Does any one of you out there remember Euell Gibbons of Stalking the Wild Asparagus fame? Well, turns out old Euell was just a bit ahead of his time as well as lacking a certain, well, savoir-faire--not to mention panache--that was in evidence at the restaurant of this year's International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire.

This exuberant festival, drawing contributions from artists, landscape architects, designers, and horticulturists from around the world, has a different theme every year. Last year, it was "Eroticism in the Garden"--absolutely sublime. But this year's theme of "Mauvaise Herbe!" ("Weed!) is just about as delightful.

While I'll be writing about this year's garden entries in the Visitez les jardins français column, here I just want to do lunch. Or, I want to show you what we did for lunch while at the festival. We ate in the Festival's restaurant tent, called Le Grand Vélum, which means "the big canopy" and is--I'm pretty sure--meant as a pun on Paris' ultra snooty restaurant Le Grand Véfour.

Any well-organized French event puts as much effort into coordinating the details to go with the overall theme as a Parisian woman puts into matching up the elements of her outfit. In both cases, the object is to elicit an unmitigated 'Wow!'. The festival restaurant couldn't have expressed the theme of Mauvaise Herbe more completely or creatively.

To begin with, outside the restaurant tent was a long glass dining table. Sunk in each place setting was a large pot containing a living weed. Modernistic faucets arched over each pot. A chair was set at each place.

Inside, waiters bustled about bearing trays of intriguing-looking dishes aloft, the trays themselves carpeted with artificial grass. Piles of grissini were stalked directly in the center of each tablecloth like a pile of kindling a campfire.

After we were seated, wonder of wonders--the menu, which was a delight and an adventure to read. The only problem was deciding which entrée, plat, et dessert to choose. The prologue to the menu warns that to lunch successfully, you must alot at least one and a half hours to the preparation and progression of courses. All right then!

The menu of Le Grand Vélum is full of humor of the excellent goofy sort that presides at the Chaumont garden festivals. The entrées were listed under the heading Mauvaise genre (bad type), the plats under Mauvais gout (bad taste), and the desserts under Mauvaise graine (bad seed). Since the theme of the festival is Mauvaise Herbe (bad herb, French for weed), I mean, you get it, right??

I loved this menu so much that I am tempted to translate the whole thing for you, but...I'll spare you. Instead, I'll just tell you what we had, because we both chose the same things. For an entrée, we had Foie gras du pauvre paysan (foie gras of the poor peasant), which was cold soup of milk of épautre (an ancient precursor of wheat), egg white acidulated with sorrel and foie gras with passion fruit, salad of chickweed. Served with a sprig of Douglas fir which you are instructed not to eat, but to rub 'passionately' between your fingers.

I was too excited and hungry to think of photographing this course. Oops!



The main course we chose was titled "Faute de crevettes, on mange la consoude", or, "Lacking shrimp, one eats comfrey." Translated, line-caught mackerel 'snackified' with honey of wildflowers and white balsamic vinegar in an anise-scented sauce (see main photo above), garnished with confit of young carrot tops with saffron, herring caviar, and comfrey leaves in tempura (photo right). Yum! Down the hatch...with liberal amounts of fragrant white Loire wine.



Of course, both of us being very bad seeds indeed, we had to have dessert (photo left), which was "Manger le dessert par la racine..." (Eat the dessert by the roots...) For sheer fantasy and French silliness, this course probably took the cake. To wit, 'Mara des Bois' strawberries with juice of elderflower, little fish 'Maurice' (??--see explanation with photo below), "bubbles" of chocolate 'Valrhona coffee "roots", and, for refreshment, fiddlehead fern ice cream (photo below right).



This dessert had so much going on that it just about addled our brains after a bottle of wine. I want to make sure you appreciate all the Frenchy nuances here, so I'm going to take you through it blow by blow. Refer to the complete dessert photo (second photo up from here). The strawberries swimming in elder flower infusion are in the ice cream glasses, with second helpings cunningly served in a canning jar. The chocolate "bubbles" (intriguingly flavored with tansy) are the brown rounds arranged on the edge of the plate. The fern ice cream (over the top!) is already accounted for.



Now, as the waiter explained to us, we had a bonus: a tiny cup of extra chocolate moussey stuff which was served on purpose without a spoon! The waiter elaborated, "You must use your tongue, Monsieur!" Denis suffered momentary consternation; like all French people, he is fastidious about eating mannerisms (use a utensil at all times!). To initiate him into the true debauchery of eating, I duly demonstrated the correct technique (photo left). What fun (total abandon required)!

Now, let's see, that leaves only the mysterious "little fish Maurice" unaccounted for, doesn't it? With slightly malicious humor, this dessert saves the goofiest for last. If you slurped down all your strawberries and elderflower juice, you found at the bottom of your parfait glass a little plastic fish, a stopper in his mouth, filled with an anonymous red sweet liquid.



To me, the Maurice (why Maurice? Was that the originator of this crazy idea?) fish was a total non sequitur, but Denis loved it. I guess you had to be really French to understand it. In fact, Denis liked his plastic fish so much that he asked the waiter for some extras, so that he could replicate the experiment at home for guests. "Not possible, Monsieur," the waiter replied sternly. "We have only a very limited number, and they have to be ordered from Japan."

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