First chef's table (at Corrigan's Mayfair) a culinary disappointment

I'd been wanting to get to a chef's table for a long while.  Just about every top restaurant in Europe seems to have one these days.  Basically it's a table, in a space just off the kitchen, with a view of what's going on and special attention from the chef.  In a world where it's increasingly tough to get jaded, seen-it-all executives to attend events, chef's tables offer a different twist on corporate hospitality.  And the small tables ensure good conversation.

I've researched and planned these for my company, but I've never attended one myself.  Thus I jumped at the chance to attend a PR roundtable at the chef's table at Corrigan's Restaurant in Mayfair last week.  I fear my expectations were far higher than reality.

I'd accepted the invitation expecting a gastronomic experience above normal dining.  At the dinners I've planned for others, the chef comes to the table for every course, discussing the food in detail.  It's usually a chef's tasting menu, with many small courses, giving the chef a chance to show off and the diners a chance to learn.  And there's a matching wine flight, with more good information coming from the sommelier.  All with a great view of the kitchen.  (At one event we organised in France, the view was actually over video screens and, if you wished, one or two guests were plucked from the table between each course to help with the cooking and get a mini master class.)

Corrigan's has two chef's tables.  One, which seats no more than six comfortably, is in an alcove directly across from the pass in the kitchen.  This might have been the option closer to my expectations.  We were in a private dining room where two thirds of the back wall was a window looking onto the far end of the pass, with glimpses into a corner of the kitchen.  As a private dining room it was lovely:  wood panelling, mellow lighting, ten substantial, comfortable leather chairs, an elegantly laid table.  All as if plucked from an Edwardian country house or gentlemen's club.

But as a culinary experience it was nothing special.

Rather than a tasting menu, we had a standard three courses chosen from a version of their a la carte menu (five options for each course).  With everyone choosing different items, this offered no practical chance for thoughtful wine pairing.  Just a multi-purpose red, or white, poured as you desired.  (Interestingly, the white was a Picpoul de Pinet, with distinct flavours I would have thought a risky choice for a general pouring.)

The chef didn't come into the room, and we got little information on the food.  The thing that started to elevate our experience was a wander back into the kitchen before we ordered, when we met Head Chef Chris McGowan (generally thought to be one of the young guns to watch on the British restaurant scene) and were able to have a little chat.  This was a fascinating 10 minutes, in which we discussed the challenges of local sourcing through this year's rotten weather, the rising trend in foraging and how those suppliers were devastated by the cold, wet winter, and his tip for gnocchi.  Use the dry, fluffy insides of baked potatoes.  But that was over all too soon, and we were back to our table.  So aside from the privacy, the glimpse of the kitchen and the chat with Chris, it was just a nice meal in a private dining room.

How nice a meal?  Delicious, but unexceptional.  I had nothing that made me think "I must make a booking and bring Piers back here."  I started with Riddle Valley duck en croute with hazelnut.  Essentially a round terrine of mixed duck meats with a pastry case, sliced and served cold on a salad.  Worth investigating as a dinner party starter for its prepare-in-advance qualities.  My main was certainly the most elegant beef rib I've had, with the thick slab of meat and fat cut off the bone and slow cooked until most of the latter was rendered out .. highly reminiscent of a good pork belly.  It was served with the bone from which it had been cut arching above it, which the waiter kindly sent home for the spaniel in a posh Corrigan's bag.  The real star of the plate, though, was the bone marrow toast.  More of a crostini, actually, and the best thing I tasted all night.

The place is, according to Chef Chris, famous for its dessert soufflés.  But the combo of chocolate, pistachio and salted caramel appeared on the menu, and I couldn't resist.  I should have taken the chef's advice.  An elegant looking dessert, but the dark chocolate was so dominant it drowned the other flavours.  Chris sent a couple extra rhubarb soufflés out and my taste of this was, indeed, much better.  Light, sweet yet sharp, a much better follow up to the heaviness of the beef.

So, as a gastronomic experience, Corrigan's chef's table wasn't exceptional enough to really be worth the round trip to London.  But it did get me to accept an invite to an agency event I wouldn't have attended without it.  Which, from a marketer's viewpoint, is the whole point of chef's tables anyway.  And the conversation was worth the commute.  Eight mostly senior executives in PR and marketing, most with at least 15 years under their belt, talking about the convergence of the two disciplines as the Internet, social media and the economy change the playing field.  For me, that depth of interaction with peers outside of my own company is far rarer than fine dining experiences, so I was delighted.

Though perhaps not as useful as Chris' tip about baked potatoes for gnocchi.  We shall see...

Up to London, back to France ... at least for art and food

With a new puppy to house train, a new garden to plant and bank accounts to replenish after holiday, staying close to home for the next few months seemed like a fine idea.  But it's spring, finally.  As the worst winter in recent memory fades away, the social diary fills up.  It's as if the whole country has had cabin fever, and wants to get out and about.

And so up to London, for a French chef and a French artist.

They were both surprises.  Chef Bruno Loubet, because someone I'd never heard of is producing Michelin-star quality food at bistro prices a 5-minute walk from my London office.  Painter Edouard Manet, because the much-lauded show left me bothered and unsatisfied.  Let's start with the art.

Manet:  Portraying Life, just concluded after a 4-month run at the Royal Academy, was London's museum blockbuster for the spring.  The focus was portraiture and, by extension, a look at the upper middle class life of Paris in the late 19th century.  Surprisingly, I found that place and time disturbing.

Normally, when I think of the City of Light in this time period I imagine sparkling cafe society, partying at the Moulin Rouge, darling children playing in formal gardens, the luscious Napoleon III rooms at the Louvre.  Monet's paintings show us something darker.

The fact that his colour palette is mostly blacks and greys doesn't help, but it's more than that.  In the most interesting paintings here, the sitters are lost in introspection.  You sense unhappiness.  A feeling of impending menace.  Take, for example, In The Garden, shown above.  At first glance it's a charming portrait of a young family.  But the longer you stand before it, the more you see the husband's downward gaze as a wish to be elsewhere, and the wife's slightly wistful look as a feeling of entrapment now that the fuzzy-faced baby has arrived.  There's the famous Music in the Tuileries Gardens, where the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd doesn't look like they're enjoying themselves, but doing a duty to see and be seen.

Madame Manet had a pensive look as she stared into space in multiple portraits, as if hoping for better things.  Her son Leon turns up a lot, his gaze into the middle distance redolent of teenage angst.  Frankly, while the descriptions on the paintings didn't explore this angle, I felt I was walking through room after room of unhappy, dissatisfied people.  Perhaps I was imagining it, but there seemed to be a back story the curators weren't bothering to explain.

The glowing exception here is Manet's compelling portrait of frequent sitter, fellow artist, sister-in-law and possibly lover Berthe Morrisot.  There's a reason the curators picked this as the main promotional image for the show.  It captures her energy, dynamism and charisma.  She seems alive, ready to climb out of the frame and saunter down Piccadilly in search of a cafe au lait.  Or probably an absinthe.

