I'm not clear on the shrimp? Did she eat most of it?
You ate one of the shrimp, and said I could have the extra one. No clear on the grits, though- you fought with me for those tooth and nail even though you kept saying you weren't hungry. They were darn good grits.
MinnieMama411 said:
I am curious...will you be posting anything about the French Regional Lunch you attended? We also attended one - the Monsieur Paul luncheon paired with wines from the Côtes du Rhone region. It was lovely. We had the best lunch mates - a young couple and a mom and her daughter....
As mom has already sussed, we were most certainly your tablemates! I was the girl sitting across from you taking notes on her menu the whole time.
It's nice to see you on the DISboards! Funny story about your husband... maybe I should have left mom to snooze in the Swalfin's hotel lobby while I went and got food at BlueZoo to sober up, hmm...
TwingleMom said:
Could you tell me about the Visa Chase Lounge?? Where is it?? How much is the soda machine?? The Burger Kings by us have these and I'm addicted to Coke Zero with Raspberry. LOL
"best meal of the trip....Dun dun dun" Please no cliff hangers.. we want to know
The Visa Chase Lounge was (is? Is food and wine still happening?) open for the Food and Wine, and was upstairs in the American Pavilion. It had the soda machines, coffee, I think tea, tables and couches, and board games as well as TVs (and clean bathrooms). The drinks are free (there's also a beer and two wines, but you have to pay for those), but you have to have a Visa credit card to access the lounge. They also hand out prefered viewing wristbands for the consorts and Illuminations on the early weekdays.
As for cliffhangers, I'm a (well, wanna-be) author! I have to use cliffhangers! They're a time honored tradition!
I love reviews that describe the cocktails. I have found that Disney cocktails generally tend to taste like fruit punch, so I usually order some version of a martini.
I definitely agree with you... especially about the Grey Goose slushy in France. Those things have like, no alcoholic taste to them what-so-ever, and I doubt they have much alcohol in return. As I said before, in Epcot, you definitely have to go to the Cave in Mexico and get a margarita, or you have to go and get a slushy with alcohol poured on it from the booth in Morocco if you want even the slightest bit of a kick. In restaurants, if I'm getting annoyed by the fruitness of the cocktails, I'll just order something that has no mixer. That shows them. >.> I've heard some of the California Grill's new cocktails have a definite hit to them, though sadly I don't know which ones. The two we ordered were pretty light.
Anyway!
Three words: French Regional Lunch.
More words: you know that insane rush that one morning early August as you frantically try to call at exactly the right time to get in to Disney Dining as early as possible in order to book your food and wine event that we go through every year? From what I understand, most people are doing this to get their Party for the Senses. And there's nothing wrong with that. We've decided we're never doing Party for the Senses again, because it's just not worth the hassle, but I think that's one of those things everyone should do once. But seriously, once. Why not after doing it that once, take a breather and stop worrying about seats and frantically running around trying to cram a hundred items in your mouth in three hours and instead get served a leisurely lunch/dinner with lovely paired food and wine as well as all the information you could want on the items? That's what we came to think, and thus, when we're doing the crazy August rush, we're doing it to get the French Regional Lunch.
Consider it, perhaps. Or actually, don't, because I will be very sad if you all book French Regional Lunches and I don't get one.
But, yeah. It's good. Just leave some space there for me.
The wines are just as featured during this meal as the food, so I'll be putting up pictures of the wine and the bottle as well, though I don't know how many of the wines are readily available in the US (or Canada, or the UK, or wherever you people are from). They've come a long way from when they used to leave the bottles on the table for you to refill as much as you want (perhaps sadly, although the serving staff still does refills on the wine for you- cheers!), but they do leave the empty bottles sitting around for you to read them.
So. This lovely, lovely meal takes place at Monsieur Paul (Bistro de Monsieurness, as I call it in spoken conversation), which is a good restaurant, has been a good restaurant, and hopefully will continue to be a good restaurant. We were there in May, and had a great meal (we did not order the truffle soup, though, which is the item I see people complaining about on the boards), we were there many times when it was still Bistro de Paris, and we will hopefully be there next October or November if all goes according to plan. Good chefs, good food. This weeks region was Côtes du Rhone, with wines from Jean Luc Colombo's various wineries in the region.
