We ended up having lunch in Pouilly-sur-Loire in this eatery. It's called Les 200 Bornes. Une borne in this sense is the French equivalent of a milepost along the highway. In other words, the filling station/restaurant is 200 kilometers south of Paris. It's on the old nationale 7 highway, which was the pre-autoroute road taken by people leaving Paris for summer vacations in the south of France. It's kind of a French route 66.
1 
2
3
4
23
4
The food wasn't bad. It was pretty simple — the kind of inexpensive lunch you might find in thousands of little restaurants and cafés in France. The starter course was a céleri remoulade salad and some salade macédoine (mixed vegetables with a mayonnaise dressing), alongside a few slices of saucisson sec, bread, and butter. The main course was a couple of chicken drumsticks with a curry sauce and a side dish of a mix of white and wild rice. It was nothing to rave or write home about, but it was satisfying. If I remember correctly, we were the only customers in the restaurant. Callie the collie stayed in the car while we dined.
Before we left town, we went to the winery below and bought a few bottles of the local wines. In Pouilly, they make two white wines. One is called Pouilly Fumé, made with Sauvignon Blanc grapes. I remember a similar wine called Fumé Blanc in California. It's called fumé (smoked or smoky) because when the grapes are ripe they're covered with a gray "bloom" or film that looks like it could be fine ashes. The other wine goes by the name of Pouilly sur Loire and is a sweeter white wine made from Chasselas grapes. It's usually served at apéro time rather than with a meal.
5 
6
7
8
67
8
The drive to our gîte took us through several towns I had visited before — Varzy and Clamecy with CHM in 2011 — and Vézelay, which Walt and I had seen years before (1993, we think). This time, we stopped on the highway and I took these pictures of Vézelay and its famous church. I think it was raining when I took them.
________________________________________________________________
Below are the unprocessed originals of the two photos of the Vézelay skyline (No. 7 and no 8 above).
9 
10
10
Le céleri rémoulade me donne faim. La cuisine française me manque terriblement. Que peut-on espérer d’un EHPAD américain. Pas moins que d’un français!
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, it was raining in Clamecy and it was extremely cloudy in Varzy but not raining while waiting for the curator of the museum.
I have photos from both towns, so it must not have been raining too much in either place. Good memories.
DeleteCéleri remoulade was a popular dish in the south when I was growing up. Surprising, right? Possibly due to the influence of Helen Corbitt, a popular southern chef who delivered us from canned fruit cocktail in the 1950s. And of course Pouilly Fumé was, and still is, a popular wine in the States.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of dressing did the grated celery root have on it? Were there chopped pickles, onions, or capers in it? I had never heard of Helen Corbitt until today.
DeleteSomeone gave us the Helen Corbitt cookbook when we married in 1968. Today's photos are so good, especially the lunch on the old plates.
DeleteThe recipe in her book has dry sherry, capers, mayonnaise, dry mustard, parsley, tarragon vinegar etc. Though I suspect what we knew growing up leaned heavy on the mayo. Helen Corbitt was the director of the Neiman Marcus store restaurants, and was well known for her poppy seed dressing. Her cookbooks are pretty wonderful, but the recipes are not slimming.
DeleteThank you, Evelyn.
DeleteWalt says that the food looks better in the photos than it actually was in real life!
DeleteI never knew the story behind why Pouilly-Fumé is called "smoked" Pouilly. I suppose I had some vague idea that the barrels it ages in were somehow made of smoked wood. Nice to know the real reason for the name.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that confuses people is the difference between Pouilly Fumé, which is made in western Burgundy from the juice of Sauvignon Blanc grapes, and Pouilly Fuissé, which is made in southern Burgundy with the juice of Chardonnay grapes.
DeleteDid you ‘do something’ to the last photo? I really like the effect.
ReplyDeletePhotoshop...
DeleteThanks, it’s very artistic.
DeleteMaybe I can post the original "unprocessed" photo.
DeleteBettyAnn, I just posted the originals of those two photos of Vézelay above, at the end of the same post as the edited versions.
DeleteI learned these wine names when I was a server in a fancy schmancy restaurant and always wondered about fumé and fuissé -- thanks for that explanation on fumé! What does fuissé mean?
ReplyDeletePouilly and Fuissé are both the names of places in southern Burgundy, near Mâcon, just north of Beaujolais.
Delete