I could happily work all day every day in an environment infused with the heady and hearty aroma of roasting coffee. But not chocolate.
I've never been a chocolate fan, and I detest milk chocolate, although every once in a rare while I do enjoy a piece of my own German chocolate cake. And I like a really good-quality dark chocolate (with nuts). I remember telling my mother when I was a kid to stop putting chocolate candy (it was all milk chocolate back then) in my Christmas stocking and to give me lots of nuts and some Starburst candy instead. I make damn good chocolate chip cookies for everyone else, but I don't care for them myself unless I put nuts in them, and even then I'd rather have shortbread or oatmeal cookies.
All this I affirmed absolutely and utterly this morning during our tour of the Bernachon Chocolatier shop, one of Lyon's premier chocolatiers and patisseries. After only fifteen minutes in there, I had a headache from all the chocolate fumes.
Bernachon has a small storefront and a series of large kitchens in back, where they make superb pastries, candies, custards and other supporting vehicles for the star of their existence: Chocolate. The kitchens were all well-lit, impressively well-organized and well-designed for working in, and very clean.
The rooms where the cacao beans are processed into chocolate were spotless, full of white tile and stainless steel machinery. Our chocolatier himself was dressed in an immaculate white coat over black pants and very shiny black shoes. I couldn't see his features but I could tell from the outline he made against the bright while walls that he was clean-shaven, had a beaky nose, and his hair was close-cropped, almost a military buzz. He had an engaging way of leaning forward on his toes as he talked in rapid-fire French with sincere passion for his craft. Emmaneul translated, and often had trouble keeping up with all the information.
Our chocolatier told us they use cacao beans from South America, which are superior to (and fewer than, therefore also more expensive than) cacao beans from Africa. The raw beans were in big burlap sacks, and I swiped a few to munch on. They were a little larger than my index fingernail, and had an oily nutty texture and taste that I liked. Their aroma was nutty rather than chocolate-y. It's only after the roasting that they develop that distinctive chocolate taste and aroma.
It's a complex transmogrification from cacao bean to food of the Gods. The beans are cleaned, roasted, tumbled, spinned, dehydrated, defatted and fatted, sweetened, ground and powdered, heated and cooled, all for very precise times at precise temperatures and precise speeds.
Even someone like me who does not care much for chocolate had to be impressed with the commitment to excellence in every detail at every stage of the process that was evident throughout the Bernachon operation. We could see superior quality from the very beginning, in the storefront display window.
Andy said there were several extraordinary creations, the most impressive to him being a chocolate cake in the shape of an elaborate hat, complete with chocolate feather plumes. Each chocolate, each confection (including some meringue sandwich cookies with chocolate filling) was exquisitely perfect and elegantly presented.
At the end of our tour our chocolatier brought out a large tray of chocolates for us to sample. Andy, along with everyone else, happily tried almost everything. I asked him to find me chocolates with nuts in them ("and no froo-froo fillings, please!").
He found two chocolates that were just right for me. One was a trio of perfectly roasted hazelnuts covered with dark chocolate. The other was a thin wafer of dark chocolate that had a layer of very finely chopped toasted nuts -- a wonderful crispy crunchy texture surrounded by the deep dark smooth chocolate.
Even someone like me who does not care much for chocolate had to like those. It really was excellent chocolate, far superior to any other chocolate I've tasted.
Andy and I wanted some time to look everything over in the shop and buy chocolates to bring home for gifts. I particularly wanted to see if I could get more of those wafers and chocolate-covered hazelnuts I liked so much. But we were being rushed out. So I told Andy, "just get me five bars of plain dark chocolate and five bars with nuts," and had to be satisfied with that. I'm sorry now I didn't get ten bars of each, but oh well.
All in all, the tour was worth the headache, and those dark chocolates with nuts really were excellent .... but I still would never want to work there, thank you very much. And I still detest milk chocolate.
