Bordeaux. December 29, 2017

Salutations le lendemain au dernier jour de l’année ! (Greetings on the next to the last day of the year!)… I hope that is correct. Hard to believe that 2017 is just about over. How did we ever make it?

So, for the foodies — Le Chapon Fin was quite good – probably I’d rate it 8 out of 10, but service was definitely 10. I’ll do my best to tell you what we ate, but don’t remember everything.

Mostly it’s difficult to remember all the “transitions” they brought to the table…to help “cleanse” our obviously messy palates. I’m clearly not doing the dishes justice as they were quite beautiful and their descriptions were intriguing. I also don’t know all of the ingredients in each – which they described in great detail (in French and also in English – naturally sounded more scrumptious in French).

• Little spoonfuls of beetroot mousse (?) with something else in it and foie gras with pistachios
• Tiny portion of exceptionally good thin pasta with squid ink and razor clams
• Appetizer for Mike – crispy veggies; appetizer for Fern – abalone with some kind of sea foam and quince (I think it was quince)
• Main for Mike – Monkfish with simple crisp yams and some kind of fruit I think (maybe mango?); main for Fern – scallops with clementines
• Another palate cleanser – tiny spoonful of chocolate mouse with tiny dab of cream
• Dessert – pear soufflé with tiny dab of fresh pear sorbet
• Red wine…

I think that’s the main gist of the meal. The place has been around for well over 150 years and has a very long and interesting history – including the architect who did the interior in 1901 and decided to make it feel like a grotto. It’s been updated, but they kept a lot of the features and sense of the place. Turned out that the sommelier (whose English was exceptionally good) grew up in Vancouver! He got interested in wine when he spent a semester in high school in Bordeaux and vowed to come back. After university and working in restaurants in Vancouver, he lived in Italy for a while and then relocated to Bordeaux, which he clearly loves. It was great to talk with him because he’s passionate about food and wine and likes to tie everything back to historic periods. Naturally we had to go through the very serious process of having the wine brought to the exactly correct temperature, seeing it poured into a wonderful decanter.

We had walked to the restaurant and walked back to the hotel. Got to the room at about midnight – just in time to check out CNN, to follow the protests in Tehran, T’s tweets, and the horrible apartment fire in NY.

Fern