Bruno's world

It was already pitch dark and nearly nine o'clock as Denis wound the car around hairpin turns on a steep, narrow road by the glow of the GPS. "Are you sure you keyed in the right village?" he queried me doubtfully. "We're deep in the Var; we could have just as easily spent the night in St-Tropez!" I was sure, only because I had already secretly verified it at least three times. We had arrived at the Marseilles airport at 7 and had already been driving nearly an hour and a half. "You'll see," I retorted, "This is going to be much more interesting than St-Tropez!"

Nearly a year ago, I had come across a book called "Les Gouteurs de Provence" (the tasters of Provence) in which French comedian and television personality Patrice Laffont is guided on voyages of discovery of la Provence profonde by Clément Bruno, known simply as Bruno. Bruno is the owner of a restaurant in Lorgues, and in the book, his personality is irresistable. What's more, the itineraries on which he leads his friend Laffont include some of the most interesting and little known addresses in all Provence. Bruno and Laffont visit a pumpkin grower, a story teller, a maker of wooden furniture for dolls' houses, a basket maker, an ancient olive oil mill... In short, exactly the sorts of things I'm passionate about. Ever since I'd read that book, I'd been dying to meet Bruno and eat at his restaurant, not least because Bruno is perhaps France's greatest truffle specialist. Fortunately for me, we needed to visit a specialist in antique Provençal doors (also discovered through the Bruno book) in a village near Bruno. It was the perfect opportunity, and I had reserved not only dinner but a room at Bruno's establishment.

"I'd better call them and tell them we're going to be late," I told Denis worriedly, peering at the never-ending dark road. I used the light of my cell phone to read the number and dialed Bruno's. I had barely begun to speak when the rich baritone voice on the other end interrupted me. "Don't worry, Madame! You have all the time in the world! Rest easy! We'll wait for you, and you will be welcomed as if in your own home. You will relax! Don't worry, and see you when you arrive!" the voice boomed in conclusion. I hung up in wonderment. "What is it?" asked Denis. "I have never had anyone on the phone at any establishment be so profoundly kind and welcoming," I answered, "I don't know who he was, but I'll bet it was Bruno himself."

It turned out they were waiting for us. As at long last we turned in the drive, an elderly gentleman appeared, signaling us with swoops of his flashlight as though we were an aircraft in distress landing from afar. He opened our car doors and ushered us directly to our room. We passed a hand-painted sign that said, "Shhhh! This way, rest..." with an arrow, and pointing in the other direction up the hill, "This way, meals and happiness..." When we emerged from our room to go to dinner, a sweeping flashlight once more led the way toward a warm glow of lights.

I'm not sure what I had expected, but I hadn't quite pictured anything as grand as this magnificent bastide. A gracious, jasmine-entwined wrought-iron pergola led us from the path to the entrance of the restaurant. We passed by the dining room windows where happy people were tucking seriously into their plates by a warm firelit glow. It was the sort of sight that made you want more than anything in the world at that moment to go inside and join that scene.

We were certainly the last diners to arrive that evening, yet we were warmly ushered to our table. On the single prix fixe menu, the choice involved which species of truffle one wished to season the evening's offerings. You could choose from a menu with Tuber borchi (the white truffle of Alba), Tuber brumale (a lesser known French winter truffle) and Tuber borchi, Tuber brumale alone, or Tuber melanosporum, the classic French black truffle. I was in heaven.

Our choice made, I raised my eyes from the menu to take in my surroundings. The overall impression was overwhelmingly warm. A fire (real) crackled in the fireplace. Sculptures of giant truffles and acorns mingled with paintings both abstract and traditional. A delicate fresco decorated the ceiling, giving the impression of a church when you looked up. But the church we were in was the House of Gourmandise. Every table was packed with happy diners bent seriously over their plates. And an ineffable, earthy aroma floated through the room as the waiters came and went: the heavenly scent of the earthbound Truffle.