Whether brooding or charismatic, the best of Manet is compelling.  But there was a lot of average, unmemorable stuff in the exhibit as well.  Many people you drift by without any desire to learn more of them or the painting, and some ... especially the pastels ... that seem so insipid you wonder how a  great artist could have produced them.  This could have been a better show with half the art, and a lot more delving into the sitters and the darker emotions floating behind their disconnected gazes.

Earlier in the day, a colleague had treated me to lunch at Bruno Loubet's bistrot in The Zetter hotel.  Loubet was a very big deal in London in the '90s, then disappeared to Australia for a decade. I missed the news that he'd turned back up as chef of the bistro in this hotel near Smithfield. The place is surprisingly low key and little known considering the quality of the chef, and the food.

Everything we had, and everything I saw coming out of the kitchen, could have comfortably been served in a one Michelin star restaurant. My colleague's starter was particularly grand: a clear beef bouillon dotted with tiny, precisely cubed vegetables, crowned with cubes of fried foie gras and a morel mushroom stuffed with chicken liver pate. Mine was a bit lighter, but still felt terribly gourmet: two beautifully poached quenelles of salmon and scallop, floating on a thick soup that was essentially bouillabaisse base. These both testified to a gourmet hand in the kitchen and, sure enough, there was Bruno, visible in the open plan kitchen, clearly in charge.

I went on to grilled fish surrounded by tiny beetroot ravioli, then we shared out desserts. A vanilla cheesecake was average, the peanut butter mousse with citrus gel was a revelation. I never would have paired those things but the mousse was so light, and the peanut so subtle, that the pairing with the sharp citrus was perfect.

Add to this a nice wine list and great service, and you have a place worth going out of your way for.  It may have been French food, but I can't imagine Manet's subjects ate this well.  If they had ... they would have looked happier.

As a wine holiday, the Burgundian-Florentine axis is a tasting, buying and educational success

And finally, to the wine.

If there's one element that tied this whole trip together, that was it.  From Chablis to Chianti, Maconnais to Montepulciano, Cote d'Or to SuperTuscans.  We built sightseeing days around it.  We chose restaurants as much for the wine lists as the menus.  We drove, lured by the idea of filling the boot in order to fill the cellar at home.  We may have dipped into high culture in Italy, sunk into the luxurious chateau in France, but what we'll no doubt remember (and drink) in years to come is the oenological adventures.

Some general observations.

The Italians don't have the marketing savvy, or sophistication, of the French.  Granted, the French pretty much invented both the concept of terroir and the idea of essentially trademarking region-specific food and wine.  But the Italians taught them how to make the wine in the first place.  You'd think the Italians would be better at wine tourism.  Sadly, they have a long way to go.  Expect better tasting venues in France, and a far better ability of hosts to take you through flavours, varieties, growing techniques, etc.  We should have done more research in advance of the Tuscan leg, and picked out specific winemakers in the Chianti hills to visit.

You're more likely to discover inexpensive gems in Italy.  Precisely because it's less sophisticated.  The French have their hierarchy of Grand Cru, Premiere Cru, Village, etc.  In Burgundy, certain fields have carried these labels for more than a century and you know exactly what you're going to get.  The Italians have something somewhat similar, in DOCG, DOC and IGT.  Problem is, these labels seem to be given out liberally and they're not dependable.  We had some deeply average DOCG (supposedly the best) while the finest wine we had in Italy ... Bombereto, from La Rampa di Fugnano; a delectable, robust yet mellow red from near San Gimignano ... was just an IGT.  That's the equivalent of a French village wine and, in theory, not that special.  And yet, it's the regret of our trip that we didn't bring a case of this home, as it's unavailable in the UK.  Going to pass along details to our regular wine shop and see what they can do.

Drink with dinner for less in Tuscany, but with more sophistication in Burgundy.  It pains me to say this, as I was raised from the womb to believe that Italian food is the best in the world.  But I have to admit, they just don't get food and wine matching the way the French do.  Only in one restaurant (Dorando in San Gimignano) did we encounter any serious consideration of the pairings.  Whereas most Burgundian restaurants were obsessive about it, and served up wines of sophistication and complexity that enhanced the meal.  The Italians seem to be more limited to "these are nice reds", and "these are nice whites".  The flip side to this is that the Italian restaurant wines were generally half the price of the French, or less.  Agreeable, gluggable, wonderful wines that might not have been memorable, but were perfectly good and moderately-priced companions to good food.

The result of all of this?  We probably drank more in Italy, but bought more in France.  If you want to do some tasting yourself, here are our highlights.

BEST PLACES TO TASTE AND LEARN
La Cave du Connaisseur, Chablis - Chablis is a ghost town on Mondays, with most restaurants and caves closed.  We could have stopped into the omnipresent William Fevre, where I'd tasted on my last trip, but we were hoping for something smaller and lesser known.  On a hunch, we ducked down steps into the stone cellars of La Cave du Connaisseur, and struck gold.  Yes, the wine is good.  And, like any place in Burgundy, you can experience the miracle of terroir here.  Inevitably, you're tasting over a map, so you can see the precise field the grapes in the bottle came from.  Then compare the bottle made from the grapes over the road, or down the hill.  And yes, they're different.  But our real luck here was with Rachel, the manager of the cave who grew up in San Francisco, so can take you through the full range in glorious English detail.  Because tasting is good.  But tasting with someone who can explain the details, discuss flavours, recommend what to drink now and what to lay down ... that's magic.  We bought a mixed case of premier crus that need to lay down for two to five years to be their best.

L'Imaginarium, Nuits-Saint-Georges - Back in Beaune, we'd bought the combo ticket for both the

hospital and the wine museum.  The latter is a bit sad.  The highlight isn't the collection, but the fact that it's housed in what was the palace of the Dukes of Burgundy.  (Bitterly cold in the off season.)  What's here is museum circa 1950: rows of objects behind glass with dry descriptions.  What it should be, if the city fathers were clever, is what you can find half an hour north in the Imaginarium.  No worthy museum here; it's actually a very clever marketing facility created by big sparkling wine maker Louis Bouillot.

But they keep things subtle, never pushing their brand too hard in the displays and offering plenty of other vignerons in their tastings and shop.  You start with the story of the vine, a multi-media show that walks you through several large rooms to illustrate the history of wine and wine making.  Many of the objects on display are the same as those in the cases in Beaune, but here you're getting lights, music and a bit of narrative.  A sister facility on the other side of the building is the story of bubbles, where you learn about the sparkling wine process.  Here, the displays are more hands-on.  There are electronic quizzes, blind scent-sniffing machines to test your nose, and a riddling game that kept us amused for longer than it should have.  (Riddling is the process of regularly turning sparkling wine bottles as the yeast is developing the flavours.  This game let you test how long it took you to spin every bottle on the board.)  At the end, you come out into a big shop where you taste six wines, mostly premier crus or village wines.  Because we were obviously so interested, our hostess took us over to the premium area and let us taste six more of the Grand Crus.  Admission cost 7 euro each, which was a steal when you combine the education, the fun and the tasting.  We didn't buy here, though.  Prices seemed a bit high and we thought we could do better when dealing direct with producers.  Which we did just up the road , where we found our favourite Burgundian red, Clos Napoleon, at Domaine Pierre Gelin a Fixin.