I was hungry for lunch when we got back to the hotel, so Andy called room service. They told him they were closed. "You're closed on a Wednesday during the lunch hour?" Andy asked, not quite believing it. He got some lame excuse and hung up. It was 1:24 p.m., and the restaurant is supposed to be open until 1:30, so we should have been able to order something. We were getting ready to go to Plan B (maybe a tuna and olive salad again from the place across the street?) when the phone rang.
It was the room service girl calling. Apparently, after Andy talked to her, she'd talked to the kitchen staff, and now called to tell Andy, "They're willing to make an exception for you as long as it's something simple like a sandwich or a salad." All I wanted was soup, and Andy told her so. They had a cream of fresh pea soup, and sent some up.
It wasn't bad, either, and made a good light lunch to tide me over until our finale dinner tonight.
And what a dinner it was. As soon as we walked into the Restaurant Pierre Orsi, we could see why it's been awarded a coveted Michelin star. Pierre Orsi himself met us as we walked in and greeted each one of us personally. I have no idea what he looks like, except that he is tall, was wearing chef's whites, and his hands are big and smooth. He took both my hands into his, bent down as if to look me straight in the eyes, and said in a soft, soulfully deep (and very sexy) voice, "Enchante, Madame!" He sounded as though he really and truly meant it, too.
Woo hoo. I was ready to give him two more Michelin stars right then and there.
Our table was beautifully set with pristine white linens, several candles, and fresh flowers. The ambient lighting was soft in the way "dimly-lit" can be really (and rarely) attractive rather than gloomy. Andy told me the restaurant was high-ceilings and the carpeting and window coverings were a deep burgundy color, while the walls were creamy white.
There was plenty of room for all seventeen of us at our table, so that we didn't feel crowded at all. And in spite of the size of our party, it seemed like every single one of us was waited on at once. I think they must have had one waiter to every two or three of us at the table. First off, each one of us was given a spoon with a bite of salmon tartare, and we were offered little squares of what was either a toasted bread or a pastry with a broiled cheese topping that had minced ham and other good things in it. Andy and I could have eaten a half-dozen of those. Then we were served a small cup of cream of pea soup that put the room service pea soup to shame. I could have made a meal of just a nice big bowl of that soup.
We were offered a choice of first courses and I chose the lobster tail salad, while Andy chose the crawfish risotto. (We had been served a white wine to go with the preliminaries, and now were served a different wine to go with our first courses, depending on what we'd chosen; Andy and I were served a different white wine to go with our lobster and crawfish.)
My lobster salad was arranged with the bright red lobster shell head and tail, and claw meat removed whole from the claw shells, so that it looked like a lobster on my plate. The salad itself was some of the best lobster I've ever tasted. Andy's crawfish risotto was adorned with the red shell of a crawfish, and he said the risotto was excellent.
(But he wouldn't eat the wild mushrooms in it, so I got to eat them. They were wonderful, with intense mushroom flavor that just doesn't happen in mushrooms at home.)
And then the main courses (with appropriate wines) arrived. Remember, there are seventeen of us around this big oval table, and seventeen main courses. Each one arrives within seconds of the others and is covered with a silver dome. At the exact perfect moment, in one smooth move, seventeen waiters lift seventeen domes off seventeen plates to reveal seventeen steaming hot dinners all at once In front of seventeen very happy and impressed diners. It was an impressively choreographed moment.
My main course was a turbot filet served over a mix of vegetables, with very small potatoes on the side. Again, all attractively presented. I'd never had turbot before, and later when I researched it, I found that it's considered a prime eating fish, with a mild white flesh, and is found in the waters of the North Atlantic and the Baltic and Mediterranean seas. It's also expensive. I can see why it's considered a prime eating fish -- it was tender, flaked just perfectly and very tasty with the beurre blanc sauce it came with.
Andy had a filet mignon with greens and small potatoes that he relished down to the very last bite.
At one point during dinner he turned to me and said, "Dean Martin."
"Eh?"
"They're playing Dean Martin."
And they were. I couldn't hear well enough to recognize the songs -- indeed, most of the rest of our table couldn't, either -- but I did catch that voice. Andy said all he ever heard the whole time we were eating dinner was Dean Martin, so it must have been one of Martin's albums from the 60s.
