wine2

I had a mad dash, get lots of paper work full tilt day today. Lunch: two peanut butter and honey sandwiches, one consumed at 11:32AM the other at 1:30PM. There were various thoughts interweaving the Excel Spreadsheets and Word docs. Peanut butter is the cornerstone of health. Whole grain bread is a form of enlightenment. Great wine with great friends makes time stand still. Then, I thought about Napa around 2PM. Specifically about dinner at Bouchon in March 2004.

I was with four friends, and it was one of the most memorable meals of my life. Not from an over the top, wildly expensive point of view. It wasn’t the whole thing was probably seventy bucks a head including tip. There was a remarkable foie gras butter (impossible to just have one taste) and lots of passed apps. We each had a different entree’ and each was shared.  We had a bottle of Robert Foley Charbono, then an Elyse Petit Sirah. The service was, in a word, perfect. Attentive but neither pushy or obtrusive. Five and a half years later, it still has stuck with me. Yeah, I can’t hang out at Bouchon every day(mostly because I live in Mass.) … but even if I lived in Napa, I wouldn’t go every night.

Maybe once in a while there will be a time and place that comes up that is amazing. There are a few places here in New England that really nail down the quality event without breaking the bank: Troquet and Pigalle in Boston; Bistro 5 in Medford;  The Pitcher Inn in Warren, VT; and in Andover Mass? … I’ll get back to you. Sakonnet Winery in Little Compton Rhode Island is great to visit, also.  I little quality goes a long way, whereas full-bore gonzo viking behavior (yeah, I have done that, too.) gets old wicked fast.

I don’t necessarily agree with Four Vines wine maker Christian Tietje when he says “Temperance, like chastity, is its own punishment” but I get what he’s saying: You gotta live a little. So. Today’s post was born of a sandwich.  I had a great meal locally, here at Burton’s North Andover recently. The place was slammed. It gave me hope that whatever economic free fall we experienced, that the worst is over and we can get back to work, to exhaustion, and to a few well-placed lunches and dinners with friends. I hope you have a few high quality moments of your own, ones that stay with you for years to come.

Here is the link to Bouchon’s web site:

http://www.bouchonbistro.com/

-James

Peasant

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