Free Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David

‘Thirty-four years in the hotel business, what a stint, hein?’
    Vogue , September 1958
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    Since writing my introductory note to the above I have received reassuring news of the food at the Hôtel du Midi. In June 1983 a reader who had stayed at Lamastre as a result of reading about Madame Barattero in French Provincial Cooking wrote me a charming letter telling me that the dinner had been ‘most delicious’. The first course had been a salade tiède – ‘ce que nous avons ici de la nouvelle cuisine’, she was told – but as you would expect subtle and different, followed by the celebrated pain d’écrevisses (the crayfish now come from Hungary), then there were cheeses, and a chariot de desserts, stylish, original ‘d’un goût très raffiné’. ‘Tout est léger ici’ said the maître d’hôtel. There was an iced soufflé aux marrons, a pistachio sorbet, oranges in grenadine , tuile tulips filled with a cream of strawberries served with a coulis. Bernard, son of maître Perrier, the chef who became Madame Barattero’s partner, and inherited from her the restaurant and hotel, of which he is now in charge, has succeeded his father as chef. It was Bernard, I learned, who had added the delicious desserts. The maître d’hôtel had said that they were the only missing elements in the range of dishes in the old days, and they are Bernard’s contribution. I remember Bernard Perrier as a small boy, and I remember also how Madame Barattero predicted that in time he would follow in his father’s footsteps. It was good to hear that the young man is fulfilling Madame’s prophecy and that the Hôtel du Midi continues to flourish .

Dishes for Collectors
    A dish of pork and prunes seems a strange one to chase two hundred miles across France, and indeed it was its very oddity that sent me in search of it. The combination of meat with fruit is not only an uncommon one in France, it is one which the French are fond of citing as an example of the barbaric eating habits of other nations, the Germans and the Americans in particular. So to find such a dish in Tours, the very heart of sane and sober French cookery, is surprising, even given the fact that the local prunes are so renowned.
    I knew where we would go to look for the dish because I had seen it on the menu of the Rôtisserie Tourangelle on a previous occasion, when there were so many other interesting specialities that it just hadn’t been possible to get round to the quasi de porc aux pruneaux . But this time I hoped perhaps to find out how the dish was cooked as well as in what manner such a combination had become acceptable to conservative French palates.
    Driving out of Orléans toward Tours I observed for the first time the ominous entry in the new Guide Michelin concerning the Rôtisserie Tourangelle: ‘ Déménagement prévu ’ it said. Very well, we would get to Tours early, we would enquire upon entering the town whether by some ill-chance the restaurant was at this moment in the throes of house-moving. If so, we would not stay in Tours, but console ourselves by driving on to Langeais, where there was a hotel whose cooking was said to be worth the journey. The evening was to be our last before driving north towards Boulogne, so we specially didn’t want to make a hash of it. But we had plenty of time,the afternoon was fine, the Loire countryside lay before us in all its shining early summer beauty. We dawdled along, making a détour to Chenonceaux on the way.
    So in the end it was after seven o’clock by the time we had battled into the main street of Tours, found the Office of the Syndicat d’Initiative, and made our enquiry. No, said the pretty and efficient young lady in charge, the house-moving of the Rôtisserie Tourangelle had not yet started. All was well. ‘ Déménagement prévu , indeed’, said my companion, ‘what a fuss. It’ll be prévu for the next two years’. Fifteen minutes later the car had been manœuvred into the courtyard