The best I ever had.

As anyone who has shared a meal with me knows, I can put away quite a bit of food. But tonight - sorry Mom,  sorry relatives and friends who have cooked for me - I had the best meal I've ever had. Lycée Decrétot is a professional high school for students that want to work in restaurant and hotel management and they are lucky enough to have a restaurant d'application that they lovingly call "Le chateau." It's here, at the chateau that the students are able to practice what they learn in the classroom. They do everything here - from checking your coat and making cocktails, to cooking, serving and cleaning.

I was invited to eat there with one of my professors and a couple of her friends and all I can say is that it was unreal (I've almost exhausted my supply of appropriate adjectives to describe how first-class everything is here). In France meals last at least two and a half hours, and let me tell you, they do things right.

So we started with an apéritif, I chose the alcoholic version, a Cocktail Calypso, made with tequila and kiwi. Then came the "mise en bouche," which tonight was a quenelle (remember those salmon things I told you about in an earlier post), with roe and chives on a grillette de pain (think of a toasted slice of thin garlic bread). After that was a "déclinaison au foie gras" served with potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and a broccoli flan, followed by "marmite de canard en Trois mouvements et ses garnitures." This dish featured duck cooked three different ways - sauteed, braised, and steamed - all of which were indescribably good. An assortment of cheeses followed; all four were made from raw milk, three were cow and one was goat. Next came the dessert, "manège de sorbets" made from bananas, mangoes, berries, passion fruit and apples. The five scoops were served in a pastry shell (think of what a coffee filter looks like, but made out of pastry crust), garnished with mint, powdered sugar and fresh fruit. And after almost three hours of gluttony came the coffee and tea and some more pastries. 

I didn't think to bring a camera, and it wouldn't have been appropriate in the chateau anyway, but just so you can get an example at how "haute cuisine" the food actually is, this is the link to the cuisine moleculaire blog. It hasn't been updated recently, but it gives you an example of some of the awesome things that these students have done with food.