Le Caveau Puligny Montrachet - One of the challenges of tasting along the Cote d'Or is that, outside of restaurants, you rarely get the opportunity to try wines by a variety of makers.  Usually, you're in the cave of a single producer, tasting his range.  Julian Wallerand, the son of a famous Burgundian sommelier, has turned that idea on its head with his chic little wine bar in the centre of one of the world's greatest white wine villages.  Pop in and you can taste whatever range of reds and whites he has open that day, probably options from little-known producers that he knows well.  An example:  We told him one of our favourite wines was Patrick Javillier's Mersault "Les Tillets".  We'd driven by his winery but he'd been closed.  An excellent wine, Julian agreed, but overpriced now that he was exporting regularly to the UK.  If we liked that, why not try Michel Bouzereau's Mersault.  Very similar but much cheaper, as he didn't have the reputation.  Perfect.  Julian's wine knowledge combines with all the gossip he picks up as his place is the watering hole for the vignerons as well as the tourists.  We'll make him our primary source for Cote d'Or wines on any future trip.

Le Volpi e l'Uva, Florence -  The Italians tend not to do wine by the glass beyond a restaurant's house
brand.   This little wine bar tucked away in a side street on the Pitti Palace side of the Arno, therefore, is a treasure.  They have 15 or 20 different wines by the glass, covering all of Italy but majoring on Tuscany.  It's not a restaurant, but they'll put together platters of bread, charcuterie and cheese to balance your tasting.  Their English is good enough to diagnose your needs and have a good chat about the characteristics of the wines.  Our new friend Leonardo took us through four interesting glasses each, listening to what we liked and didn't like in wines and then producing samples that worked to our tastes.  (We knew he was good when we loved our own selections, but weren't so crazy about each others'.)  The bar runs regular tastings and even has a week long wine school, something I'm keeping in mind for the future.

Enoteca Italiana, Siena - A very curious place with a lot of undeveloped potential.  Not worth going out of your way for now, but it could turn into a hot spot in the future.  We ended up here mostly because my old favourite, Le Cantine Greve in Chianti, was closed for the off season.  (And didn't bother to say so on their website, thus seeing us standing in the rain in front of a locked door.  Most irritating.)  Le Cantine, written about here in the past, offers a vast range of Italian wines in serve yourself tasting kiosks, activated by a card you charge up when you enter.  Whilst there's not much expertise amongst the staff, the ability to try so much is great, and they have a library of books available for reference.  Disappointed by the closure, we pushed on to nearby Siena for some sightseeing, and while parking in the lot below the old Medici Castle saw a sign for the Enoteca, offering tastings and hundreds of wines.  I had hopes this would be something similar to Greve.  On the tasting front, no.  They had perhaps 10 bottles open for tasting, served by a stylish barman whose knowledge of hair gel and precision shaving techniques seemed far better than his wine expertise.  In fact, the main floor ... though empty at 4pm on a Tuesday ... seemed much more like a trendy nightclub and restaurant than a serious wine enterprise.  Go down the broad, gently sloping, winding stairwell (clearly designed for horses to traverse) and you end up in a cavernous network of high cellars.  Here, where we'd hoped for Cantine-style kiosks, we found a strange museum of wine, with room after room of glass shelves with bottles arranged as if an art installation.  A wonderful testimony to the Italian label-designers' skill, but we could see no logic to the arrangement and learned nothing about the wine.  Might be worth trying at mealtime in the regular tourist season, but for now it's still worth the trip to Greve.  Assuming they're open.

And that's the end of the story, for now.  Our collection of acquired bottles now slumber peacefully in the wine fridges.  Most will be at their best around 2017, though there's one very special bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin the owner told me is going to be superb in 25 years.  That one now has a little "drink for retirement party" sign on it.  As for drinking today?  If only I could find some of that Bombereto...

Join the Napoleonic aristocracy at Chateau d'Etoges

My accommodation strategy this trip was one of escalating elegance.

We started out staying with friends.  We moved on to the Mercure in Beaune, a functional business hotel on the lower end of the scale.  Basic, comfortable, with free broadband and within easy walking distance of the town centre.  Next to Italy, where we had a week in an apartment within the 14th century Villa Pandolfini (at right).  This was a return to a much loved haven for me, which I've written about before here.  

At Pandolfini, we started to tip the scales to luxury.  With its two bedrooms, kitchen, gracious sitting room, 20-foot painted ceilings and Renaissance-era loggia overlooking the garden, it was undoubtably more than we needed.  Had we filled the other bedroom, the shared price per couple would have been the equivalent of the Mercure.  With just the two of us, the cost was more equivalent to a top hotel in Florence.  But then we wouldn't have had all that space and privacy.  (Or the owner's family on hand to help with car problems.)  Still, the overall accommodation costs weren't outrageous.  Until we got to our last two nights.

On the way home, I decided to splurge.  It was the Easter weekend.  Nothing would be open.  We were breaking up a long drive.  I figured the low accommodation cost of the first week would average out in the second.  And so, it was a premium room inside the Chateau d'Etoges, in the heart of the Champagne region.

If ever there was a setting for my husband to win his argument for the primacy of French culture, this is it.  It is a country house hotel on a very grand scale.  The chateau, a mostly 17th century confection built on the foundations of a Medieval castle, and still standing within its moat, stands in its own grounds at one end of its eponymous village.  The ground floor is a procession of grand sitting rooms with a white stone entry hall with a sweeping stair at their centre.  I'm not sure how many guest rooms there are (I'd guess no more than 25 or 30), but there are certainly few enough that these main rooms are never crowded.  We spent a happy afternoon playing backgammon in the grand drawing room, a view of the terraced gardens across the moat out the window at our elbow.  Later that evening I sat alone in the library/bar area reading for 40 minutes before dinner.  When we walked the grounds ... dotted with fountains that legend says influenced a young Luis XIV ... we only ran into one other couple.  And yet we knew there were other guests, as the breakfast room (buffet an additional 17 euro, but does include the local fizz) and dining room were always full.

It's not like we needed the public rooms, because our bedroom was a ridiculously large cube of perhaps 25 feet in height, depth and width.  Big enough to accommodate not only the superking bed under its royal canopy, but a sofa, a big table with armchairs on either side, a big fireplace with mirror towering above it and a massive wardrobe.  Remarkably, as the place suffered a lot of neglect after its Napoleonic heyday, the original delicately-coloured panelling with its inset paintings survives intact.  Through a door in the corner, next to a window that towered almost as high as the ceiling, was the bathroom.  Both rooms were delightfully suffused with the sound of flowing water, thanks to the fountains burbling into the moat outside.  The bathroom had another window looking out to the moat and gardens, a massive marble tub and dressing table and, beyond that, another room for the toilet. 

And through the room with the toilet, a first for me in hotel accommodation:  a small staircase up to the servants quarters, where a third person could have been quite snug in the single room tucked into the lofted space above the bathroom.

The only drawback to all this luxury, I must admit, was the mattress.  It's a real shame to be surrounded by such luxury, clamber into bed and think that your mattress at home is more comfortable.  