Here's what we ate: a frothy soup of truffle and celery root; canneloni of winter vegetables and tiny shrimp in white truffle sauce; a baked mountain potato in truffle cream; a boned pigeon cooked two ways with tiny vegetables (and truffles of course); various desserts (which I hardly touched, so sated was I). Every dish was showered with truffles, and by the end of this dinner we had each consumed more truffles than previously in our entire lives. The wine, a perfect red from the Château de Crostes next door. A waiter approached us. For breakfast, would we prefer the continental or...the truffle breakfast. Well, you know what we picked...
I think even my dreams were truffled that night. But when I awoke, I found I hadn't been dreaming! Breakfast--besides the usual yogurt and basket of breads--included truffled brie with truffle oil, country ham showered with truffles, and the royal dish of truffle country, the brouillade. Those of you who read the Truffle Festival postcard know what that is: creamy scrambled eggs with truffles.







We were just pushing back from the table to make room for our distended bellies when Bruno appeared. Even if I hadn't seen his photo, I would have immediately known it was he. A mountain of a man, his face was tanned and his abundant dark hair the color of...a truffle.




After a few seconds of greeting rituals, something clicked. Bruno sat down at our table and asked the waiter to bring him a coffee. We skipped superficial chitchat and and went straight to honest, heartfelt conversation. Bruno quickly revealed himself as a man unafraid to show his emotions. He described his grandmother, and the pivotal role she played in his upbringing as the child of a single mother. The bastide where we were sitting was the much enlarged house of this cherished woman, Mariette, and Bruno had named his restaurant La Campagne Mariette. In fact, in every facet of Bruno's establishment, he rendered homage to his grandmother.

After about an hour of animated conversation, Bruno asked us how long we could stay. We looked at each other. We had planned to go look at doors that morning, but...we could go in the afternoon, we said. Bruno got up and rubbed his hands together. "Let's eat together," he announced, and led us into his wonderland of a kitchen.

On the spot, he dreamed up what would be our lunch: vegetables confit in red wine; eggs Mimosa, pigeon with foie gras in pastry. (Oof! We planned on the spot to fast for the remainder of the weekend.) A few brief instructions and the kitchen staff set to work (in the middle of the general lunch preparation) to make our special dishes.

Bruno's kitchen is unlike any other restaurant kitchen I've ever seen--or, I can confidently say, in the world. Why? Because it is Bruno's kitchen before it is a restaurant kitchen. Every detail bears the imprint of his unique personality. That's the difference--it is an utterly personal kitchen. On the walls, deep red and cream tiles made in nearby Salernes. The counters are granite and the cupboards and workstations adapted from old furniture.

As in any real person's kitchen, you can eat at the kitchen table. In fact, there are two of them, and they are the most prized tables in the house, where, if you're lucky enough to be one of Bruno's friends, you get to eat your dinner in these intimate surroundings. As we entered, Bruno's beautiful wife was sitting at one of them, eating a rather enormous platter of ham and braised vegetables. "I'm on a diet," she said.

One thing was overwhelmingly apparent to me as I watched Bruno waltzing through his kitchen, smiling, touching the shoulders of his staff, tasting here and there: this was a kitchen of love. A kitchen of camaraderie, of respect, of creativity, of collaboration. The exact opposite of the sort of abusive kitchens that today's bloodthirsty hordes of food journalists seem to adulate. There was no shouting, no cursing, none of the gratuitous violence of a New York celebrity chef's kitchen. It was the absolute antithesis in style of Anthony Bourdain. (What a relief!) And it was beautiful.

When Denis told Bruno I loved to cook, he handed me an apron and told his son, Benjamin, "She's your trainee." Benjamin gently and expertly explained to me everything he was doing, and invited me to join in. Best of all, I got to see all of the wondrous kitchen, which consists in fact of several rooms, all of them excavated into the hillside behind the Bruno's grandmother's original house.






