day4-traumatizingly good French food

The bus dropped us in front of the now-familiar SNCF station. For the hundredth time in 12 hours we walked back to the hotel. Or so it felt. After a short period of rest in the hotel room, we came back out to the street for dinner, craving for a real meal after days of hasty, snacky meals and sometimes even no meal at all. (There were so many reasons not to eat properly; we might be more tired than hungry, our soaked shoes might be too nasty to put on once we took them off, or simply we might not be at the right place at the right moment.) At any rate, we had no intention to miss numerous local specialties again. A restaurant listed in Patrick's guide seemed to be the one to go: "genuine Provence specialties in an unpretentious atmosphere."

The small restaurant in the old section was bustling with diners of all ages, sitting at rustic tables with cute gingham check table cloth, only a foot or so apart from each other (typical French way of seating diners). Blocked by the legs of our table and the diner one inch behind the chair, I had to lift my legs one at a time over the chair to under the table, being cautious not to topple over the glasses on the table all the while. It was quite a task, to say the least, to someone so used to the sometimes too spacious American restaurants. A big bowl of chick pea salad was circulating around the tables, apparently as an appetizer, from which one self-serves as much as one's appetite demands. It was a nice custom based on the mutual trust between the diners and the restaurant--modesty and trust still are in existence in the other part of the world. Nobody piled up the plate with ladles full of chickpeas when they easily could. They knew it would be indecent and the restaurant knew that their customers would not prey on it.

With the usual help from the Rick Steve's phrase book, we picked a plate of assorted beignets, a salad with endive, anchovies, and boiled eggs from appetizers, and gorgonzola gnocchi and mysterious "scoops of meat in tomato sauce" from the entree. I took some pictures of Patrick with my plush monkey. Minutes later, Patrick pointed toward the counter. As I looked up, one of the waiters were taking pictures of the monkey with his camera-phone, and smiled. He's become an idol in France, we joked.

Beignets of various vegetables and seafood were close to divine with the golden batter perfectly crunchy outside, light and melting inside. The bitterness of endive was a great companion to the intense flavor of the anchovies, which could have been the best I have ever had--I usually avoid anchovies, fearing the fishy oiliness of the food, but this was a sublime exception. "Scoops of meat" turned out to be two huge meatballs, not too far apart from what the name suggested. Appropriate blend of herb gave a nice accent to the tender meatball of finely ground beef. The true surprise, however, was the tomato sauce. Tomato sauces somehow have hard time becoming anything exciting. They are usually tasty and hearty, but rarely are excellent. But this one was (again) a sublime exception (which happens so pleasingly often in France when it comes to food!). The fruity, refreshing flavor of tomatoes was perfectly preserved, but it was not at all acid. It was probably cooked in a very short time so that the flavor would not be destroyed, and it also was very fresh. Any tomato sauce that had been sitting on a stove top for more than half an hour could taste that fresh. Patrick's gorgonzola gnocchi was exceptionally good, too, but the tomato sauce smoked it.

Though the pear compote on a table we saw as we came in was a considerable attraction, we were too full to accommodate a single cell of the pear. We had espresso (excellent, too) and left, satisfied beyond belief. It was the first real meal in days, and it was excellent.