatoes or whatever else looks fresh that might come from either the outdoor market or the super. – except Brussels sprouts. I hate Brussels sprouts.) And dessert.

DESSERT!

Wonderful little pastries from the artisan patisserie. Chocolate.

FRENCH CHOCOLATE!

DESSERT!

A POLITICAL ASIDE

Eric Cantor, Republican House Majority Leader, was quoted today in the Wall Street Journal as having said that his Democratic opponents don't believe in capitalism, they believe in the welfare state.

First of all, how do you describe a political party that insists on continuing to provide significant, targeted subsidies to an industry (Big Oil) that collectively pulled in one trillion dollars in profits last year alone? To me, that's not a political party with conservative principles, a political party that espouses capitalism. That's a party that doles out welfare. The amount of corporate welfare that has been incorporated into the tax code would outrage their base if widely publicized, and at this point the Republicans have to take ownership of that lost revenue.

And ending the corporate welfare state does not represent a tax increase. It's tax reform. Tax increases are properly defined as increases in tax rates. Tax reform doesn't increase rates. Tax reform levels the playing field, sees to it that every American citizen and every American corporation is treated equally. Only tax reform can lead to the realization of truly conservative principles and an end to the corporate welfare state.

How do Republicans define the term 'welfare state' then? I suppose that their definition is a state that values individuals over businesses. Well, at least to the extent that I believe that it is the business of government to see to it that the elderly, the infirm, and the poor don't of necessity go hungry or homeless, I believe in a welfare state for individuals. Is there waste, fraud, and abuse in our system of welfare dedicated to individuals? No more, I submit, then the waste, fraud, and abuse in our corporate welfare system.

The cost overruns collected fraudulently by a single defense contractor for the development a single weapon system are, in all likelihood, equivalent to all of the waste, fraud, and abuse in what Republicans choose to call welfare. It's time that they stuck to their supposedly conservative principles. It's time that they let businesses stand or fall on their own merit, like true capitalists. It's time for the rest of us to insist that they do.

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD...

It sounds trite to say it, but it must be said. The French are really into their food and wine.

Whereas Americans can be characterized, and not altogether unfairly caricatured, by the speed with which they eat and the vast quantities that they consume at each sitting, the French actually care about quality – the quality of ingredients, the quality of preparation, the quality of presentation, the quality of time spent at table. You would think that given the opportunity, Americans would appreciate this different attitude toward mealtime. You would be wrong. 

Americans complain that they can't get a decent cheeseburger. Americans fret that the service is slow.

Americans are jerks.

Not that I'm some sort of unreconstructed Francophile. I appreciate the opportunities available to me growing up in America. America is a great country.

But Americans are jerks.

Americans have adapted their mid-day meal regimen to accommodate their working life. They shovel in the calories and gobble them down within a half-hour time window and are back at work before the last mouthful has completed its journey down the esophagus. France, on the other hand, is a country where business ceases at noon and everyone takes a couple of hours to have a hearty meal with friends, lingering over three courses, letting the digestive juices do their work as they were meant to do. And if the French are becoming the least bit Americanized, if more and more urban – and even some rural – supermarkets and big box stores stay open over lunch and even (gasp) open on Sundays, is that not the saddest of intrusions of modern life into a culture that celebrates its rich history of decadence?

Let's begin our examination of the French food supply chain with a discussion of grocery shopping.

Every village of even modest size has at least one market day in the town square, sometimes two or three. Local produce, meats, seafood, and cheeses abound. Fresh, fresh, fresh. There's a local lady with a small table selling a few dozen eggs. Next to her a guy has six or seven tables covered with produce that tastes as good as it looks...and it looks pretty darn good. There's the 30 foot-long meat counter, just like a small supermarket's meat counter except that there's no self service. And they take plastic. A smaller trailer sells Chinese food and I'd swear that other guy is advertizing horse meat. During Thursday market, the one closest to the weekend, you might find the spice lady or the olive man as well. Shoppers may not be able to eat the whole week through from market day purchases, but they know the good stuff when they see it, they buy the good stuff, and they use it while it's fresh.