These main chateau rooms at d'Etoges run 298 euro a night.  I can justify it with my averaging over the holiday strategy, or by considering that many a perfectly average room in nice hotels in London or Paris charges as much.  But there's no denying, this is eye-wateringly expensive.  I wouldn't consider it unless you're planning to spend most of your time at the property, as we did, so you can really make the most of it.  

The restaurant in the Orangery is very good, as discussed in the early entry on our best meals of the trip.  There's a nice little spa with one treatment room, a whirlpool, a sauna and steam room.  Without a pool, I wouldn't pay the fee just to use the spa, but with a treatment it's a nice place to relax, and the prices for massages were actually a bit lower than the English norm.  The village has two champagne producers less than 100 yards from the chateau's gates, and you can take one of the bicycles from the courtyard to explore the surrounding countryside.

There are three other levels of rooms, from tiny ones in the chateau's attic to basic options over the orangery and something slightly nicer ... but still not as grandiose as ours ... back in the chateau.  I must confess to already thinking how wonderful a return on some future long weekend would be.  With all those lovely public rooms, I bet you wouldn't feel deprived in the smaller bedrooms.  It's less than 5 hours total travel from home, and we didn't have any time to go to any champagne houses.  Or space left in the car to buy any.

But for now, I need to turn my attention to earning the money to pay that bill.

In Beaune, take a break from wine with mustard

Our time in France was mostly about wine.  Of adventures beyond the oenological, I have only two to

relate, and both in Beaune: a hospital, and a mustard factory.

Beaune itself is a beautiful little town, and a perfect place to base yourself if you're keen on a wine-tasting holiday.  Its architecture harks back to the glory days of the Dukes of Burgundy and, if you've ever been to Bruges, will remind you of that Belgian city.  Which is no surprise, as that was the northern capital of the same dukes. 

The main attraction in town is the 15th century hospital, which I described here on my last visit.  We stopped in, and enjoyed it, but our most memorable bit of sightseeing came just outside the city walls at La Moutarderie Fallot.

France is the world's leading mustard producer.  It grinds out 86,000 tonnes a year, and 98% of that is Burgundian.  If you want a fascinating insight into this market domination, sign up for a tour at Fallot, who've been making the stuff here since 1840.  You can reserve and pay for your tickets in advance on their website, and though the tour will be in French, they provide English translations throughout.  

The tour takes you through the original factory rooms, venerable stone-walled spaces.  (Production today is still on site but has moved to more modern rooms.)  You start by learning about the plant, its properties, and how it's been used through history.  The ancient grindstone, with its ridges carved in opposing directions to achieve a fine grind, is fascinating.  Stonemasons needed to re-chisel the lines regularly to keep things going, as the seeds would dull the stone.

Next, you learn how they make the stuff. Turns out there's a reason so much mustard is produced in wine country; after the seeds, the most important ingredient is verjus, a bi-product of wine making.  As you'd expect from those numbers, Burgundy used to grow a lot of mustard seed.  These days, production far exceeds what Burgundian fields can offer, so the bulk of the seeds come from Canada.

Special mustards, however, are still produced entirely with Burgundian ingredients, and marketed accordingly.

After learning how it's made, you get to try your hand at producing your own mustard.  Just three ingredients ... mustard seeds, salt, verjus ... should be easy, eh?  Let's just say there's a reason to leave this to the professionals.

After learning the basics, you walk through a model factory filled with century-old equipment, while old Fallot the mustard maker guides you through on a headset.  Finally, you emerge with a handful of free little pots, and then move on to the shop.  There, you'll find a tasting bar with pumps that allow you to sample a wide variety.  This is where you really feel the magic.

Grainy.  Yellow.  Brown.  French.  English.  That's just the start.  The Fallot folks weave spices and flavours together to create varieties strong and mellow, spicy and mild.  Tarragon, red pepper, cassis, mushroom, nuts ... enough to ensure we filled our shopping basket with jars to take home.  They sit in the kitchen now, just waiting for the opportunity.  A rare roast beef, crusted with cep and smoked tea mustard?  Can't wait.

Siena, San Gimignano, Medici Villas: Get out of Florence to truly understand it

One of my favourite elements of Renaissance art is the backgrounds.  Look over the shoulder of every madonna and there's an exquisite, hilly landscape, dotted with olive groves, striped with rows of poplars, crowned with walled cities.  Sacred space bears a startling resemblance to the Tuscan countryside.

Florentines were urban captains of industry, but they loved the land outside their walls.   It graced their art, they wrote and read poetry about it, they built villas within it.  They also spent a lot of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries fighting with neighbours like Siena and Lucca, trying to take over more of it.  Thus any introduction to Florence really needs to include some forays out of town, if you're really going to understand the big picture.

We started with one of the oldest and most significant of the Medici villas ringing town:  Poggio a Caiano.  It's hard to overstate the architectural significance of this place.  Lorenzo de' Medici (the great) asked Giuliano da Sangallo to do something revolutionary in the late 15th century.  Instead of the usual defensive, enclosed castle, he wanted a gracious building looking back to ancient Rome, set in gardens, with no military potential.  It inspired villas throughout Tuscany, which inspired Palladio in the Veneto in the 16th century, who set the model for most of the grand country houses of England in the 17th and 18th, which then set the model for the idea of noble living around the rest of the world.  Including the White House in Washington D.C.

When I visited about a decade ago there wasn't a lot to see once I admired the world-shaping exterior.  The main hall, filled with grand frescos glorifying the Medicis, commissioned by Medici Pope Leo X, and a 19th century theatre and billiard room added for Italian King Vittoro Emanuele, was about it.  The government's clearly been beavering away, as the aforementioned rooms are now in great shape, and have been joined by almost all of the other rooms on the piano nobile (the main entertaining floor). These aren't Renaissance, but 19th century.  Some are a suite of rooms done up for Napoleon's sister Elisa, who he made Grand Duchess of Tuscany and who took her responsibilities there seriously.  This was a favourite retreat and the rooms are lovely examples of the light, delicate neoclassicism of the Napoleonic era.  The other rooms are more of the renovations made for the King during the brief years when Florence served as capital of the newly-united Italy.  They are heavier-handed, but still a pleasure to explore.  Though the villa had been emptied, the curators have found representative furniture to stage the rooms.

Amazingly, Poggio a Caiano is free.  As are all of the Medici villas.  A bit of pay-back, I thought, for the steep service charges at the Uffizi.  These villas are also little visited.  As opposed to the crowds in every corner of Florence, we spent an hour here on a Sunday afternoon wandering by ourselves.  In fact, it looked so empty we drove right by the first time, thinking it was closed.

While Lorenzo and his successors were chilling out at these villas, writing poetry and commissioning art, they were also plotting to take over traditional enemies like Siena.  If you're going to see just one other town in Tuscany, this is my pick.  I think its cathedral is the most beautiful in central Italy, and its down square the most distinctive.  It's also filled with lovely shops, many of them specialising in local delicacies like cured meats and truffles.  It's all spread across several hills, adding to the picturesque appeal of the place.

