Sooooo, we ate at La Chevre d'Or. It was GREAT. We had their house aperitif, which involved some "vin de cerise" or something they had made themselves (more about these liqueurs people make later), some fruit juice, and some dry white "methode champenoise", which of course is champagne that wasn't made in the Champagne region, so they can't call it champagne. It was lovely, and arrived with a small dish of olives.
There's a problem here: the batteries in all three of (1) my camera, (2) my iPhone and (3) the French cell phone were dead, so there are unfortunately no photos, which is a serious pity. For his first course, I think Phil had one of these salads with chevre on toast, with honey drizzled on top or something. I had their soup, which was (get this) asparague and fava bean soup, and it was FANTASTIC. It had some crunchy thing on top, and was drizzled with EVOO with some pesto mixed in. The soup had no cream, and I couldn't tell if it had broth (probably). It was nice on its own, but when you mixed in the EVOO and basil, it was to die for. I had the fish; can't remember what Phil had, but it may have been the fish soup or something. There was a palate cleanser between first and second courses that was grapefruit sorbet in a glass with a sweet white wine poured over it, like Monbazillac or Sauternes or something. That was fantastic, too. We drank a bottle of the house rose, which was from the region, and was so unbelievably pale that I actually asked if they'd brought us their house white instead of rose, and was told "No".
I probably had sorbet cassis and/or sorbet citron (lemon) for dessert. The first course and the palate cleanser and wine were so fantastic, the rest of the (EXCELLENT) meal pales in comparison. And I (sob) have no photos.
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| amuse bouche |
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| only photos you'll see of me |
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| I was watching a baby |
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| my calamari and risotto |
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| salade rustique |
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| phil's main course |
So the last evening we were there, we went back UP that mountain (did I mention the multiple hairpin curves? at least I wasn't driving) to Cabris (great view of the Riviera from the edge) to Le Petit Prince for dinner. It was so bad that I later wrote to our landlords suggesting that perhaps they shouldn't ever recommend it again. For the amuse bouche, we had a glass full of unseasoned raw stuff; it was fine, cucumber and things like that, if you salted it. Phil didn't finish his.
So I'm having trouble with the formatting here. We had "salade rustique", both of us, for a first course. As you can see, it was HUGE; neither of us ate it all. However, it was pretty good, what with good ingredients and all and fairly difficult to screw up, at least not badly. It would have been a really good lunch for us with bread and wine. For our main courses, Phil had their beef stew with pasta, which was dry, and the beef stew was essentially inedible, as was the roasted asparagus spear, what with it being seriously overcooked. I had their calamari with risotto. The calamari was tough and inedible; the rice was undercooked, and the risotto was drowned in cream. I don't remember exactly, but I don't think it was even HOT. Same asparagus.
Neither of us ate much at all of our main course, which was too bad for the (very expensive) half bottle of red wine we had, what with it being very good. The waitress, who we think was also the owner, commented on our not eating much of our main courses, and THEN Phil wanted a dessert. Can't remember what it was, but it had ice cream in it and was good. I decided I wanted two scoops of sorbet, e.g., cassis and citron (hey, the scoops you get in France are probably less than half the size of an American scoop of ice cream). That woman actually asked (in a rather snide way, I thought) if I was actually going to eat all my dessert.
And those were our first and last meals in the Cote d'Azur.
Stay tuned. I know the photos are all clumped, but I'm doing the best I can...at least there are photos, right?
Cheers, Lillie
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