Supplementing the markets are the alimentaires, the little grocery stores, often themselves in the town squares, presided over by a woman of indeterminate age who knows your business better than you do. There's just enough of everything on the shelves to tide you over in case of emergency – a few bars of hand soap, a couple of packages of disposable diapers, two or three boxes of laundry detergent...France hasn't completed the conversion to liquid by half. And there's always butter and cheese, a small selection of local produce, and a free floor show...like the American guy who comes in at odd hours for odd things. He lives across the square and down the alley and he rents out his house to people from all over the world. C'est vrai!

I'm not ashamed to say that we do the bulk of our grocery shopping at Carrefour, the supermarket outside of Cazouls and the hypermarket on the outskirts or Narbonne. (For the uninitiated, a hypermarket is a combination supermarket and department store, often the anchor of a large shopping center. Think K Mart with a kickin' seafood section.) You can't beat the price and selection. Take a quick tour.

As is typically the case in the States, the entrance to a Carrefour supermarket brings you to the produce section. I never understood the logic of that, by the way. It means that your delicate fruits and veggies are at the bottom of the cart, at the mercy of being squished by that two liter bottle of Coke that you throw in at the other end of the store. Anyway, that's where the similarity ends. Nothing is wrapped in plastic and everything is clearly marked for price and country of origin. And since we're talking the Mediterranean marketplace here, including north Africa, just about everything is in season all of the time.

Lovely leeks, fat and snow white with crisp greens. Lettuce heads, untrimmed, straight from the fields, tasting like butter.

Seafood is displayed on deep beds of ice and the whole corner smells of the Med. The salmon and the shrimp will be familiar, but there are a whole range of Mediterranean species to choose, from various whole fish and filets to the exotic 'what-the-heck-is-that' swimmer. Look but don't touch; there are attendants. And be careful, the floor is always wet.

Although by American standards the meat counter is lacking in the beef department, the variety is stunning – chicken, duck rabbit, lamb, mutton, a dizzying choice of sausages, and more. If you've never barbecued a boneless duck breast with a thick, untrimmed layer of fat over a grapevine wood fire, the flavor is impossible to describe.

My favorite place in our local Carrefour is the deli counter. Such an understatement: deli counter. There's boiled ham and Serrano ham and salami and pepper salami and four different kinds of country pate and three different kinds of foies gras and big round chunks of sweet chorizo and chorizo and you can ask for a couple of slices of this and 100 grams of that and before you know it, you've got sufficient pickings to keep you happy for several days – assuming you've also visited the cheese counter, as exciting for the discriminating cheesehead as the deli is for me.

As for the rest, much is familiar but with subtle shifts in emphasis. There is a lot less breakfast cereal and a lot more chocolate. There's a huge aisle of milk, unrefrigerated and in cartons as well as plastic bottles. Irradiated? Don't know. Hard to get used to. Lots of wine. Beer, too. Shelves and shelves of alcoholic beverage.

Ah, France.

Next up, we'll talk about how all of this translates into a typical day's menu and a few restaurant tips.

I’M NOT A DIARIST

Do you know that guy who pulls out his cell phone as soon as the plane stops at the gate to tell his wife that the plane has just stopped at the gate, then calls again at the baggage claim and once again in the shuttle? I’m not that guy.

Do you have a Facebook friend who describes her evening in little bytes, every detail concerning the kids, the pets, the hubby? That’s not me.

For instance, In France our breakfasts were always light…a pain au chocolat or a croissant, maybe a one-egg, herbed omelet. Occasionally, we’d add a couple of rashers of bacon. Once, we finished off a bit of merguez sausage left over from dinner the night before. And don’t forget bread fresh from the artisan patisserie, some of that fine butter from Normandy, maybe fruit jelly fresh from the farm purchased on market day in the town square. Having said that, do I really have to document the fare at every one of thirteen or fourteen breakfasts? For some, I suppose, it’s necessary information. To me, carefully chronicling such mundane occurrences smacks of egotism.

I’m just not that special.

So forget the day-after-day this is what I did and this is when I did it. From now on, I’ll write on themes. And not surprisingly, food will be one theme, as will real estate agents, satellite television, people who rented our house, and people who manage rental housing. It just makes more sense to me that way.

A TYPICAL STORY…OR NOT

Our story is a typical one.

My wife Catherine and I have always loved to travel. Ten years ago, when we first visited the Languedoc, we fell in love…in love with the weather, in love with the pace of French village life, in love with the smell of fresh bread every morning.