Dessert was several trays of chocolates and pastries that were passed around the table, along with coffee. Andy, of course, eschewed the coffee but tried almost everything on all the trays. I stuck to one of the Napoleons. And then another one. I was very happy with them and my decaf cappuccino.
After dinner, we were all given a special private tour of the restaurant's wine cellar. We were taken right through the kitchen (I would have loved to linger there and have someone tell me exactly what everyone was doing at all the work stations), into an elevator and down to the wine cellar basement. What a cellar it was, and what a collection of French wines. There seemed to be no end to all the racks and racks of bottles. The young wines were all in one area, precisely organized by type and year. And then there was the area where many of the bottles were dusty with age. The really old and valuable wines and cognacs -- dome ports and liqueurs too -- were behind locked glass doors. Several of the locked vintages were from the 1800s. Andy said the oldest he saw was a cognac from 1805.
I bet that is one helluva smooth cognac.
Restaurant Pierre Orsi was a wonderful finale to our French Cooking in Lyon tour.
Off to Barcelona tomorrow.
Short shots:
Date correction:
I know, I know, my last letter should have said "Tuesday 2 May" instead of "Tuesday 3 May." At least I have the correct date in this letter.
Milk chocolate:
There wasn't any at Bernachon. Apparently they detest milk chocolate too, and only make dark chocolate.
And speaking of dark chocolate, every now and then when I have a piece of really good dark chocolate, with nuts, I like some really good dark roast coffee to go with it.
Or a glass of red wine. I make some decadently dark chocolate biscotti that are wonderful dipped in red wine.
Chocolatier toilet:
When I went to India, my friend Andrea sent me a rubber funnel designed for a woman to use when she has to use one of those standing toilets that is really only a hole in the ground. As it turned out I never did need it in India, and I didn't think I'd ever need it in Europe.
But I sure could have used that thing today.
At the end of our Bernachon tour, I asked Andy to help me find a restroom. He thought he found it, but then came back out and said,"No, it's a shower, I think the toilet is somewhere else." He looked around some more and then said, "Well, I think this is actually it. There's a toilet paper roll on the wall there, see?"
It was indeed very much like a shower stall, nicely tiled in white, but had a sloping pan leading to a fairly large drain. On either side was a kind of step against the wall. It took me a minute to realize that you're supposed to stand with legs spread apart and feet on those steps (elevating the feet helps keep them out of the fall-out zone), and do your business (after removing any clothing that would obstruct the flow of the business, of course).
In that immaculate, totally modernized and state-of-the-art facility, that toilet is the surprise of the whole trip so far.
Andy and the leftover pork cheek stew:
Yes, he ate it for lunch today, but he didn't have to eat it cold. During my India trip four years ago, when Mayu and I were at the Kingsbury Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, she told me how she and her sister Aruni would use a hairdryer to heat up a leftover snack. So I told Andy to try heating up his stew with the hotel hairdryer. He did, and was very happy with his leftover pork cheek stew.
Michelin stars:
The whole Michelin star thing started in the early 1900s when the Michelin tire company published a little travel guide book to advise its customers of interesting places to visit. A one-star restaurant is a "very good restaurant." If it has two stars, it's "worthy of a detour," and if it has three stars, it has "exceptional cuisine, worthy of a special trip." Even a single star is very hard to get, and the review and rating process is very secret.
Dean Martin:
I remember Mom liking Dean Martin more than Dad did. He used to play Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Jack Jones, and Harry Belafonte, along with Herb Alpert, and classical guitar music from masters like Andres Segovia. And, of course, his beloved Beethoven symphonies, and anything the pianist Vladimir Horowitz ever did.
We kids used to ride him unmercifully about Vladimir Horowitz. "What the hell kind of a name is Led Zeppelin? Or Three Dog Night??" he'd grouse.
"Way better than Vladimir Horowitz," we'd say, and tell him he had "no soul." I would never admit it back then, but I really liked Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and all the rest. Still do to this day. And Beethoven's Ninth is my all-time favorite symphony. (Dad's favorite was the Fifth.)