The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta stands atop one of those, a shocking confection of striped black and white marble rising out of the mellow tones of walls and tile roofs that gave the Crayola box the name Burnt Siena.  It's a sizeable place, but to one side you see half finished walls that show the original ambition; the Sienese at their peak were challenging Rome, but they ran out of money so had to scale back ambition. Inside, those bold stripes continue, leading your eye relentlessly to a monumental altar.  They're so compelling you might not notice anything else.  But you need to, because this place is a treasure trove.  There's the line of lifelike papal busts that stretches along the tops of the arches in the nave.  The magnificent pulpit by Nicola Pisano, sitting on columns that balance on the backs of prowling lionesses, some with their prey in their mouths.  Most famous are the unique inlaid floors, depicting ornate scenes created with different types of marbles.

Through a door on the right you'll find what I think is one of the most beautiful rooms in the world, the Piccolomini library.  Added by a local boy who became pope, it houses an impressive collection of illuminated manuscripts.  You'll hardly notice them, though, because the walls are covered with a pastel riot of frescoes of religious and historical scenes.  If that weren't bright enough, there's an ornately painted ceiling, a highly patterned floor and a Roman sculpture of the three graces in the middle of it all.  It is not a room for fans of simplicity.

Sloping towards the top of another hill nearby is the Piazza del Campo.  This is regularly rated one of the grandest squares (albeit it's actually scallop shaped) in Europe, and is where the horses run the famous Palio.  Like many an Italian piazza it's dominated by a towered town hall.  The elements that make this one so stunning, however, are its unique shape, accentuated by the ribs of lighter marble laid into the pavement, the way it slopes up the hill, and the assortment of pleasing, architecturally matched buildings that edge it.  On finer days, I've sat at one of the restaurants at the top of the slope and watched the world go by.  But it was too cold for that.

Instead, we went into the Palazzo Publico.  I wanted to show Piers the famous frescoes of the Allegory of Good and Bad Government.  Though badly damaged, it's still great fun to see this early bit of spin doctoring, with a happy, prosperous Siena under a democratic government on one wall, and a crumbling Siena with people getting murdered in the streets under the tyrant displayed on the other.  (One assumes the Medici, once in complete control, weren't too concerned about preserving the warning against the tyrant.)  The palace has a whole series of rooms with other interesting frescoes, most from the late Middle Ages but one room glorifying Garibaldi, Vittorio Emanuele and Italian unification.

Our meandering drive to Siena via Greve in Chianti went through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the region.  It is a pleasure simply to drive here, pulling over occasionally to take in the view or have a picnic lunch.

The road to San Gimignano is a bit less picturesque given the industrial sprawl of Poggibonsi you have to navigate to get there.  But the destination is worth it.  Much smaller than Siena, the town would be a forgotten backwater today if it weren't for the oddity that it retains so many of the towers that were once a feature of Medieval homes.  As civic governments got stronger, they brought warring families (think Montagues and Capulets) under control and demanded they de-fortify their townhouses.  But, for whatever reason, many of the towers in San Gimignano didn't come down.  So you end up with an intact, walled city looking pretty much as it would have circa 1300.

Beyond the architecture itself, there's little serious sightseeing besides the church, which houses my pick of the most horrifically graphic vision of hell in Medieval art.  (Yes, that devil is indeed impaling that screaming blonde woman there.) The clever folks of San Gim work to keep all those tourists who come to look at the towers, however, by turning the main streets into some of the best tourist shopping in Tuscany.  Here you'll find leather workshops, home stores with exquisite linens and kitchen items made of olive wood, gourmet food shops, ceramic workshops and art galleries. The prices are slightly lower than in Florence and the atmosphere somewhat more refined.  At least in the off season, San Gimignano does seem to calm down!


There are a wealth of other possibilities outside of Florence.  Some people love Lucca.  Others swear by Pisa.  I wanted to get us to Volterra, but ran out of time.  Tuscany's a big place.  If you want just a few highlights beyond Florence, I recommend these.

Strap on your walking shoes for Florence, and go easy on the art

Florence is getting harder to love.

After a week in Burgundy, where we were often the only visitors in sight, I had hoped that Tuscany's
tourist mecca might be a bit less crowded than in past summer visits.  Nope.  While there might have been fewer couples and families, the town was awash with school groups.  Noisy, milling teenagers, blocking traffic patterns and rarely displaying any interest in what's around them.  I suppose teachers have brought them on the theory that if you throw art and architecture at 100, it might stick to a couple.  Was I ever this obnoxious on school art history trips?

More than on any other visit, sadly, the centre of Florence reminded me of Venice: a historic stage set given completely over to tourism, with no locals besides those catering to visitors.

Or maybe, on past visits, I hadn't noticed so much.  My mother was an art historian and I was raised in her interests.  We'd both forget about the crowds to happily linger in contemplation of the elegance of Ghiberti's door panels, the majesty of Brunelleschi's dome or a room full of Botticelli madonnas.  But this time was different.  This time, I was introducing my husband to Florence, desperately trying to do anything I could think of to spark some appreciation of Italian culture in him to match mine.

Now, I'm not saying my husband is a cretin.  He's well-rounded and intellectually curious.  But he is, I think, a fairly typical man, and he didn't study any art history at school.  He felt no driving need to pack in the sightseeing, and I'm fairly sure that by the fifth madonna, fresco or church facade, it was all starting to look the same to him.  I suspect he represents the majority of the population, whilst my past visits, always with the art historically obsessed, belong to a tiny niche of society.  It put a whole new light on holiday planning.  I went for what I thought was a fairly light agenda, and we still hit cultural overload pretty quickly.  The milling teenagers didn't help.

Thus we only spent two days in Florence, rather than the planned three.  (And thank God for that, as the change of Friday plan allowed us to discover car problems which, if not revealed 'til we started our drive back to France on Saturday, would have been a real issue.)  We walked around Florence's historic core, popped in to a few attractions and got in a bit of historic spectacle.  It was, the man tells me, a decent introduction.

It's fairly easy to get around Florence on foot, and if you didn't stop anywhere you could do a circular walk of the main sights in a few hours.  Starting at the Santa Maria Novella train station, pop across the plaza to the eponymous church, where you can see the one big, original late medieval church facade in town.  The Florentines had an odd habit of not finishing churches, meaning that San Lorenzo ... the next one you walk by ... is still unfinished and both the main cathedral and Santa Croce have been finished by 19th century restorers.  There's a fun street market around the side and back of San Lorenzo where you can find all the standard Florentine souvenirs:  leather goods, silk scarves, majolica pottery.  From there to the central piazza of the cathedral (duomo), where the dome, Giotto's bell tower and the far older baptistry combine to make a majestic sight, despite the heaving crowds.

Down the street to Orsanmichele, another church but this time converted from an old granary, famous for the Renaissance sculpture in its niches.  Next a little detour to the straw market, where more Florentine crafts are on sale and you're supposed to stroke the nose of the bronze wild boar to ensure your return.  The poor pig was encircled by people 20 deep, so we just gave him a nod and kept moving.  Not far from here you're beneath the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, its piazza the civic heart of Florence to match the religious one up the street.  You peer down the corridor of the Uffizi, crowds streaming towards the Ponte Vecchio, but it's not time for that yet.  You need to detour a few blocks further to see Santa Croce.  Then back, over the bridge with its beguiling jewellery shops, and to the other side of the river to see the Pitti Palace.  Wander back down the Arno a bit, cross at the Ponte Santa Trinita ... from which you actually get the best view of the Ponte Vecchio, give a nod to Ferragamo's world headquarters in its Medieval townhouse, then head back to the train station.  It's possible to do this in about 3 hours; we broke it into two days, incorporating a few visits along the route.