You'll notice that not all these wines were ridiculously expensive. One goes for as cheap as ten dollars. Some people might not like that- you're paying for an expensive dinner, shouldn't you get expensive wine? I don't really mind it personally, though, because that means I can taste this wine, fall in love with it, and actually get it and have it at home (if you know, PA didn't have ridiculous liquor laws)... unlike all that lovely sake I had over at Tokyo Dining, which I'll never see. So I don't think it's a big deal, but I am pointing it out in case it's a big deal for you.
Here's the cute place settings. You can see only three glasses. Don't worry; they brought out more.
Only complaint I can make about this dinner- and seriously, only complaint- was the butter was cold. It could have used a slight warming to get more room temperature before we were served.
Jean Luc Colombo's wines (at least, all the red ones) have pretty watercolor pictures on the label. I approve of this.
This is the Cap Bleue Rose 2012 (which, um, you can read). It's a blend of three grapes- Syrah (the Syrah grape is going to pop up often- that region is great for Syrah, which made mom a very happy mom), Cinsault (I'd never even heard of that grape before), and Mourvédre. Some years, this blend has been made without the cinsault, with just the syrah and mourvédre. That's three red grapes, if you're counting at home, meaning the wine definitely had to be bled. (And the presenter actually described this and how they bleed wine, which is why I love meals like this- I learn such useless, never need to know, but
interesting information on wine and food!)
This wine was lightly sweet, with a hint of raspberries and cherries. That sweetness gave it enough to hold it's own against the amuse-bouche, though, despite it being surprisingly heavy.
(Who am I kidding, though- all the courses paired great.)
But first, a cute baguette. They gave extras of these, too. This restaurant has a great bread service- they bring around like, five different breads during your meal and ask you which one(s) you want- and even though it was just a simple bread, it was still lovely.
First course is simply labeled 'Amuse-bouche'. So I have to go from memory and my fragmented notes, which means: this was sweetbreads, in some sort of (very) creamy gravy sauce, with peas, carrots, and sage, and pasta was somehow involved. It was ridiculously delicious, and I spotted a lot of people using their baguette to sop up left over soup-stew-gravy-sauce-whatever it was that wouldn't cooperate and get on the spoon. I know I did.
So this was very good. As long as I didn't think about what I was eating. Yes, I am a coward, I know, but if I start thinking about what sweetbreads are, I get grossed out. ;;
Viognier La Violette, 2011. I wonder if this one was actually infused somehow, because it really did smell like violets. This is 100% Viognier, and tastes... well, a lot like a Viognier. Light fruitness- peach I thought was the dominant one, but the presenter suggested apricots, too. This was a light wine, and I was surprised tasting it and then reading what it was paired with, but the pairing was again fantastic, proving that people that get paid big bucks to pair wine with food at Disney know more of what they're doing then I generally do. What a surprise.
Sasuage in brioche with port reduction, then a side salad (or greens/petit mesclun, the menu prefers) with some sort of vinaigrette on it- maybe it was a port vinaigrette? Is this some sort of French thing, putting sausage or other meats in a brioche? Because I had never had it before, and it was delicious. They need to start serving this at Chefs de France or something, because I want to get it again and Tourist Trap, PA sadly lacks in expensive (and inexpensive) French restaurants.
Side salad, was, admittedly, not the most interesting thing this meal. It was a side salad. But I still ate all mine, and basically everyone ate all theirs, so it wasn't a bad thing or anything. Just, you know, not that attention grabbing.
Les Abeilles, Cotes du Rhone, 2011. This is the ten dollar wine, and I want to go buy it, because it is much better then the ten dollar wines I usually end up buying. A relatively even blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre. And apparently BEES were somehow involved. This had some standing tannins, but they weren't rough. Very fruit forward wine. Tasted like plum, but I say that about every other red wine I try. There was some definite spicy notes. Very good wine for it's price, I'd say.
Gratin dauphinois! Or, if you prefer, potatoes and crème fraîche (soured cream, if you *really* prefer). This was a delicious side to the...
...HUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGEEE piece of chicken.
Yeah, chicken. (And chanterelles- golden mushrooms.) 'Mr. Paul's vinegar chicken', to be exact.
Let me be honest with you. I have been going to Disney regularly- as in, once or twice or even three times a year- for ten years now, and I have never once ordered chicken at Disney. Even at my picky sixteen, I just ordered salmon at every other restaurant. Chicken? I find chicken one of the most boring things to eat on the planet. It's cheap, it's easy, you can do anything with it, and it still tastes like chicken no matter what you do. So I never have seen a point in ordering it at Disney. I don't care how they fancy it up, it's still going to be chicken. And while a steak is still going to be a steak, if you go that route, I'm going to take a steak over a chicken any day of the week. I think mom feels basically the same: she's never ordered chicken at Disney, either.