But I've had a good life without Vladimir Horowitz, thank you very much.
I've never been a chocolate fan, and I detest milk chocolate, although every once in a rare while I do enjoy a piece of my own German chocolate cake. And I like a really good-quality dark chocolate (with nuts). I remember telling my mother when I was a kid to stop putting chocolate candy (it was all milk chocolate back then) in my Christmas stocking and to give me lots of nuts and some Starburst candy instead. I make damn good chocolate chip cookies for everyone else, but I don't care for them myself unless I put nuts in them, and even then I'd rather have shortbread or oatmeal cookies.
All this I affirmed absolutely and utterly this morning during our tour of the Bernachon Chocolatier shop, one of Lyon's premier chocolatiers and patisseries. After only fifteen minutes in there, I had a headache from all the chocolate fumes.
Bernachon has a small storefront and a series of large kitchens in back, where they make superb pastries, candies, custards and other supporting vehicles for the star of their existence: Chocolate. The kitchens were all well-lit, impressively well-organized and well-designed for working in, and very clean.
The rooms where the cacao beans are processed into chocolate were spotless, full of white tile and stainless steel machinery. Our chocolatier himself was dressed in an immaculate white coat over black pants and very shiny black shoes. I couldn't see his features but I could tell from the outline he made against the bright while walls that he was clean-shaven, had a beaky nose, and his hair was close-cropped, almost a military buzz. He had an engaging way of leaning forward on his toes as he talked in rapid-fire French with sincere passion for his craft. Emmaneul translated, and often had trouble keeping up with all the information.
Our chocolatier told us they use cacao beans from South America, which are superior to (and fewer than, therefore also more expensive than) cacao beans from Africa. The raw beans were in big burlap sacks, and I swiped a few to munch on. They were a little larger than my index fingernail, and had an oily nutty texture and taste that I liked. Their aroma was nutty rather than chocolate-y. It's only after the roasting that they develop that distinctive chocolate taste and aroma.
It's a complex transmogrification from cacao bean to food of the Gods. The beans are cleaned, roasted, tumbled, spinned, dehydrated, defatted and fatted, sweetened, ground and powdered, heated and cooled, all for very precise times at precise temperatures and precise speeds.
Even someone like me who does not care much for chocolate had to be impressed with the commitment to excellence in every detail at every stage of the process that was evident throughout the Bernachon operation. We could see superior quality from the very beginning, in the storefront display window.
Andy said there were several extraordinary creations, the most impressive to him being a chocolate cake in the shape of an elaborate hat, complete with chocolate feather plumes. Each chocolate, each confection (including some meringue sandwich cookies with chocolate filling) was exquisitely perfect and elegantly presented.
At the end of our tour our chocolatier brought out a large tray of chocolates for us to sample. Andy, along with everyone else, happily tried almost everything. I asked him to find me chocolates with nuts in them ("and no froo-froo fillings, please!").
He found two chocolates that were just right for me. One was a trio of perfectly roasted hazelnuts covered with dark chocolate. The other was a thin wafer of dark chocolate that had a layer of very finely chopped toasted nuts -- a wonderful crispy crunchy texture surrounded by the deep dark smooth chocolate.
Even someone like me who does not care much for chocolate had to like those. It really was excellent chocolate, far superior to any other chocolate I've tasted.
Andy and I wanted some time to look everything over in the shop and buy chocolates to bring home for gifts. I particularly wanted to see if I could get more of those wafers and chocolate-covered hazelnuts I liked so much. But we were being rushed out. So I told Andy, "just get me five bars of plain dark chocolate and five bars with nuts," and had to be satisfied with that. I'm sorry now I didn't get ten bars of each, but oh well.
All in all, the tour was worth the headache, and those dark chocolates with nuts really were excellent .... but I still would never want to work there, thank you very much. And I still detest milk chocolate.
I was hungry for lunch when we got back to the hotel, so Andy called room service. They told him they were closed. "You're closed on a Wednesday during the lunch hour?" Andy asked, not quite believing it. He got some lame excuse and hung up. It was 1:24 p.m., and the restaurant is supposed to be open until 1:30, so we should have been able to order something. We were getting ready to go to Plan B (maybe a tuna and olive salad again from the place across the street?) when the phone rang.
