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.