Sublime

The flavor of a truffle is the continuation of its scent, complex and earthy, neither mushroom nor meat, but something in between. It tastes, more than anything else I know, of the outdoors, and there is a nicely balanced contrast in the mouth between the crunchy texture of the truffle and the bland smoothness of the eggs. You will find truffles in

Quand j’avais la vingtaine bien sonnée, j’ai été brièvement séduit par les bars urbains branchés, avant de m’apercevoir que ces bars sont en réalité des ennemis de l’amusement. Alors que le pub existe pour les chopes de bières à l’ancienne, la conversation, les feux de cheminée, la chaleur, le bois et le confort, les bars servent notre ego, notre d

Color: the vibrant red, the shades of green. Texture: the crunchy vegetable, the soft sponge of the lobster, the pudding-ness of the panna cotta. And volume: the undeniable three-dimensionality of a lobster barge with a mast and a crow’s nest.

There is, he told me, a criminal element at work in the snail world. Tromperies, or frauds, have been known to dupe the unsuspecting consumer, and one of the favorites is to disguise the small gray snail as his larger and more expensive cousin. This is achieved by an imaginative system of recycling in which empty shells, once inhabited by escargots

He sees Mark’s bag of fried flowers on the tip-pocked table. Funny thing about those flowers. Who’d voluntarily cook and eat a rose? It’s like planting and watering a breadstick. It’s perverse, and even sort of obscene, eating what’s clearly put on earth to be extra-gastric. Didn’t taste all that hot, either. And there’s still a piece stuck with th

the fact that it resembles what it is: a familiar, worn, old-school brasserie of the Parisian model.

Provence is not a land of lush pastures, and a cow, so they say, is as rare as a genial tax inspector. But the goat flourishes in the scrub and the mountains, and goat cheeses are surprisingly versatile.

But as is so often the case with men who have made it like this, he was arrogant and self-righteous.