In the back room, three enormous cauldrons bubbled and steamed: beef, chicken, and rabbit stocks, dark, rich, and fragrant. If Bruno's cooking could be said to have a hallmark other than the profligate use of truffles, it is these stocks, which are reduced over and over again to produce unctuous,darkly flavorful sauces. And what's that multicolored snake writhng around the conduit on the wall? Just another bit of Bruno's whimsy. His kitchen, the restaurant, and the entire grounds are filled with sculptures of his personal choosing.


But there's no doubt that the most impressive thing about Bruno's cooking is the sheer amount of truffles that are used. Trays of truffles were everywhere, swaddled on kitchen towels and being kept cool by fans. The cooks grated them as casually as if they were carrots, and showered the outgoing dishes with handfuls as generously as if they were using chopped parsley. The sheer generosity was astounding (the prix-fixe dinner menu is only 80 euros). Portion scales are unknown in Bruno's restaurant.










I found myself wondering how, with Bruno in the picture, there could be any truffles left at all for the rest of France! And in fact, many of the kitchen conversations centered around where the next truffle "fix" was going to come from. ("He said he had three kilos...")

As I trailed behind Benjamin through the kitchens, I felt as if I were alive in the midst of a Rembrandt still life. Cameo after cameo flashed before my eyes: compositions of vegetables in the mise en place for the lunch service; piles of pigeons, feathered heads, feet and all, waiting to be boned by Benjamin's knowing hands; burnished copper casseroles; a basket of garlic glowing in a dark storage room;and perhaps my favorite, an ancient stone mortar filled with fleur de sel sea salt, the final flourish on every truffle-laden platter just before it headed to the dining room..
















Those yellow squeeze bottles? They contain truffle-infused olive oil, not French's mustard! Bruno's kitchen had a spice cupboard a lot like the one I have planned for the kitchen in Revest-des-Brousses, with the spices stocked in recycled jars just like my own. No wonder I felt so at home in Bruno's kitchen!















Denis and Bruno sat at the kitchen table, deep in conversation, while I "helped" Benjamin prepare the dishes we were about to enjoy. The last was the pigeon. Benjamin deftly deboned the bird, separating the breast halves, severing the thighs, and then removing the thigh bones, leaving the leg intact.

Then he pulled the skin off all the pieces. He showed me how to take a round of puff pastry, and layer the boneless thigh over the breast. On top, we placed a hunk of foie gras, then a layer of black truffles, and a compacted mound of compote of cabbage.


The pastry gets stretched up and joined over all this succulence, and the entire thing inverted smooth side up. The final touch--a puff pastry leaf went on top. Then, into a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.

I was now released by my teacher to join Bruno and Denis at the kitchen table. The festin began with the vegetables in red wine. Mmmm. Then, the eggs in mimosa (eggs with truffle in a ramekin hiding a layer of foie gras and a whole truffle inside, on a bed of tomato petals confits and with a handful of mesclun, not to forget the final handful of grated truffles. Have I inspired anyone? Finally, the succulent surprise package of the pigeon in pastry, just emerged golden from the oven. Only Bruno and Denis, champion gourmands, had room for the desserts prepared by the "criminals", as Bruno affectionately called them, in the pastry kitchen. It was now 2:30 in the afternoon, and we had been eating almost nonstop since 9 in the morning. My only regret was that I hadn't been "in" on the entire conversation with Bruno. But you can't have everything. We made plans to return at the beginning of May, and Bruno plans to come over and cook for our housewarming. In the next installment of this story, I plan to persuade Bruno to take me truffle hunting.

Meanwhile, in the back room where the stocks simmer, a large window gives onto one of the dining rooms, so the diners can see not the most glamorous part of the kitchen, but this nether region where the magic begins. On a counter by the window is a collection of ancient copper utensils. And alongside them, a small wooden statue of Bruno himself surveys the diners, making sure that happiness reigns supreme for everyone in his world.






























La Campagne Mariette
2345 Route des Arcs
83510 Lorgues
FRANCE
Tel. +33 4 94 85 93 93 Fax +33 4 94 85 93 99
www.restaurantbruno.com or Google Bruno--he's first on the first page.

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