7/7/2005. La Bonne Etape

During my five years in France, I've eaten my way through a lot of splendid restaurant repasts. The problem is, that the more time I spend immersed in this paradise of food, the more discriminating and demanding my palate becomes.

I don't mean to be a food snob--and I sincerely hope that my tales of food mania don't make me sound like one. Great food doesn't have to be expensive. For instance, one of my most memorable meals ever was in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, where we stopped at a roadside tajine stand. Sun-wizened Berber men lured us out of our car by snatching conical clay tajine dishes from their braziers and waving them under our noses.

For pennies, we devoured tajines of lamb and olives, accompanied by rounds of crusty bread baked on the premises, that were the equal in flavor of any Michelin 3-star dish. This in spite of the fact that the morsels of lamb were the poorest cuts, with very little meat on them. All that mattered to me was that the flavors--the perfumes--of the dish, were exquisitely redolent of that particular spot on earth. The olives were local, the meat full of the flavors of the wild herbs and plants the animals had grazed on, the hard wheat for the bread was in growing in small, steep, hardscrabble fields all around us. It was a meal full of terroir, as the French would say.

The taste of terroir is by definition authentic--local, immediate, directly connected with the local terrain, its flora and fauna, and the people who inhabit and work that particular piece of the planet. The taste of terroir is always rooted in tradition, borne of a respect for and deep experience with the ingredients.

In this respect, cooking is a humbling experience. When you're up against hundreds of years of tradition, it is presumptuously ego-overblown to imagine that you are going to "create" an entirely new dish using ingredients that have been worked with by generations of predecessors infinitely more experienced than you are yourself.

So I have learned to be alarmed by a restaurant claiming "creative" cuisine. I have nothing but scorn for such innovations as foie gras wrapped in cotton candy, for instance. Some of the most expensive and disappointing meals I have had claimed to be "cuisine créative", a label which now makes Denis and me turn on our heels and head on down the road.

All this is not to say that you must recreate the same old dishes that tradition dictates, although they certainly form the backbone of the body of knowledge and experience that make up any great cuisine. But usually you do best to respect the general themes of tradition. So it is that foie gras--that most traditional item--is mainly married with truffles, with bittersweet (such as tiny glazed turnips), with sweet-sour (fruits, honey, vinegar), and on rare occasions of excess, with oysters.

All this to say that this past weekend, I ate perhaps the most perfect foie gras preparation--and one of the best meals--of my life. We were at the Bonne Etape, a hotel and restaurant in Provence, and we had ordered the Menu Jarlandin. This had begun with "creaminess" (crémeux) of crustaceans with lovage and caviar, apple "jelly" and Szechuan pepper.

Immediately the use of lovage made my attention spike. This little-known yet ancient herb, with it the flavor of an ultra-pungent celery, is very rare in modern cooking. Its use, I was positive, was a sure sign that this was going to be an interesting dinner at the very least. The dish turned out to be exquisite, and I marveled at how the chef had succeeded in creating a harmonious whole out of such disparate elements.

The following course of foie gras poêlé (seared) with black cherries and sanguins woke me up to the fact that I was embarking on what was to be an indisputably memorable meal. I hadn't been sure what sanguins were, but a random memory neuron had told me to expect a sort of wild mushroom. And for me, the opportunity to taste a new wild mushroom must never be missed.

When the plate arrived, it was dressed in a symphony of reds. The sweet cherries, their juice in a sauce, and the diabolically fiery-colored sanguins (sang=blood, for this mushroom's bright red, milky sap)... And it was the mushrooms that made for the twist of creative genius on the time-honored theme of foie gras/sweet-sour. The sanguins were at once peppery and acidic, providing the balancing counterpoint to the sweetness of the cherries and the unctuous foie gras.

My first reaction was surprise, which was quickly transformed to wonder and appreciation by the following bite. By the time I had scraped the last smidgen of sauce into my mouth, I was saying to myself that this dish was an exemplar of originality working within the proven norms of tradition and the dictates of seasonality. Two days earlier I had eaten another foie gras with cherries at a restaurant in Aix-en-Provence which had been solidly good but not exceptional, twice as expensive, and nowhere near as original.

Who would have thought to combine mushrooms with cherries? The chef dared to do this because he had a deep familiarity with his ingredients, and was able to imagine how the peppery, tart sanguins would surprise and delight in their role as foil to the rest of the ingredients in a way infinitely more subtle than the usual vinegar or wine reduction. He was also alive to the happily coincidental color harmonies of the cherries and mushrooms.

Of course, all of these complex ruminations ran through my mind in the split-second, abbreviated, and free-associating style of a few seconds' reflection. By the time I had finished the dish, this chef had my full attention. I was wide awake and anticipating what would come next: a ragout of shellfish with vegetables "of the moment" . Light, savory, and aromatic, this was the perfect counterpoint to the previous foie gras.

