Free Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David Page A

of the charming Hotel Central, we had booked our room, the luggage was unloaded. As we were about to get into the lift I returned to the desk and asked the lady in charge if she would be so kind as to telephone chez Charvillat and book us a table, for we were already late. As I walked away, I heard her saying into the telephone ‘ Comment, vous êtes fermé ?’
    Yes, the déménagement had started that day. Closed for a fortnight. Well, it was hardly the fault of the charming girl at the Syndicat, but … anyway, it was now too late to move on to Langeais. We must eat at Tours and make the best of it. By the time I had explained the magnitude of the disaster to Madame at the desk, she and I were both nearly in tears. For she perfectly grasped the situation, and did not think it at all odd that we had driven two hundred miles simply to eat chez Charvillat. But all the restaurants in Tours, she said, were good. We would eat well wherever we went. Yes, but would we find that dish of porc aux pruneaux which by this time had become an obsession? And in any case what restaurant could possibly be as nice, as charming, as comfortable, as altogether desirable as that of M. Charvillat?
    Madame spent the next twenty minutes telephoning round Tours on our behalf, and eventually sent us, somewhat consoled, to a well-known restaurant only two minutes walk from the hotel. I wish I could end this story by saying that the place was a find, a dazzling revelation, a dozen times better than the one we had missed. But it was not as dramatic as that. It was indeed a very nice restaurant, the head waiter was friendly, and we settled down to some entirely entrancing white Vouvray while they cooked our alose à l’oseille – shad grilled and served with a sauce in the form of a runny sorrel purée. In this respect at least we had timed things properly, for the shad makes only a short seasonal appearance in the Loire. It was extremely good and nothing like as bony as shad isadvertised to be. Then came this restaurant’s version of the famous pork dish, which turned out to be made with little noisettes of meat in a very remarkable sauce and of course we immediately felt reproved for doubting for one moment that an intelligent French cook could make something splendid out of even such lumpish-sounding ingredients as pork and prunes.
    It was worth all the fuss, even for the sauce alone. But, almost inevitably, it was something of an anticlimax. The combination of a long day’s drive, the sampling during the day of the lovely, poetical wines of Pouilly and of Sancerre sur place (and whatever anyone may say, they do taste different on the spot), a hideously ill-advised cream cake at an Orléans patisserie, the alternating emotions of triumph and despair following so rapidly one upon the other, not to mention a very large helping of the shad and sorrel, had wrecked our appetities. By this time it was known throughout the restaurant that some English had arrived especially to eat the porc aux pruneaux . The helpings, consequently, were very large. By the time we had eaten through it and learned how it was cooked, we were near collapse, but the maître-d’hôtel and the patronne were just warming up. If we were interested in local recipes, what about their brochet au beurre blanc and their poulet à l’estragon , and their dodine de canard ? To be sure, we should have had that duck as an hors-d’œuvre, but just a slice or two now, to taste, and then at least we would have some local cheeses and a sweet?
    Curiosity overcame prudence. We did indeed try their dodine de canard , which was not the daube of duck in red wine usually associated with this name, but a very rich cold duck galantine, which would have been delicious as an hors-d’œuvre, but after all that pork … Cravenly, we ordered coffee. No salad? No cheese? No dessert?
    As we paid our bill, expressed our thanks, and left with the best grace we could muster, I was miserably aware that we