Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David Page A

the alternative côte de bœuf either with or without a supplementary price the ladyinterrupted me. ‘You surely don’t imagine I can afford to give you côte de bœuf on the fourteen franc menu’ she snapped. It wasn’t a propitious beginning, but the oxtail was well cooked and so were the vegetables. No complaints. But then we were offered a choice of three fourth-rate commercial cheeses or a dessert of œufs à la neige smothered in caramel – a recent development, that tacky caramel, I believe, and one which quite wrecks the innocence of a dish which should be frail and pale as a narcissus, just white meringue and creamy yellow crème anglaise . Alternatives were a bought-in gâteau and a tatty-looking apple tart. Turning her back to our table Madame stood over the trolley carefully measuring out the portions of whatever it was we had chosen. Coffee was mediocre. The two women, unprepossessing in their worn tweed skirts and draggy woolies, were anxious to clear away. The chef, who had spent most of the lunch hour sitting at a table reading the paper and smoking, now disappeared, making no attempt to ask the customers if all had been well. Our bill, with a bottle of undistinguished Gigondas, was just half what we had paid at Hièly. Had we enjoyed our lunch half as much as the one at Hièly we should still have had no-cause for complaint. Alas, we had not enjoyed it at all. The grasping attitude, the general shabbiness, the brainless parsimony displayed by Madame, the dispirited and dispiriting service, the dreary bread, the absence of a house wine – always a bad sign in a starred restaurant – all added up to yet another of those dozens of unsolved Michelin mysteries of my past travels in France. There was something about the people and the place and the ambiance which took me back to the London of 1963, the Profumo summer, the couple and the restaurant I described in the article called Secrets in the present volume. Any restaurant which reminded me so strikingly of that one certainly has no business whatever having a Michelin star. We were lucky that we could shrug off the dispiriting experience, climb back into the car, remember that in the back of it we had a lot of good things bought at Villeneueve that morning, that we had a kitchen to cook and eat them in, that we needn’t ever go to another restaurant again for the rest of our stay unless we chose to do so. But I still wonder what the Michelin organisation thinks it is doing. Hièly in Avignon very properly has, and for many years has had, two stars. One star is gravely and grossly overdoing it for a great many of the establishments to which Michelin awards them, and of all the faults which turn me off a restaurant – surely I cannot be alone in this – meanness is just about the most unacceptable. If the Michelininspectors didn’t notice that defect, not to mention others, in the restaurant in question I don’t think they can have visited it for a very long time.
    The above was written in the early summer of 1984, while this collection of articles was in preparation. In 1985 I again spent several weeks at Uzès, staying in the same welcoming house, again feasting on the beautiful cheeses and fresh produce to be bought on market days, once more enjoying a fine meal at Hièly, but not this time venturing into any local country restaurant. The Michelin Guide however had obviously revisited the establishment near St André-d’Olérargues, and, not before time, had withdrawn its star .
    February 1986

Roustidou
    With the exception of ordinary cafés and the relais routiers , where you get ordinaries by the litre, few restaurants or hotels in Provence now offer much alternative to fancy-bottled Provençal wines at prices comparing unfavourably with what one would pay for much more classy Alsace, Loire or Beaujolais wines if one were travelling in these districts. One can’t have everything, and for me Provence has more than most other provinces of France,