Celebrating le Vaucluse

Our stay in the Vaucluse has been great: we’ve finished all of the research that we’d planned on doing and we took all of the excursions, big and small, that we wanted. But now that our time here is quickly drawing to a close, there are lots of last minute details to take care of--packing up boxes of books to mail home, searching around our rental house to gather up all of our stuff, getting suitcases ready for the trip to Paris and the flight back, and all the rest. Our last week in Bédoin, however, hasn’t simply been filled with chores. We’ve also taken the time to enjoy some culinary treats.
On Saturday night la Cave Coopérative held another of its famous get-togethers. This one, la Fête de la vigne et du vin ("The Festival of the Vineyard and Wine"), is actually a department-wide event taking place on the same date in more than 60 caves in the Vaucluse. Bédoin’s version of the festivities included ATV buggy rides through the vines and a visit to the bottling assembly line. We were more interested in the 16-euro apiece dinner, which included une assiette provençale, consisting of saucisson (“salami”), pâté, jambon cru (“prosciutto”), salade, cornichons (“pickles”) and green and black olives. The main dish was followed by a cheese course, and finally a dessert of fresh strawberries in red wine with crème chantilly (“whipped cream”). There was a live band, playing mostly American music, and of course, being at the cave, the dinner was bien arrosé with lots of local wines. We had fun talking to the people sitting next to us: a young social worker from Zurich who had just returned from climbing Mont Ventoux on his bike and a nice vintner and his wife from Bédoin who made a special trip inside the cave to get a piece of chèvre cheese for us when they found out we liked it.
We’ve also been revisiting some of the restaurants in the vicinity that we have enjoyed over the past few months, two of them being right here on the main street in town. Both have very friendly équipes working there and offer good, relatively inexpensive meals. Le Grillon is a small place whose name, I believe, is more a play on the verb griller, rather than on the word for a cricket. The chef, who comes from a restaurant family, grills your supper in front of you on a wood fire in an elevated fireplace. We’ve had some lovely meals there including a tasty salade au chèvre chaud (“warm goat cheese salad”), a grilled dorade ("sea bream"), une marmite de poisson (a fish soup), and une brochette de canard ("duck shish kebab"). All were very good, but the best was Ray’s travers de porc, a grilled pork sparerib with spices that made it taste like barbecue. Yum! Another place we like in town is the Hôtel l’Escapade’s restaurant. We’ve had appetizers like des cuisses de grenouille (“frogs legs”) and une barigoule aux artichauts (artichoke hearts served with prosciutto). Some of our main dishes there included for Ray pieds et paquets (you don’t really want to know what it is!) and for me a very delicious cuisse de canard (“duck leg”).

My favorite eating place for French cuisine around, and possibly throughout our whole stay here (though others were close), is in Carpentras: La Petite Fontaine. Small with a limited menu, this restaurant serves up delicious meals every time. On our first visit there I had fresh asparagus with a green onion sauce as a first dish, followed by wonderful Saint-Jacques (“scallops”) with a chive sauce that were well worth the 5-euro supplement that we had to pay. Today we both had the 17-euro menu: starting with a half of a small, grilled eggplant topped with melted mozzarella slices and fresh tomato; as a main course, Ray had suprême de pintade (“guinea fowl”) and I got a great piece of grilled tuna. So there you have some meals to enjoy vicariously...more coming from Paris next week, I hope!