A Week in Gastronomic Paradise

What is the ultimate French food experience? Shopping in a Paris open-air market? Spending the afternoon in a sidewalk café on a spring day? Savoring every moment of a dégustation at a three-star restaurant? Nope! The ultimate French food experience lasts an entire week. It involves two meals a day from a Michelin–starred restaurant. It includes spending time with a Michelin–starred chef learning the tricks of the trade. It involves visiting food and wine producers and observing the intimate workings of their production. It may even involve visiting a market or two.

And I just got back from France where I had this ultimate experience. It started this way one Sunday last June…

I met up with six other "foodies" at the train station in Besançon, in the heart of Jura region of France. My fellow travelers included two cooking instructors from Paris, an artist from Maryland, an ENT surgeon from Minnesota, a retired business man from Washington, DC, and Patti Ravenscroft, founder and director of Les Liaisons Délicieuses, which organized of our adventure.

From Besançon we drove 30 kilometers southwest to the small village of Amondans — home of the 18th-century Château d’Amondans — our home for the next week and site of a Michelin 1-star restaurant under the direction of Frédéric Médigue.

Meeting new people, especially en masse can be stressful. After the prerequisite bonjour monsieurs and madames at the Château gates, we reconnoitered our rooms, unpacked, and then gathered outside in the Château’s extensive garden for an aperitif — the first of many we would enjoy during the week.

Before sitting for dinner, Patti took us on a quick tour of the Château’s expansive, modern kitchens. The kitchen includes separate areas for hot and cold final cooking and assembly, fish and meat preparation, and baking and desserts.

Dinner that night, as on all nights, was served in one of the Château’s spacious and luxurious dining rooms. Always present are unique flower arrangements made from the pickings of the Château’s own gardens and skillfully arranged by Pascal, the headwaiter.

Dinner followed the same routine that one would expect in one of France’s 479 Michelin-starred restaurants. A plate of hors d’oeuvres is presented the table to start the meal. (At Château d’Amondans this consists of a wafer of puff pastry baked with a topping of the local Comté cheese along one edge.) The first individual course is the entrée. This is followed by the plat, then the cheese course, and finally the dessert. Occasionally, a small amuse-bouche precedes the entrée. The dessert is accompanied by a plate of les mignardises, small sweets. (At the Château, the sweets were miniature eclairs, profiteroles, madeleines, lemon tarts, and candied orange peel.) Finally, the meal is completed by coffee or tea. As great as our first meal was, we would soon learn that each meal in turn would outshine the previous one. Recipes were provided for many of the dishes, but it is always necessary to revise and modify the original ingredients and instructions for the American kitchen and ingredient availability.

For me, the best part of the week was spent in the kitchen. Sometimes Chef Médigue would demonstrate a particular dish. Other times the emphasis would be on a particular group of techniques. Often, I would just wander into the kitchen to observe the various stages of the process of preparing fine meals. If there was something that I didn’t understand, the Chef was always willing to provide a suitable explanation of what was happening. If I wanted to know how a particular dish was prepared, Chef Médigue would recite the process, and I would hurriedly scribble notes and snap a few pictures to document the process. It will be months before I can try at home all I learned in that one week.

The night that the Château was closed for business; we were guests at a one–star restaurant in Besançon called Mungo Park. This proved to be a wonderful evening and the meal was outstanding.

But the week wasn’t all eating and cooking. Once we visited a local winery that produces the special Jura wines. The Château provided lunch and the winery provided the wine. In all we tasted nine different wines. Another time we visited a producer of Comté cheese. We also went to the local market in Besançon one morning with the Chef — although he admitted that he didn’t have time to go to the market everyday — he just ordered what he needed from local suppliers that he had dealt with for years and could trust to provide ingredients of exceptional quality. After the market we visited a local patisserie that produced world-class pastries, chocolates, and ice creams.

We also spent some time touring the region and enjoying the sights. The Jura is really a forgotten part of France in the foothills of the Alps. There’s great natural beauty plus charming villages — such as Ornans and Arbois — and interesting historical sites — such as the Château de Joux.

Saturday morning came much too quickly. After a coffee and croissant, the group headed for the train station and went our separate ways. We had had a wonderful week of food and fun, but I don’t think any of us could have looked at another one of those glorious, beautiful, rich, elaborate meals for a while!