Cadillac

After breakfast, we headed for the Gare-Montparnasse station to catch the TGV to Bordeaux. There are no pictures from this segment of our journey. Both of us remained in the clutches of mousse-coma, and drifted off to sleep for the three hours the train ride took.

We were met at the train station by a taxi, which conveyed us our lodgings in the nearby town of Cadillac. By the time we got there, we were actually a bit peckish, so we set out on foot in search of munchables. We ended up ducking into a small grocery and picking up some items.

This was the most expensive bottle of wine on the shelf

We picked up a bottle of the Alsatian Gewurz. Note also that while the market’s cheese case was a typical, garden variety supermarket cheese section, it contained items that one would have to go to a specialty cheese shop back home to find. Such as a soft, stinky French Muenster – which I pounced on the moment it caught my eye.

Stinky Muenster, mimolette, serrano ham, baguette, vin blanc. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We took our loot out to the patio, kicked back, and made yum-faces and giggled.

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Our guidebook sez: “Set on the banks of the Garonne, the bastide town of Cadillac was established in 1280 to halt the progress of French troops. A gate, the Porte de la Mer, is a reminder of those warlike times."

It’s entirely charming, though to call it charming is sort of condescending, as if it’s some place out of a movie instead of a town where real people actually work, play, and live. Still, it looks like every small French agrarian village in every movie you ever saw that featured one, if the village in the movie had not been sanitized of all commercial signage.

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Our tour includes meals at some of the lodgings, and Cadillac was such an instance. There is a set menu served in these situations, to which one can make changes or additions if that is desired. Our waitress explained the menu to us, and that our meal came with two glasses of wine each, which we could choose from the menu provided. Essentially, red and white table wines were available prix fixe.

The opener was a green salad along with pig loaf chunks (which Julia insists on calling porc terrine), both of which were just fine. What pricked up our taste buds, though, were the dollops of bavarois onion, light, airy blobules of sweet oniony mousse that we both found delightful. The house wines were simply not what we were after, however, so we upped the ante for the main course.

Sturgeon, likely poached, accompanied by a mild butteresque sauce and an onion/fennel timbale (slaw, for guys like me). I’m not really a fish guy, but I both liked and respected the sturgeon. It was mild, but not boring. It possessed a distinct fish flavour, but laid back, unlike, for instance, mackerel. The entire plate hung together very well. One theme that seems to recur with the meals we have eaten is how well all the components synergize, with little effort required on the part of the diner. Everything simply meshes, in a way I only notice consciously 2/3 of the way through a course.

For the wine, we chose a Graves, a 2014 Chateau de Chantegrive. In point of fact, we had no idea what it would be like when we ordered it. My approach has been to look for a type of wine from a region I have never tried before, and then select something at least a little bit away from the lower end of the price range of the available selections. This approach worked out splendidly tonight.

In early 2014, on our EBC trek, I was ribbed by some of my companions for constructing my own dessert by spreading Nutella on Walker’s shortbread cookies. I feel vindicated by this evening’s dessert. Mounds of chocolat mousse, atop a shortbread cracker. The name of the fruit escapes me. The same fruit was made into the sauce pictured above, which was also seasoned with clove.