Our first day in town was 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation, long considered the Florentine New Year.  There's an annual procession of citizens in Renaissance costume that starts over by the straw market and winds through town until reaching the church of Santissima Annunziata.  The church is famous for a fresco of the annunciation, in legend finished by an angel while its exhausted painter slept.  I'm not sure it is truly divine, but it is certainly a lovely thing, now enveloped by a golden canopy within the only church in Florence that got the Baroque treatment.  Amongst all the Renaissance restraint this interior is actually a bit hideous.  But standing there as a whole crowd of people in period costume gathered around a young woman laying flowers at the feet of the virgin, with trumpet and drum accompaniment, was spectacular.

Earlier in the day we'd toured the Palazzo Vecchio, with its impressive progression of fresco-encrusted walls and its jaw-droppingly large main chamber.  There's a map room here of which Piers was fond.

On our second day we paid the entry fee to get into Santa Croce, most notable for its late Medieval
frescoes and its tombs of Italian greats.  Machiavelli, Galileo, Michelangelo, Rossini, and plenty of others you've never heard of.  The main altar is currently under wraps but all of the side altars are fully restored and available to view for the first time in my memory.  There's little left of the famous Giottos, but what's there is so imbued with humanity and emotion, it almost brings tears to your eyes.  While here, you can also pop into the Florentine leather school, where the craftsmanship is excellent but the prices this time seemed far higher than they used to be.  Finally, on the way out, we popped into the Pazzi Chapel.  Designed by Brunelleschi, with subtle decoration in glazed terracotta by the Della Robbias, it's a study in restrained elegance.

We spent the biggest chunk of sightseeing time at the Uffizi.  It's been at least a decade since I'd set foot inside.  It's expensive, the crowds are usually crazy, and having seen all the paintings several times, I came to prefer the much quieter Bargello museum with its sculpture and decorative arts.  But you can't introduce someone to Florence without coming to this, the cradle of Western painting and one of the greatest museums in the world.  We bought the tickets online, in advance, which allows you to skip some lines but is still spectacularly inefficient, in that you still have to wait at Door 3 to show off your reservation and have tickets printed for you, before crossing the courtyard to get into the shorter queue at Door 2.  In other countries, you just print your own ticket with a unique bar code and the guy at the door scans it.  This screamed of job creation schemes, while the ticket was almost 30% more expensive than buying it on the day.  That said, the queues of the non-reserved were spectacularly long and filled with tired and grumpy people.  The extra expenditure was worth it.

Turns out the museum is in the middle of a long, slow upgrade they're calling the Uffizi Nuovo, meant to more than double the display space and allow them to get the wealth of stuff in storage onto permanent display.  So now, instead of completing the long "u" of galleries on the top floor of the building, you reach a new cafe with a magnificent rooftop dining area in the shadow of the Palazzo Vecchio's bell tower.  Had I known of its existence, I would have scheduled a lunch break here, as there are few more dramatic views in Florence.  I hit this old end point of the galleries, wondering where the Caravaggios were, then got directed down a modernistic, over-sized staircase made in a vast well hollowed out of the old building.  You descend one floor, and they then take you back around the whole "U" again, with those Caravaggios at the very end to give you the energy to keep pushing.  On the way you pass the Bronzinos, Baroque art, Northern European stuff and whatever special exhibition is under way, along with a progression of spare, modern galleries still empty and being finished.

I have mixed feelings about the changes.  Given how much of the collection has always been in storage, it's exciting to think of what's going to be accessible once it's all out.  They've done a great job on the new galleries and they show of the art beautifully.  But they've doubled the size of the museum while still maintaining the original chronological journey.  One gallery after another, with no choice but to follow the progression from start to finish.  Even I was flagging at the end, and I'm the museum kid.  Piers was downright grumpy.  Although he was cheered by the oddity of Bronzino's naked dwarf portrait, and Caravaggio's chill-inducing Medusa shield, both towards the end.  But I can't help thinking that, with the museum now so big, taking a hint from the Louvre and building an underground concourse from which you could access all the wings of the museum at your own pace, in whatever order you wished, would have made more sense.  With the old path remaining, my big advice is to plan on a break in that lovely cafe.  You're going to need it if you want to keep your energy up for the second half of the museum.

The best of the rest: Holiday restaurants were homey, with some flashes of elegance

We had kitchens at our disposal for most of the holiday, limiting the number of restaurant meals.  Given how much we ended up spending when we did go out, this was a good thing!  Last entry, I told you about my favourite restaurant meals of the trip.  Here's an overview of the also-rans.

Le Fleury, Beaune

Though it's the centre of Burgundy's legendary wine region, Beaune isn't crowded in the off season, and on Sundays it's a ghost town.  The majority of the restaurants within the town walls are closed, which made Le Fleury ... right around the corner from the star sight of the medieval hospital ... a beacon of light on a grey, wet afternoon.  We had a delightful four course chef's set menu for 49 euro in this elegant, modern restaurant that's more formal than the typical tourist place.  Scallop and jerusalem artichoke to start, then lamb, followed by cheese and excellent puddings, plus a good selection of local wines by the glass.

Le Bistrot des Grands Crus, Chablis
Our most disappointing meal out.  It was also our cheapest by a wide margin (62 euro for two courses, a glass of wine and coffee each), so perhaps it suffered badly by comparison.  The high expectations had been set by a great review in our Burgundian food and wine guide, and the fact that this is the cheap and cheerful sister to Michelin-starred Hostellerie des Clos nearby, where I'd eaten an amazing meal on a previous visit.  The food was good, and traditionally Burgundian, but unexceptional.  Ham persille and beef bourguignon were better elsewhere.  The best dish here was a salad served with breaded and deep fried rounds of goat cheese.  Some good wines by the glass.

Palace de Menthon
Menthon-Saint-Bernard is a holiday village on the east side of Lake Annecy, dominated by the family

castle of the holy man after whom the village is now named.  (Sadly, no large dogs with casks of brandy under their chin were in evidence.)  The Palace is a grand Victorian place on the lake shore, which was empty and echoing with pre-season maintenance when we popped in.  There's quite a funky, modern restaurant all done in vivid colours, with magnificent views, off a surprisingly basic lobby.  We didn't eat here ... the place clearly wasn't geared up for lunch ... but they scrambled together coffee and pastries for us and sat us in splendid isolation on a sunny balcony overlooking the lake.  I'm not sure I'd go back for dinner, but the coffee and cake was great.

Le Vieux Logis, St. Jorioz (Lake Annecy, France)
Not in any directory, no signs out front, this place is as local as it gets.  Our friends Cora and Didier eat at this simple, child-friendly spot all the time, where two ladies do all the cooking and don't mind if the kids play behind the bar.  It's built around a wood fired oven where they make pizza.  There's fondue (both meat and cheese) and raclette, and that's about it.  Delicious, homey and cheap, it's a required stop whenever we visit.