It was the room service girl calling. Apparently, after Andy talked to her, she'd talked to the kitchen staff, and now called to tell Andy, "They're willing to make an exception for you as long as it's something simple like a sandwich or a salad." All I wanted was soup, and Andy told her so. They had a cream of fresh pea soup, and sent some up.
It wasn't bad, either, and made a good light lunch to tide me over until our finale dinner tonight.
And what a dinner it was. As soon as we walked into the Restaurant Pierre Orsi, we could see why it's been awarded a coveted Michelin star. Pierre Orsi himself met us as we walked in and greeted each one of us personally. I have no idea what he looks like, except that he is tall, was wearing chef's whites, and his hands are big and smooth. He took both my hands into his, bent down as if to look me straight in the eyes, and said in a soft, soulfully deep (and very sexy) voice, "Enchante, Madame!" He sounded as though he really and truly meant it, too.
Woo hoo. I was ready to give him two more Michelin stars right then and there.
Our table was beautifully set with pristine white linens, several candles, and fresh flowers. The ambient lighting was soft in the way "dimly-lit" can be really (and rarely) attractive rather than gloomy. Andy told me the restaurant was high-ceilings and the carpeting and window coverings were a deep burgundy color, while the walls were creamy white.
There was plenty of room for all seventeen of us at our table, so that we didn't feel crowded at all. And in spite of the size of our party, it seemed like every single one of us was waited on at once. I think they must have had one waiter to every two or three of us at the table. First off, each one of us was given a spoon with a bite of salmon tartare, and we were offered little squares of what was either a toasted bread or a pastry with a broiled cheese topping that had minced ham and other good things in it. Andy and I could have eaten a half-dozen of those. Then we were served a small cup of cream of pea soup that put the room service pea soup to shame. I could have made a meal of just a nice big bowl of that soup.
We were offered a choice of first courses and I chose the lobster tail salad, while Andy chose the crawfish risotto. (We had been served a white wine to go with the preliminaries, and now were served a different wine to go with our first courses, depending on what we'd chosen; Andy and I were served a different white wine to go with our lobster and crawfish.)
My lobster salad was arranged with the bright red lobster shell head and tail, and claw meat removed whole from the claw shells, so that it looked like a lobster on my plate. The salad itself was some of the best lobster I've ever tasted. Andy's crawfish risotto was adorned with the red shell of a crawfish, and he said the risotto was excellent.
(But he wouldn't eat the wild mushrooms in it, so I got to eat them. They were wonderful, with intense mushroom flavor that just doesn't happen in mushrooms at home.)
And then the main courses (with appropriate wines) arrived. Remember, there are seventeen of us around this big oval table, and seventeen main courses. Each one arrives within seconds of the others and is covered with a silver dome. At the exact perfect moment, in one smooth move, seventeen waiters lift seventeen domes off seventeen plates to reveal seventeen steaming hot dinners all at once In front of seventeen very happy and impressed diners. It was an impressively choreographed moment.
My main course was a turbot filet served over a mix of vegetables, with very small potatoes on the side. Again, all attractively presented. I'd never had turbot before, and later when I researched it, I found that it's considered a prime eating fish, with a mild white flesh, and is found in the waters of the North Atlantic and the Baltic and Mediterranean seas. It's also expensive. I can see why it's considered a prime eating fish -- it was tender, flaked just perfectly and very tasty with the beurre blanc sauce it came with.
Andy had a filet mignon with greens and small potatoes that he relished down to the very last bite.
At one point during dinner he turned to me and said, "Dean Martin."
"Eh?"
"They're playing Dean Martin."
And they were. I couldn't hear well enough to recognize the songs -- indeed, most of the rest of our table couldn't, either -- but I did catch that voice. Andy said all he ever heard the whole time we were eating dinner was Dean Martin, so it must have been one of Martin's albums from the 60s.
