shewhomust | Dinner au jardin

One last foodie post, before the feasting is over...

After we had found the source of the Meuse, we overnighted in the little spa town of Bourbonne-les-Bains. The picture isn't particularly relevant, except that it's my favourite of those I took in Bourbonne, and perhaps it conveys some of the flavour of slightly quirky, somewhat faded grandeur. After we'd walked the length of the Grande Rue (which didn't take long) and climbed up out of the valley to look back onto the town (and then scrambled back down the short cut past the casino to our hotel) we decided that we didn't fancy eating in the sister hotel, which had a dining room. That left the pizzeria 'Le Jardin'. At five o' clock it had looked so closed we weren't at all confident it would ever open again, but by dinner time it was packed, and bustling - a good sign.

I had crudités - this used to be a staple of French restaurants, a selection of small salads, often grated carrots, celeriac rémoulade (in a mustard dressing), sliced tomato, and often too something local or unusual. I remember a deliciously fresh yet earthy lentil salad in Le Puy... Now crudiés seem to have been displaced by the many variations on a green salad, served with goat's cheese on toast, otr with slivers of meat and cheese, which is often exactly what I want for lunch, but a bit overwhelming as a first course. Even here, the alleged crudités was a bowl of lettuce topped with shredded raw cabbage (red and white) and celeriac, in a mustard vinaigrette. After all the rich food we'd been eating, any sort of raw vegetable was a delight.

Instead of pizza we opted for the local spciality, a caquelon vosgien. The caquelon is the shallow eartherware dish, in which potatoes, bacon, munster cheese and rather a lot of cream are baked together - and then, to cut the richness of the dish, flambéed with mirabelle eau de vie. This is my idea of comfort food, and I ate it very slowly. I was certainly too happily involved to notice any pause in the service, but when our caquelons were removed, the table was cleared by the man who had been visible cooking behind the counter, not by the young woman who had served us hitherto. She reappeared with a toddler in her arms, followed by two older children, all of whom had come to kiss their daddy goodnight.

And our ice cream was brought by a very blond little girl, slightly older still, though probably not old enough really to have been delivering the generous slug of eau de vie poured over the mirabelle sorbet.

We asked for a local wine, and were served a pinot noir vin de pays des Côteaux de Coiffy, which was made just down the road. The initial impact was quite harsh, but it - or maybe we - mellowed as the bottle progressed, and we decided that the next morning we'd go and see if we could find the producer.