Tuesday, August 28 2007

Eating Quebec

Quebec City is Canada's oldest, and it's a great and wonderful place to be. I was here over the weekend at the Vinexpert/Distrivin conference, meeting with our retail partners and seeing old friends and making new ones. My friend and co-worker Yves taught my Winemaking Excellence 101 course (with a little help from me) on Saturday, and the general retailer conference was Sunday.

Saturday night after work we went out for dinner to a wonderful restaurant, Le Patriarche. I had the do-it-yourself table d'hote, a five course dinner:

• Creamy lobster bisque with stewed-vegetable roll and watercress mousse
• Symphony of foie gras :
• Panfried foie gras on a brioche bread slice, onion and red wine chutney, and sweetbreads cutlet
• Classic torchon-style foie gras with Domaine Pinnacle ice cider caramel
• Cèpe crème brûlée and poached foie gras
• Blueberry/Mint Granita
• Wild game trilogy :
• Wild boar with sage juice with a potato-pancetta gallete
• Wapiti with morel sauce and truffled mashed potatoes
• Bison flank steak with confit shallot juice and roasted carrots
• Death by Chocolate
• White chocolate crème brûlée
• Tanzanian chocolate fondant with Morello cherries
• Guayaquil chocolate mousse and lime mille feuille
  

Along with a delightful Pinot Grigio and a wonderfully well balanced Cotes du Rhone red. While that sounds like a lot of eating, the meal took nearly three hours, and all of the portions were very small, two or three bites at most. Eating like this makes a meal an occasion, but it also makes it much more about company and conversation than about merely feeding yourself. With fifteen minutes between courses, you had better have something to talk about with your companions!

And, of course, that's where wine comes in. Nothing goes better with conversation or lubricates social interaction better than a great glass of wine, and the only time a great wine tastes better is when you share it with friends--you can only drink so much before you must stop, but there's no limit to how much you can talk about it.

I'm off to tour Quebec city Monday, and I've got a couple of more dinner reservations to get through. I think I know why the Quebecois guard their language so carefully--why let out such great secrets of food and drink when you can share them with a close circle of friends?

Off to practise my Francais!

Posted by Tim AT 5:22AM

1 Comment

Post A Comment

Email