(Actually, now that I seriously think about it, I think I had chicken bastila at the Moroccan restaurant back when we still did the dining plan and got 'free' Appys, but that's it.)
But this... was really good chicken. In an absolutely huge portion size that could feed me and my mom for two days. I don't know what Mister (Chef?) Paul did to it, but I liked it, and mom liked it, and it was all very weird and confusing. I can't even figure out how to describe how it tasted. Like chicken, but, well, actually good? This was a very strange situation.
What mom had been waiting for: the Terres rulees, Cornas 2006. A pure Syrah. It was
divine. More tannins, and more dryness then the previous blend had but it still had a fruitness to it (cherries, perhaps?). It had an interesting, almost smokey smell. Not like, the smoky smell you'd get with whiskey, but... lightly smokey. I don't know. I just know we really liked this wine. It was pretty light too, surprisingly, for as much flavor as it had.
Cheese course. No idea what cheese it is- they neglected to mention that fact, which amuses me. With grapes, and raisin bread. It's a hard cheese, so it wasn't really my thing. I nibbled on it, then let it go and just ate the bread and the grapes. It wasn't bad, but just not anything I was interested in, and after all that chicken, I wanted to save room for dessert.
(WHICH WAS DELICIOUS. Spoiler!)
We finish off with the les Saintes, Muscat De Rivesaltes 2007 (which apparently won Jean Luc Colombo some sort of wine maker of the year award, as well as honorable recipient in some French Region thing). This had a very honey note to it that reminded me a bit of mead, but it was definitely wine. Despite that, it wasn't overly sweet. I mean, it was sweet enough to be used as a dessert wine, definitely, but you probably could have paired a meal with it if you really wanted to (though it would probably be the generic 'asian spicy foods' every sweet white wine and it's mother wants to be paired with). It was good. I liked it.
I'm going to quote wikipedia on this one. This was Saint Honoré cake- "This classic French dessert is a circle of puff pastry at its base with a ring of pâte à choux piped on the outer edge. After the base is baked small cream puffs are dipped in caramelized sugar and attached side by side on top of the circle of the pâte à choux. This base is traditionally filled with crème chiboust and finished with whipped cream using a special St. Honoré piping tip."
If you know what those terms mean, you know more about French baking then I do. Then there were caramelized apricots, light vanilla cream, and homemade pistachio ice cream from downstairs (which is as close as I got to the ice cream shop this trip, sadly). I've already used the word divine to describe one of the wines, and now I'm having trouble thinking of a word that tops divine. Is heavenly better then divine? This was better then the wine, which was already divine. It caused me to go in to happy dance mode, which is this thing that happens when I'm eating food I really, really, really like and I start bouncing unconsciously in my seat. (I am weird. I am aware of this.) This was just... really really good. It's a shame a lot of people seemed already too full from that huge plate of chicken to make a big dent in this.
>.> I didn't have that problem. But it's very rare that I can't fit dessert in.
...This feels like a long post. I think I talk too much. Write too much. Whatever. This was great, delicious, the best meal of our trip sort of great and delicious, and we had a lot of good meals. I seriously recommend everyone book it: they have them once a week all through the food and wine.
Just... book the Champagne region one or something so I can still book it, too! ;_;
Also, be aware that like basically all these lunches, you will be sitting with other people. That was not a problem this year. We had excellent, awesome tablemates that made the meal very enjoyable, and everyone talked and then shut up when the presenter was actually talking (last two years we did this, we had a pompous jerk- not the same one, but they were close enough- who spent the whole time basically bragging about how many golf courses he owned and talked over the presenter, too) and it was all quite lovely, actually. So, cheers to them.
Next: Three quick grabs around the F&W, then a dinner we really didn't have room for.
And I totally agree, "Delicious wine should never be wasted!" Tell the Mister not to worry. After out first Frunch, we left the building and hugged a princess. We then watched the American Adventure and cried as if my brother died. (And you were sneaking him wine!)
I'm glad your enjoying it though, and the drinking around the world was a lot of fun. I want to do it again next year, but it's probably going to be out of our reach, moneywise. Hopefully, though, we'll get the French Lunch in.