After a sorbet of Poire Williams to refresh our palates and give us the fortitude to continue, a pigeon in almond crust with a lemon balm sauce was the ne plus ultra--quite likely the best pigeon I've ever eaten. I should explain first that the rich and gamey taste of pigeon makes it my favorite bird, and second, that this is not the pigeon that inhabits the cities of the world. Although it is related, it is raised in captivity by small producers and is therefore never an "industrial" bird. The breast was cooked rare, just as it should be, while the leg seemed to be lacquered and was so delicious that I ate it in tiny nibbles. The sauce was discretion itself.

Right through the dessert of lavender honey ice cream served in its "ruche" (hive), this was a dinner that celebrated the flavors and aromas of the place and the moment. Nothing over-wrought or flashy, just simple perfection. I was in awe.

I'm going to make myself an apprentice to this chef, I told Denis, and just at that moment, Chef Pierre Gleize emerged from the kitchen to make the rounds of his tables. At the back of the room, we were last to receive him. As I congratulated and thanked the chef for the exquisite experience, he seemed a bit shy--or perhaps I was overwhelming in my effusiveness. More likely, he was justly tired at the end of an evening preparing 30 dinners as wonderful as ours. At any rate, while perfectly friendly, he didn't tarry long to make the skillful small talk of many chefs. And I didn't get to pose the many questions that had started queuing up in my brain as he approached.



But the next morning, the gregarious Denis intercepted Mr. Gleize on the way to his garden. There, with our feet on organic soil, the chef and I found common ground. He showed me his herbs transplanted from the surrounding garrigue. Gesturing at the foothill nearby, he told me that a few weeks ago, the entire mountainside was pink with thyme blossoms--the moment when he heads out to harvest basketfuls. We earnestly discussed the exceptional perfumes of the local herbs, native on this sun-soaked, dry and rocky soil. He gestured at the purslane growing in his garden paths, explaining how he loves it for salads. A fellow weed-eater! He gave me a sprig, and maybe it was the magic of the moment, but even the purslane in Provence tastes better--tart and more flavorful than the fat, water-gorged leaves of mine in Normandie.



How I would love, I thought, to spend time with this man, learning at the knee of his experience. I had an immediate fantasy of spending several weeks here, of listening and taking notes while this master shared with me some of the secrets accumulated during a lifetime. We would write a book together! A book that would invite readers to launch their own personal quests for the culinary perfumes indigenous around them, rather than intimidating with culinary arrogance.

Regretfully, I came down to earth long enough to reflect that Chef Gleize cooked as I would like to cook--and certainly as I prefer to eat. Of course, his intuitive understanding of ingredients and techniques comes only through a combination of professional training and a lifetime spent among the perfumes of Provence. But part of what makes Mr. Gleize so engaging for me is his unprepossessing manner. Most great chefs--understandably--have an ego that seems to hover three feet over their heads. Chef Gleize, on the other hand, is utterly without airs of any kind. He simply shares what he lives, knows, and loves through his cooking.

Whence his passion? In his answer (my translation), you'll see that he could as well be a poet as a chef. "The scents of the garrigue on a hot day, this immense, natural distillery of perfumes, the olfactory texture in the air after a storm, the complex perfumes of the woods during hunting season which are in perfect harmony with the colors of the woodcock, my grandmother's dishes so long in preparation and so quickly devoured, my father who re-created in sugar the bouquets of my grandfather's most beautiful garden flowers, where also were grown the vegetables for the clients of his restaurant--all of this sensual experience which gives birth to the desire to share what I love and what I feel. What has nourished this passion is an inherited malady: to welcome and to be responsible for the happiness of people who visit us...When one inhabits the most beautiful country of the world and in turn, one is inhabited by it, one is incapable of perceiving its imperfections. In no other place are the sun, the sea, and the mountains so close and so interwoven, as in this frontier between the civilizations of olive oil on the one hand and cream and butter on the other, where each is excellent in equilibrium. A country where your steps in the garrigue give rise to clouds of perfume that go to your head and make you dream of all that is not a dream."



Pierre Gleize was destined to become a notary like many of his forebears, but after he graduated his path diverged. He learned the art of confiserie in Apt, and p”tisserie and cuisine in Nice. One day on his way north toward his home region of Drôme, his motorcycle broke down in front of a former postal relay transformed into hotel at Ch”teau-Arnoux. He met Arlette, the daughter of the family (who became his wife) and never left.

La Bonne Etape, Chemin du Lac, 04160 Ch”teau-Arnoux, FRANCE. Tel: +33 (0)4 92 64 00 09; fax: +33 (0)4 92 64 37 36; http://www.relaischateaux.fr/bonneetape

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