Truffle heaven

The Greater Daglan Area, or GDA, is known for producing excellent black truffles. And the Michelin-starred restaurant Le Gindreau is known for producing excellent dishes with them.

And so it was that on this past Thursday — when my wife Jan and our friend Joanne and I lunched at Le Gindreau — that I decided to throw caution to the winds and order one of the all-truffle menus.

It cost 99 euros for an amuse, a main course, a small cheese course, and a massive dessert. As it turned out, it was a good idea.

Before I go further with my delight at truffle-heaven-on-a-plate, here’s just a bit of what I wrote about the restaurant in the posting “A well-deserved upgrade” on February 12th of this year, soon after Le Gindreau had been awarded its second Michelin star:

I have been raving about Le Gindreau, the restaurant in Saint-Médard, for quite a while. The food, the service, the atmosphere — they are impressive and have seemed to keep on improving.

As a refresher, the restaurant is less than an hour’s drive south of Daglan, and is located in a former schoolhouse. Since Chef Pascal Bardet and his wife Sandrine bought the place from the previous chef, it’s been renovated and refreshed.

Our lunch began with glasses of Champagne and a wonderful assortment of amuse-bouches. Then came the first of my truffle-laden dishes — a single layer of macaroni, stuffed with foie gras and black truffles and then gratinéed, and served with mushrooms and a sauce made with Jura wine.

For my main course, I received veal sweetbreads, garnished with artichokes and slices of black truffles — over which Sandrine then grated a fresh black truffle. That may have been gilding the lily, but it was superb, and here’s how it looked:

Sweetbreads smothered in truffles.

The so-called cheese course was another truffle-laden concoction. It consisted of layers of thin, crunchy biscuits with mounds of a soft, buttery, salty cheese, and then garnished with generous slices of black truffle:

Truffles galore.

Finally came the massive dessert, which is designed for two diners (Jan and me, in this case). It’s a black truffle soufflé that looked as large as a head. Here it is, being served:

Truffles in the dessert.

To finish the serving, our portions were flamed with dry Maraschino liqueur, like this:

The final, flaming touch.

So it was all wonderful. And to finish things off, we had an enjoyable few minutes talking with Chef Pascal Bardet, a charming and unassuming man who told us in detail about how he learned of his second Michelin star, how he informed his team, and his sudden trip to Paris to be recognized. As I wrote back in February, star No. 2 was “a well-deserved upgrade.”