7.2 Le Jardin des Plumes in Giverny is a place Colette read about that Alexander Lobrano loved and since she's been hankering to return to Giverny, she convinced an old pal to drive us out today. It's a wonderful, lovely house/hotel and garden/restaurant with quirky touches (above is one of the water cups featuring painted flies and one live ant; another the knives which we were advised did best if held onto for the entire meal).
The panoply of pre-amuses was stunning, their descriptions defying my poor memory and the main amuse was a bowl of raw merlan offset by the sharp taste of pea pods and sweet taste of the peas themselves pureed. The menu is a 2-2-3 one so we went for all of them.
Our friend had a dish with almost raw "RostBoof" with burrata and teeny, tiny mushrooms; Colette and I had a "gaspacho" that included halved baby tomatoes, slices of cured pigeon (that could have been Iberico ham), and figs, and a small portion of 'tomato soup' that had wonderful garlic that gave it
Our friend gamely (she was our guest but didn't know it at this point) ordered the chicken from M. So & So with radishes and herbaceous things and Colette and I had the sea trout with black olive sauce and (for my not a potato-man) very nice smashed potatoes.
For desserts we spread our wings, having the strawberries with chocolate, apple with its ice and Baba deconstructed, which I noted that the ladies hovered hovered until I relented and let them finish it off.
Our bill, with 1.5 bottles of wine, no bottled water, the warm bread (and Bordier butter) you can see off to the left that Colette insisted was just like her beloved Grandma in Ithaca made each week for her family, coffee that finally came free (they were training a bunch of stagieres from nearby towns and blamed the 17 year old for the mix up in coffees - which he wasn't responsible for) - was 170 E for three, or 113.33 a couple.
Go? For the restaurant, indeed; for the crowds at Disneyland, whoops Giverny, do as M. Lobrano did and go for the night.
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