Paoli, Florence
This has been a regular stop for me in Florence for years, notable for its fabulous location just off the main street linking the duomo and the Piazza Signoria.  The food's dependable, most of the waiters speak English and the frescoed interior with scenes from Dante's life (his house is a stone's throw down the street) make it highly atmospheric.  My starter of ricotta-stuffed tortelloni in a truffle cream sauce was excellent, the follow up of wild boar stew on polenta was hearty, veering towards leaden.  (Although that might have been bad ordering.  It was far too heavy a main after such a big starter.) Piers was less enthusiastic about his starter of cured meats, followed by a forgettable pork cutlet in cream sauce.  Overall, the food was good rather than great; stodgy and overly-traditional.  Still, it's far better than many of the tourist rip-off joints in the main part of town.

Ristorante Senese, Lastra a Signa (near Florence)
While Paoli is nothing but tourists, this family restaurant in the Florentine suburb of Lastra a Signa sees few.  On the night we were there, we sat between a large family celebrating grandpa's birthday and a group of twenty-somethings celebrating life with the harsh but cheap house chianti.  (We tried one glass, but preferred a nice bottle of Montepulciano.)  This place is known for steak, specifically the classic bistecca Fiorentina.  This is a t-bone, usually more than a kilo and cooked on the bone, very rare.  That's what we had, with a side of fried seasonal artichokes.  One of the best steaks I've ever had, but not a very balanced meal.  Even split between two, this is just too much protein for your own good.  I'm glad I did it once, but think I might go for a nice little fillet on a return visit.

La Taverna Caruso at Villa Caruso Bellasguardo, Lastra a Signa
A bit like the fondue place, you'd never find this without locals to guide you.  Enrico Caruso bought a villa in the hills above Lastra a Signa after becoming the world's most famous operatic tenor and these days it's the only noteworthy historic sight in town ... though it's little visited and far from pristine in its condition.  The road leading there is so severely potholed we were worried about doing permanent damage to the car, and you take the path from carpark to restaurant through the overgrown, unlit garden at your own risk.  The food comes out of Caruso's own kitchen; if you need the toilets you're sent upstairs into the main house.  The permanent restaurant has evolved from the team that caters special events here; evidently it's used for weddings and other big parties in the summer.  Very local, very seasonal ... pasta with rabbit and fried artichokes were the highlights.  Probably worth popping in for lunch if you were touring the villa, but not worth the perilous night-time journey unless you want the thrill of saying you ate in Caruso's basement.

And then, sadly, there's the meal that never was.  We were on our way to Ristorante Da Delfina in Artimino, in the hills further along the Arno from Lastra, when our car started to judder as if on the brink of collapse.  I suspect, had it not been for that mis-adventure, this would have been one of the top meals of the trip, as this is a highly-acclaimed spot and my memories of eating there years ago are great.   Instead, we spent hours in a garage and I had a particularly tasty canoli in Lastra's Sicilian bakery.   Another homey, simple treat from this leg of the trip.

Paying for pleasure: Best holiday meals all veer toward the gourmet

The comparison offered by back-to-back weeks of dining in France and Tuscany revealed some interesting, if unsurprising, conclusions.

1. The French excel at sophisticated cuisine, the Italians at comforting, hearty food. Our poshest meal in Tuscany, though our best in Italy, still lacked the elegance and presentation of our Burgundian experiences. Meanwhile, more homespun Italian fare was tasty and filling, if not memorable, while the one French meal in which we slipped down to the bistro level was our worst in that country. 
2. The Italians have a long way to go in the art of food and wine pairing. We only ate in one restaurant where servers seemed to have this skill; it's usually more about picking a nice bottle and plonking it on the table. 
3. The French, on the other hand, don't do wine flights the way we do in the UK. At home, we usually order these to go with a very nice meal, bringing the personal attention of the sommelier and exposure to some very nice wines carefully selected to go with each dish. In France, we suspected it was a way to get rid of whatever was open, and gave us inferior wines to those we could have selected ourselves. 
4. The varying styles in composing the plate of your main course divide opinion. The French have set what we now consider to be the norm in the western world. Protein, served attractively on the same plate with matched vegetables, sauce and starch. Traditional Italian cuisine still separates these things out, with your starch coming in the pasta course and your protein following it as a separate course, often coming naked on the plate or just with a spray of leaves. Fine if you're having multiple courses, but disconcerting if not. 
5. Both the Burgundians and Tuscans do fine things with wild boar. 
6. The Italians, of course, excel at the pasta course, but are beaten soundly by the French in both the bread and cheese stakes. 

These summary points, I fear, point at a dreadful truth: Our palates are becoming jaded. Dining on this trip, while good, fell far short of our lofty expectations of the culinary hot spots to which we were travelling. And our four best dining experiences were amongst our five most expensive. (Although, in our defence, I'll note that in most cases at least half the bill was down to wine, thus jacking up the prices.)

So, with the warning that you're not going to get a deal at any of these spots, here's the round-up of my best meals on the holiday. (Piers' numbering would be slightly different, but the names are the same.)

FIRST PLACE: Le Jardin des Remparts, Beaune, Burgundy
We turned out to be the only diners in this beautiful, and fairly large, restaurant, all night. I was worried this was a bad sign, but we ended up with beautiful food, lavish service and no attempt to rush us out, despite the fact we were all that was keeping the whole staff from going home.

We opted for the 68 euro menu exceptionelle which allows you to assemble your own 5-course meal (starter, fish, main, cheese, pudding) from the menu. Not liking the looks of the daily set menu, this was by far the best option as the a la carte prices are steep. My foie gras starter, for example, would have been 35 euro. Food was imaginatively combined (scallops, mango and black olive; fillet with a sauce of pickled herring) in a way that stayed on the right side of innovative. Lots of extras (amuse bouche, Pre-dessert, petit four) meant that I was actually pushing hard to get the chocolate fondant down. Given the low season emptiness there was no cheese cart, but the prepared offering of soft white cheese layered with Fallot mustard (made 100yards away) and served with mustard ice cream was gorgeous.

Our issue, as with so many of the high-end restaurants in France, was that the wine list prices slid toward the exorbitant. Our waitress was very helpful, however, asking what our budget was and then steering us to a well-matched half bottle of Puligny-Montrachet to start, and a half bottle of Auxey Duresses to carry on. The great service, beautiful food, exquisite wines and the sense of private dining made this our favourite meal of the trip.

SECOND PLACE: Ristorante Dorando, San Gimignano, Tuscany
One of my favourite restaurants in Italy, though my previous two visits pre-date this blog. Happily, it's still just as good. They're an early adopter of the Italian slow food movement and one of the few fine dining establishments in a town filled with basic tourist spots. Dorando's speciality is taking recipes from Renaissance cookbooks and updating them for the modern world. Fortunately they'd decided to open despite "the season" not really kicking off yet. I doubt they were making much of a profit, given that we were one of only two occupied tables in the place, but we did our best to make the chef's day worthwhile by going for the five-course tasting menu. 

