Our Blog - Valentines Day dinner at Maison Pic

We try to do something "special" a couple times a year ... birthdays, anniversary, and/or Valentines day. This year, we started off with Valentines Day at Maison Pic. If you have been reading my blog for awhile. you may remember we went there a few years ago for our birthdays. This year, we decided on Valentines Day and to include several old Roman cities in Provence. Last time, we only did dinner there and stayed in a hotel nearby, but this year we went all-out and stayed 1 night in the hotel. It was a luxury evening! Instead of checking in at the desk, they basically just take you into the lounge and you get greeted with a welcome drink and sweet.

Tom also decided to go all-out and had a bouquet of flowers and a bit of champagne waiting for me.

We had Lucy with us (there was a puppy-charge, I will admit), and they had a cushion and a water bowl in the room for her. They also mentioned that the hotel could arrange a puppy-sitter during our dinner, but Lucy wanted to just take a nap in the room.

We started with a cocktail before dinner, again sitting in the lounge area. The artwork in the middle was quite interesting ...

The amuse bouche also started while we were sitting in the lounge. There are little cups with dutch cheese cubes, a cooked mussel, and then a cracker with black squid ink crumbles on the backside and fresh herbs and cream.

The meal itself was a "Journey in 10 courses". There were definitely a few asian inspirations, which is quite typical for the chef, Anne-Sophie Pic. She came by the table and spoke to us ... mostly in French, but she knew we were English-speakers and said we could talk in English if we wanted. I asked her why she tended to use Asian flavors in her cooking. In fact, she said that lived in Japan when she was young (trained in management in Japan and the US) and she loves many of the flavors found in asian cuisine. And with that ..... off we go on our journey....

This is Sea Urchin with apple, kuromame (sweet black soybeans), and nasturtium (the flower, of which almost all is edible).

We did the drink pairing and with the next course, we didn't get a wine but, instead, a tea ceremony. The person doing the ceremony said that there just isn't a good wine to pair with the signature dish, the berlingots of Anne Sophie Pic, and so the tea was best. It was a green tea that is done twice ... the first is steeped very quickly and at a specific high temperature and is very smooth. With the second, it is steeped longer and the water has cooled slightly, giving it a stronger and slightly bitter flavor. There are two videos ... best to not have the volume on or you get to hear Tom and I discussing where we did a tea ceremony at on our trips to Japan ... and asking if I am taking picture or vide :-)

And here are her signature berlingots. French berlingots are normally hard candies made in a pyramidal form, which is the shape that she uses for her pasta berlingots. Made with matcha green tea powder, they are filled with lightly smoked Banon cheese and served with a watercress consommé infused with ginger and bergamot. In an interview several years ago, she mentioned that her inspirations for these were the candies of the same name that she loved as a child. She wanted to use the pyramidal shape with the pasta, which guarantees a good balance between the quantities of pasta and filling, and yields a soft, creamy and very gourmet filling.

The next course was something that we had never had before ... salsify. Salsify is nicknamed the “oyster plant” because it has an oyster-like taste. It originated in the Mediterranean, where ancient Greeks and Romans harvested the roots for both food and medicine. It is a long, thin root vegetable that is a member of the dandelion family and it looks like a carrot or parsnip. Here it is caramelized with a white beer, then served with a black sesame seed mousse, cocoa nibs, and yuzu (there is the Asian flavor).

This is a really lovely trompe-l'œil. It does have scallop in it, but the shell is made of dried rice. The scallop on the interior also has sake kasu (also called or sake lee), which is a white paste that has a similar taste to fruity Japanese sake.

Another fish course with John Dory (the fish) along with whelks (small sea snails), little raviolis, and a lovage foam (lovage is a green plant that can be used in many ways, leaves, roots, and seeds).

For the meat course, we had a choice of two different things and we each picked a different option. I had the beef tenderloin marinated with smoked Madagascar vanilla and black garlic. The tart on the side had sweet potato and mushroom, and a coffee/chestnut sauce. I also opted to add the black truffle supplement, that got shaved on top (and they did NOT go lightly on the truffle!!)

Tom went for the wild venison with cabbage and green curry, and a blueberry tuille.

These next two courses were kinda pre-desserts ... somewhere between savory and sweet. The first was was probably the prettiest of the courses for me, a mousse made of Saint Marcellin (a soft French cheese made from cows milk) with clover and beer. Then after that, a little bowl has quince, Sicilian pistachios, and tarragon. The directions were to plunge the spoon to the bottom to get all of the flavors together.

We then had an after-dinner drink before the sweet desserts came out. This is a 1976 Pineau des Charentes (a fortified wine, similar to sherry) that was made for the restaurant. The serving was a little theatrical, being served with the use of a very large eye-dropper.

We also picked different desserts. I went with the signature dessert of a dark chocolate honeycomb filled with several different flavors including hojicha (a Japanese green tea that originated in Kyoto), Corsican bitter honey, and Cubeb, which is a "fake" pepper corn that comes from SE Asia. Tom had ice cream and mousse that had black garlic and black truffles.

A couple different petit-fours: trompe-l'œil olives but are bonbons of chocolate and little raviolis and roses that are chocolate with yuzu and pralines

And if we didn't have enough the night before ... continental breakfast was a very nice spread as well!