My wife and I were in Chatilly, France for my sister-in-law’s wedding, and Chantilly is a very picturesque French town with its own stunning castle, and worthwhile places to eat. For a family get together before the wedding, we ate at Le Bouchon Gourmand. The place and the food were really enjoyable, but I spent most of my time and attention in conversation with the group, in which about 8 different countries were represented. International gatherings among friends and family have always been full of lively and informative conversation, and it’s hard to focus on what I was eating, but there were a few things that caught my attention. So, on to the food.
The Burger
Credit generally goes to one of several people in the USA for inventing the concept of the hamburger, and certainly it has come to be strongly associated with the food culture in the United States, but that hasn’t (and shouldn’t) stop the rest of the world from making their own versions of it. The best burger I ever had was in Lima, Peru, and this burger at Le Bouchon Gourmand may be the 2nd best I’ve had.
There are so many lazy burger concepts in the US, some intentionally so because it increases profitability and mobility. One can understand why the burger does so well in the US because #1 it is a lot of calories, #2 it is portable so you can eat it on the go, #3 the concept is essentially a blank canvas for you to flavor it however you want and #4 the US is the world’s largest producer of beef. Ironically, it is hard to find truly delicious burgers in the US, even though it seems like that is our national cuisine. We gear the burger so that it is a punch of fat in the taste buds, and it is relatively easy to achieve that, and for many Americans it’s good enough to call it a meal. But producing a burger that has the power of the punch of fat to the face, combined with a layer of French elegance takes some cheese found only in northern France called maroilles. It is used to make the blanket of flavor you see spread all over the burger and spilling all over the plate. Everything else about the burger was mostly the same, but the sauce transformed the burger from a predictable punch of calories from fat to an enticing silky reinterpretation of an American classic into something regionally unique. It may be heresy to say this in the US, but even though the US may have come up with the burger concept, and popularized it, the rest of the world is perfecting it and making it beautiful. The goal shouldn’t be to deliver all the fat its possible to deliver to your taste buds, but to find a way to give all that fat a fitting personality, with something special to offer, that lets you take notice of the world around you. Don’t get me wrong – there is a time and a place for a good smashburger…sometimes a hit of fat in the face just feels so right. But until I can get some maroilles at my California home, or until I can return to Le Bouchon Gourmand, I’ll just have to revisit the memory of the flavor as best I can.
The Dessert
Speaking of punches in the face with a lot of fat…or more accurately with this cherry and ice cream dessert, a bold stab of tartness followed by a creamy salve to stop the pain.
Ice cream dishes are found around the world and this one reminded me of a kind of sundae that you would find int he US. But this one had some of the most tart cherries I’ve ever had, along with some Chantilly cream which of course is one of the things for which the town is well-known. I suppose the formula for this dessert was to put the cherries in play to disrupt the world inside your mouth and cause a kind of chaos, making the lips pucker and the eyes squint, followed by a radical questioning of reality as you know it. After your world had been torn apart by the pleasant violence, then the angels and merciful souls found in the silky lace of the chantilly cream and vanilla ice cream come flowing into the chamber of pain left by the cherry disruptors. Crunching the toasted almonds in between helped you forget your taste buds are all wounded and in need of triage at this point. It was almost like a morality play of the balance of good and evil, and in the end, I think the evil won. It would be a little while before I recovered from the merciless onslaught of tart cherry jabs felt all over the inside of my mouth. This makes me wonder if you dig into the ground in Chantilly far enough instead of reaching molten lava you’ll find this stuff, and that’s what they put in their desserts. I playfully exaggerate, but this thing had a definite personality.
Finding a unique and satisfying regional culinary experience while out with friends and family is among the greatest pleasures we have. Finding an undiscovered flavor expressed in a way I’ve never seen before, along with experiencing a morality lesson contained within an ice cream dessert, all while being out with family and friends in a beautiful place creates some of those happy memories that will stay with me for a long time. And that’s all good and fine, but I need to get some of that damn cheese.
