THE YEAR BEGAN with lunch.
We have always found that New Year’s Eve, with its eleventh-hour excesses and doomed resolutions, is a dismal occasion for all the forced jollity and midnight toasts and kisses. And so, when we heard that over in the village of Lacoste, a few miles away, the proprietor of Le Simiane was offering a six-course lunch with pink champagne to his amiable clientele, it seemed like a much more cheerful way to start the next twelve months.
By 12:30 the little stone-walled restaurant was full. There were some serious stomachs to be seen - entire families with the embonpoint that comes from spending two or three diligent hours every day at the table, eyes down and conversation postponed in the observance of France’s favorite ritual. The proprietor of the restaurant, a man who had somehow perfected the art of hovering despite his considerable size, was dressed for the day in a velvet smoking jacket and bow tie. His mustache, sleek with pomade, quivered with enthusiasm as he rhapsodized over the menu: foie gras, lobster mousse, beef en croûte, salads dressed in virgin oil, hand-picked cheeses, desserts of a miraculous lightness, digestifs. It was a gastronomic aria which he performed at each table, kissing the tips of his fingers so often that he must have blistered his lips.
The final “bon appetite” died away and a companionable near-silence descended on the restaurant as the food received its due attention. While we ate, my wife and I thought of previous New Year’s Days, most of them spent under impenetrable cloud in England. It was hard to associate the sunshine and dense blue sky outside with the first of January but, as everyone kept telling us, it was quite normal. After all, we were in Provence.
- Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence
Gag.
I was strongarmed into joining a book club at work about 2 months ago, and today we got together for the inaugural meeting, having had the (dis)pleasure of reading the book from whence the above excerpt came. A monument to pretentiosity, this book of France and Food was dull, with a few (fleeting) moments of hilarity drowning in a sea of condescension. I can see how people could find it “delightful,” but I wouldn’t want to hang out with those people. It really wasn’t my cup of tea. And I straight up love tea.
We met for lunch at a French Café - my first adventure in eating out on weight watchers. Apparently French food is crazy high in fat and also dairy products: even the grilled vegetable sandwich was full of cheeses and pesto; I was really unsure of what to order - something I forsee happening again and again when I attempt eating out in the future. Confused and hungry, I ended up going with a smoked salmon panini thing which came with a vegetable soup. It totally isn’t sitting well, and was NOT worth the points I allowed for it. I am currently sitting in my office surrounded by my own terrible gas waiting for the stomach cramps to subside, hoping no co-workers have the unfortunate experience of walking into this haze of flatulence, made all the more irritating by the knowledge I spent 3 hours of my life reading that piece of crap, later forced to discuss it over food which will take considerably less time to race its way through my system.
Fucking rich food.
And I’m still hungry, somehow.
So today I discovered I prefer consuming anglicized food (and teen fantasy fiction) to those literary and culinary creations which attempt to encompass all things provençal.
