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EYE ON EUROPE |
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 "Voila! 'Ere it is, the pig lard you selected as your entree. Good luck, suckers!" |
French cuisine goes
to hell in a handbasket
of TheColumnists.com
It was Father’s Day Eve and the Bordeaux sun was glowing warmly as my wife and daughter suggested we drive upcountry 16 miles to La Winery for lunch. It sounded idyllic. La Winery is a heavily promoted wine depository with a trendy restaurant run by chef Olivier Garnier. We had wanted to try it for a long time.
But this turned out to be the worst parody of French cuisine we have seen in the Bordeaux region in the past three years--and that’s saying something. It combined everything that has gone wrong with French restaurants: staff arrogance, kitchen complacency and front-office greed fed by stubborn belief in their own superiority.
This column should serve as a warning to visitors: it is no longer true that any French restaurant serves carefully prepared food at reasonable prices. That kind of enthusiasm is probably 20 years out of date. Today most French restaurants serve vacuum-packed dishes and sauces produced industrially and heated up in secrecy to be served to unsuspecting customers. And they don’t give it away.
At two other self-promoted restaurants, our long wait for food was extended by haphazard service. At one, La Tupina, we became concerned after 30 minutes’ wait for our starter. The waitress, finally noticing my frantic waving, laughed off the fact that she had forgotten us after stashing us away in what they probably call Foreigners’ Corner. A bunch of drunken English people were at the next table, trying to engage us and our guests in their slurred witticisms.
The same disregard for the customer happened at the appropriately named Cafe de l’Esperance (Café of Hope). Hope is what you need in a place that leaves you stranded while all the bustle happens at the other tables. Finally the waiter noticed our long faces. “Oh, I forgot to process your order,” he said off-handedly. I wrote to the Guide Michelin about that one but it’s still in the new guide. Avoid it.
We have tried dozens of Bordeaux area restaurants and found only one--L’Oiseau Bleu--good enough for a return visit. We have returned there several times and never been disappointed.
But at La Winery the other day, it was a slow-motion disaster. The service was erratic, the food barely edible and the wine ordinary. I ended up with a stomach ache and a thudding hangover for about 12 hours.
The vaunted décor of this place, now just starting its second year in business, resembles a provincial train station. We counted seven dead flies on the window sill beside our table. Mosquitos dive-bombed us as we waited out this comedy.
There was no choice on the day’s menu--raw
tuna to start, and bacon fat as a main course, take it or leave
it. Yes, bacon fat, and mostly fat. I asked the snobbish waiter
whether “poitrine de cochon” (pig breast) could
be labelled with some grander name by other chefs. “Well,
no, it’s basically a thick slice of lard,” he said.
He advised against ordering à la carte because it would
take too long.
That last comment became our joke of the day because we waited
an hour between the raw tuna and the lard, which was translucent
and jiggly. It came with carrot purée resembling something
out of a newborn’s diaper. This would have been a good lunch
for someone with very bad teeth.
Contact with the help cooled gradually as they noticed the hilarity at our table and my open notebook filling up with comments they could only imagine. The three waiters were by now inaccessible, their backs turned to the room and engrossed in private chit-chat.
The bill, when I finally got it, came to 102 euros (roughly $150). On the way home we passed a huge MacDonald’s restaurant on the highway. “Dad, let’s stop here,” my daughter said. “I could murder a Big Mac.”
My conclusion is something I have known all along. The best cooking around here is in my wife’s kitchen. In fact she’s calling me now for her famous steak au poivre. Now this is going to be a great Father’s Day meal.
©2008 by Michael Johnson. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted June 16, 2008.
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