Dessert was several trays of chocolates and pastries that were passed around the table, along with coffee. Andy, of course, eschewed the coffee but tried almost everything on all the trays. I stuck to one of the Napoleons. And then another one. I was very happy with them and my decaf cappuccino.
After dinner, we were all given a special private tour of the restaurant's wine cellar. We were taken right through the kitchen (I would have loved to linger there and have someone tell me exactly what everyone was doing at all the work stations), into an elevator and down to the wine cellar basement. What a cellar it was, and what a collection of French wines. There seemed to be no end to all the racks and racks of bottles. The young wines were all in one area, precisely organized by type and year. And then there was the area where many of the bottles were dusty with age. The really old and valuable wines and cognacs -- dome ports and liqueurs too -- were behind locked glass doors. Several of the locked vintages were from the 1800s. Andy said the oldest he saw was a cognac from 1805.
I bet that is one helluva smooth cognac.
Restaurant Pierre Orsi was a wonderful finale to our French Cooking in Lyon tour.
Off to Barcelona tomorrow.
Short shots:
Date correction:
I know, I know, my last letter should have said "Tuesday 2 May" instead of "Tuesday 3 May." At least I have the correct date in this letter.
Milk chocolate:
There wasn't any at Bernachon. Apparently they detest milk chocolate too, and only make dark chocolate.
And speaking of dark chocolate, every now and then when I have a piece of really good dark chocolate, with nuts, I like some really good dark roast coffee to go with it.
Or a glass of red wine. I make some decadently dark chocolate biscotti that are wonderful dipped in red wine.
Chocolatier toilet:
When I went to India, my friend Andrea sent me a rubber funnel designed for a woman to use when she has to use one of those standing toilets that is really only a hole in the ground. As it turned out I never did need it in India, and I didn't think I'd ever need it in Europe.
But I sure could have used that thing today.
At the end of our Bernachon tour, I asked Andy to help me find a restroom. He thought he found it, but then came back out and said,"No, it's a shower, I think the toilet is somewhere else." He looked around some more and then said, "Well, I think this is actually it. There's a toilet paper roll on the wall there, see?"
It was indeed very much like a shower stall, nicely tiled in white, but had a sloping pan leading to a fairly large drain. On either side was a kind of step against the wall. It took me a minute to realize that you're supposed to stand with legs spread apart and feet on those steps (elevating the feet helps keep them out of the fall-out zone), and do your business (after removing any clothing that would obstruct the flow of the business, of course).
In that immaculate, totally modernized and state-of-the-art facility, that toilet is the surprise of the whole trip so far.
Andy and the leftover pork cheek stew:
Yes, he ate it for lunch today, but he didn't have to eat it cold. During my India trip four years ago, when Mayu and I were at the Kingsbury Hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, she told me how she and her sister Aruni would use a hairdryer to heat up a leftover snack. So I told Andy to try heating up his stew with the hotel hairdryer. He did, and was very happy with his leftover pork cheek stew.
Michelin stars:
The whole Michelin star thing started in the early 1900s when the Michelin tire company published a little travel guide book to advise its customers of interesting places to visit. A one-star restaurant is a "very good restaurant." If it has two stars, it's "worthy of a detour," and if it has three stars, it has "exceptional cuisine, worthy of a special trip." Even a single star is very hard to get, and the review and rating process is very secret.
Dean Martin:
I remember Mom liking Dean Martin more than Dad did. He used to play Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Jack Jones, and Harry Belafonte, along with Herb Alpert, and classical guitar music from masters like Andres Segovia. And, of course, his beloved Beethoven symphonies, and anything the pianist Vladimir Horowitz ever did.
We kids used to ride him unmercifully about Vladimir Horowitz. "What the hell kind of a name is Led Zeppelin? Or Three Dog Night??" he'd grouse.
"Way better than Vladimir Horowitz," we'd say, and tell him he had "no soul." I would never admit it back then, but I really liked Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and all the rest. Still do to this day. And Beethoven's Ninth is my all-time favorite symphony. (Dad's favorite was the Fifth.)
But I've had a good life without Vladimir Horowitz, thank you very much.
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