Auberge de l'Escargot d'Or, Dieulefit, France, March 17, 2011—
THERE ARE SO MANY ridiculosities about the above byline I won't even begin to deal with them. My point is, we came on this improbable slapdash tour of France to find out if it was truly the case that the bad old days of clunky meals were over. I'm almost relieved to tell you that yes, there are things you can depend on, you can still get predictably second-rate meals here.
We're in what I'd call a non-touristy corner of the Drôme, north of the Var, here to look for. Soup-plate. I won't go further into that at the moment: suffice it that no one would come here for any other reason, unless perhaps for rambling — we're on a margin between Provence and the Alps.
Dinner in the hotel, because first it's fairly far out of town, second there weren't any promising restaurants in town. We're eating pension, which means we take the lowest order of menu, okay with me. We began, after the near-obligatory amuses of toasts and tapenade, with ravioles, tiny ravioli stuffed with cream, cheese, herbs, and sauced with cepes and girolles.
We asked for the lamb on the menu, but the five people at the next table had got there first, so we hasd ent recote, Lindsey forestière, with girolles and cepes and the sauce that had been on the ravioles, I with sauce dieulefitoise, which t urned out to involve a generous smearing of the local cheese, picodon. With them, roasted oversalted potatoes, bland battered and deepfried zucchini.
No salad. The cheese was, what else, picodin, a little past its prime, but with very nice honey. Dessert was an overcooked "crème brulée" — really more a clafoutis, innocent of fruit.
White (sent back: maderised) and red (rather a nice local Côtes du Rhone) in carafe
•Auberge l'Escargot d'Or, Route de Nyons, Dieulefit; +33 47 54 46 40 52
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