A Michelin 2 Star Extravaganza

The adults of our party headed to Les Baux de Provence for our second group meal at L'Oustau de Baumaniere, an inn and two-star Michelin restaurant. Les Baux is Un Des Plus Beaux Villages de France - a government designation for the most beautiful villages in France. We only saw the main part of the village from the car as we drove past, since you had to park and walk in.

We descended a little further to reach our destination - it was a beautiful evening and the 8 of us were seated at a large round table under the trees on the terrace. The ambiance was wonderful. We all selected L'Evolution - the 7 course Menu Degustation. Funnily enough, none of our menus had any prices on them. There were however, many prices on the wine list - or rather the wine tome. It was huge and extremely heavy - I asked Dave to please refrain from ordering the 9,500 euro bottle of wine!

We started with a few amuses, which I forgot to capture with my camera but take my word for it, they were awfully pretty.

The bread service was incredible - we selected from a choice that included spinach, olive, poppyseed, campagne and of course, baguette.



The first course involved a large prawn in some lovely sauce.




The second course was a large slab of foie gras sitting on a cherry gelee with a single cherry on the side. Served with toasted campagne bread. Mmmmm.



Then we received the Rouge Barbet fish, simply grilled with a melange of different sauces.





That was followed by another fish - Mediterranean sea bass,which was incredibly rich. Again, beautifully presented.

The meat course was the pigeon, which is what the restaurant was known for. The recommended preparation was "pink" but I decided to go for "medium" instead and was very glad I did.









The cheese cart was extremely impressive - I lost track of the selections but we had lots...






The first dessert was a peach sorbet - it was so flavorful.





The second dessert was some sort of lemon mousse over a bed of fresh strawberries and served in an island of dry ice with scattered rose petals. The presentation was phenomenal.



The THIRD dessert was a pannacotta-like item, served in pretty layers that we had to mix up.




The coffee presentation was pretty and there was also a final sweets cart with caramels, chocolates and candied fruits.


Thankfully we restrained from partaking from the humidor, since it was fast approaching 12:30 am and we still had an hour drive to get back to the villa.

After that 4+ hour, once-in-a-lifetime gourmet meal, I didn't eat again until 2 pm the next day!