First fan of duck with delicately sauteed broccoli, a great example of how simplicity can triumph over sauce-laden "classic" cuisine if your ingredients are good. Next I had pappa al pomodoro, probably the smoothest and most sophisticated version of this stale bread-based dish I've ever had. Meanwhile Piers, doomed by his tomato allergy, had to miss this treat in favour of a pumpkin soup with shaved truffles. Which, to be honest, was even better than mine. On to pici with a guinea hen ragout, a hearty and comforting lead-in to the star attraction: sirloin steak done with a crust of lardo di colonnata, served with a side of beans stewed in Chianti wine. The lardo is matured and cured pure fat from a very prized type of pig. This may not sound like your cup of tea, but I can promise that if you like butter, foie gras, clotted cream or other unctuous, rich fats, this will be right up your street. The moisturising and flavour enhancing cap it gives to the beef is really quite remarkable. We finished with something billed as a ginger apple and pine nut pie, but that was actually somewhere between a cake and a layered custard, served with a delicate ginger sorbet. (See photo at top.)

THIRD PLACE: Au Clos Napoleon, Fixin, Burgundy
A top pick in our gourmet guide to Burgundy, this place didn't disappoint. Rustic in appearance, set near the top of the hillside in the Cote de Nuits village of Fixin, it had the benefit of a premier cru vineyard on the other side of the wall. We had to have that wine with our meal, of course; it was one of the best reds we had in Burgundy and we left the restaurant with a case of six.

The food that accompanied it was a gourmet take on local classics. Ham hock coated with parsley paste and mustard for nibbles, followed by a duck terrine balanced by a sharp yet sweetly-dressed salad. My beef bourguingon here was the best I had out of several tries that week, while my husband's chicken leg in epoisses sauce packed a big punch in flavour, though he thought it was a bit overcooked. A variety of very local cheeses, none from more than 10 miles away, wrapped things up. The groups of local business people at other tables suggested consistent quality that drew a regular crowd.

FOURTH PLACE: Chateau d'Etoges, Etoges, Champagne
I admit, our delight in this meal may have something to do with circumstance. We'd been on the road for 11 hours. We had reservations in the chateau's restaurant the next night, but I'd planned on finding a local place after arrival. But we were tired, and they could squeeze us in. All we had to do was crunch across the gravel to the orangery for a lovely meal, before falling into our luxurious bed. Magic.

The prices for their four-course set menus were surprisingly reasonable at 45 or 55 euro depending on your choice. Frankly, when the cheaper menu starts with foie gras ravioli with foie gras sauce and a mushroom duxelle, I'm happy. The seared pork that followed was served with discs of turnip poached in Asian spices, a really interesting touch and a lighter alternative to potatoes. The Asian feel was supposed to extend through a sweet and sour sauce and Chinese cabbage, which was tasty but of which there wasn't enough. The cheese trolley that followed was typically French, with more than a dozen options and a nice balance between little known local stuff and classics like Brie and Puligny St. Pierre. While the first two courses are off a set menu with just two options per course, dessert gives you a choice of the whole menu. I went for a poached pear with chocolate mousse; delicate flavours, delightfully presented.

Interestingly, this meal was far better than the larger, more expensive Menu Balthazar we had for Easter the next night. That dinner, with its half lobster to start and its pigeon as a main, left our stomachs feeling leaden while our wallets lighter than they should have been. Especially as this is the place we learned the lesson about avoiding wine flights.

We didn't just blow the budget at pricey gourmet spots. There were some other places worth mentioning. For the also rans, see the next entry.

Highlights from a heavenly road trip: Food, wine, culture ... and one brilliant Italian mechanic

Like most Americans of my generation, road trips are part of my vacation DNA.  St. Louis to Ft. Lauderdale in 20 hours straight (my parents alternating driving duties so we didn't have to stop) was the  annual gig, with the six hours to Chicago being a regular long weekend and plenty of other midwestern adventures thrown in.

So I get a Pavlovian shudder of excitement when I pack a car, throw a pillow in the back (means the journey's long enough to offer naps) and get out the maps.  How much more exciting, as a grown up, when that road trip goes through some of the cultural and culinary capitals of the Western world.

Emerge from the Channel Tunnel and pass the site of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, where Henry VIII and Francis I had their famous meeting.  Drive past some of the most famous names of WWI, spotting military cemeteries dotted in the now-peaceful farmland.  Soon we're in Champagne, with vineyards spreading to the horizon.  A few more hours and it's Burgundy, rich with culture, food and wine.  A couple hours more, a stop-over at picturesque Lake Annecy, nestled in the edges of the Alps.  Through the Mount Blanc tunnel where, sadly, you do not get a free eponymous pen as a prize for transit.  Come down into the vast agricultural plains of Italy before hitting more, smaller mountains.  Past Genoa, the Cinque Terre, and the marble quarries of Carrara, with half the mountain cut away to reveal a gash of pristine white.  Finally, Tuscan countryside and a Renaissance villa 20 minutes outside of Florence.

Yes, there are a few more sightseeing temptations on this route than seeing Rock City.  (An attraction in the Tennessee mountains advertised on countless barn roofs across America.)  This was a multi-destination trip, with gentle drives on all but one day, and plenty of time to explore.  We started in Northern Burgundy, with time to wander the Yonne Valley and do some tasting in Chablis.  Next to Beaune, an hour further south, where we lingered for three nights and threw ourselves into the wines of the Cote d'Or.  This was the gastronomic highlight of the trip; exquisite wines, fabulous meals, even a tour of the Fallot mustard factory that ended up being one of the Top 10 experiences of the trip.

We spent two nights of "family time" with our dear friends Cora and Didier and their happy brood, the youngest of whom is my godson and the most exquisite little boy on the planet.  (No prejuduce there, of course.)  From there, down to Florence for week 2, where we moved the focus from food and wine to culture.  My husband had never been to Tuscany so this was about the basics.  Walking tour of Florence, a visit to the Uffizi, a wander about Santa Croce.  Siena, Greve in Chianti and San Gimignano for a wider Tuscan view.

Ending the holiday with the four-day Easter weekend meant we could take our time getting back.  IF the car worked.  Good Friday was looking grim as the car ... already loaded full of fine wine and ready for the next day's 600-mile haul, started shuddering badly and labouring to accelerate.  It felt pretty much as it had last year when the engine died.  And now it was acting up again, in a foreign country, where I didn't have the language to communicate about cars, on a holiday Friday.  We were saved by the owner of the estate where we were staying, who took us to his local garage, talked the guys into fitting us in, stayed with us all afternoon and even drove us across town to the Audi dealership to pick up the needed part.  Six hours after the last shudder the car was back to normal, and I had a new appreciation for Fiat mechanics.

Back on schedule, we spread the return over three days, driving 11 hours the first and 5 the third, leaving Easter Sunday for a luxurious treat in a chateau hotel in the Champagne region.

We ate too much, drank too much, spent far too much money and have returned with great memories and fine souvenirs.  (Most of the latter now ageing gracefully in our wine fridges.)  All now fodder for the coming series of blog entries.  Stay tuned.