In love with the wine…

In 2005, we purchased a little holiday house in a small village north of Beziers. Nothing fancy. No garden or pool so no maintenance. We visited when we were able, rented it out to defray some of the expenses.  We came to think of our visits to the Languedoc not as vacations, but as coming home.

That’s why we were pleased to read in an English-language online newsletter that the French government has loosened access to the French healthcare system for early retirees. That’s important to us. If we don’t qualify, we will have to purchase private insurance at a heavy price. We’re not wealthy. Solid middle class. The cost of healthcare could negatively affect our standard of living when we retire permanently to the Languedoc in the next couple of years.

A typical story, except for one thing. We’re Americans. Yanks. From across the Pond. All of this EU stuff doesn’t apply. Not a single EU country recognizes our American Medicare health insurance for retirees. We’ve registered on the message boards. We subscribe to the newsletters. We paid dues to an association of Americans abroad. We’ve even telephoned the French embassy.

We ask the same question: How long will it take to qualify for the French healthcare system if we arrive at age 65 with a carte de sejour?

The answer? Immediately. Or 90 days. Or five years.

Don’t get me wrong. I can deal with uncertainty. I am fully aware that our fate rests in the hands of a French bureaucracy that can be as opaque as a London fog. But it’s frustrating that so much that is written in English concerning our problem, practically all that is written in English, is directed to our UK cousins and that all of the articles on websites directed to Americans are three paragraphs long and link to an international health insurance company.

Are all Americans in the Languedoc either employed or wealthy? Are there any Americans in the Languedoc at all outside of Montpelier? We occasionally hear the accent but most often in places where tourists gather.

Rant over. Are you American? Have you navigated the same problem that we are facing? Send up a smoke signal. Give us a sign.

SETTLING IN - JUNE 14

It didn’t take long. 

Cathey asked me to pick up a croissant along with the usual pain au chocolat for me and baguette at the bakery in the morning. Warm, flakey, buttery goodness. Not her style…except in France. I bought two desserts in anticipation of UK Sharon’s arrival that evening – a chocolate 'brownie' with the consistency of a super-thick mousse and a saucer-sized, sugar-coated, raspberry-filled butter cookie sandwich. Cathey wondered why I’d bought the sweets, didn’t believe that it was already Wednesday and that Sharon was due, so a 15 minute discussion ensued about what day of the week it was. 

To my discredit, I won.

We wait for the Live Box.

Our long-term tenant – we’ll call her Kerry – came by later in the morning. Neat and petite. Dark tan and blonde and Brit. She’s a very nice lady who lost her husband suddenly not long ago and is renting her villa down the road over the summer for at least three times what she’s paying us. And we've solved the problem on storage and house security. More about that in a minute.

Light lunch – charcuterie, cheese, bread, and wine again. It hasn’t gotten old yet and it won’t get old for the rest of the trip.

The ladies who have been managing the house for us, doing the turnovers and taking care of the maintenance, popped over after lunch. They’re going to be heading back to England soon. Itchy feet. Given Kerry’s long-term let and her willingness to take charge of the house, deal with the showings by the real estate agents, and even store the few small bins of items that we want to keep if the house should sell, we’re OK with it. Off they go and leave the keys.

Following Berangere’s advice to hook up with a local agent, I walk down to the agency on the main drag in Cazouls. The receptionist speaks no English. An older, put together guy with a bit of English comes out to speak to me in broken English and refers me to a younger, bearded and sandaled guy with no English in the biggest, well-appointed office in the far back. He knows the house, even showed me pictures he had on his computer from when the house was up for sale at the time that we bought it. I'd forgotten how ugly the furniture was before we recovered it. 

Talked price. Made an appointment for him to come over the next day.

Dinner of French lentils and merguez sausage. I’m normally not a consumer of legumes, but French lentils, properly prepared and spiced, ain’t pork and beans.

I left for Montpellier to pick up Sharon after dinner, taking a route that Kerry suggested…the  A75/750…new, free, but as it turned out not any faster. I arrive as the plane lands. Home on the A9 and the A75, the right way to go even if it costs five euros and change.

Kiss and hug. We exchange presents…books and tea and chocolate covered almonds with chili (Smooth on the tongue. Hot going down.)

Talk, talk, talk. It’s good to see UK Sharon again. More like family than family.

Bed late.