Cool and cloudy.

As venue of our last meal in France, following the advice of a trusted friend (thank you, Francine!) we chose a particular Basque-style restaurant:

41 rue Croulebarbe, Paris 13. Métro Gobelins.

We got off the Métro at the wrong stop, compounded the error by walking in the wrong direction, and arrived an hour late for our reservation. But Mr Laborde, comfortably bellied up (apt expression) to the bar, assured us our tardiness didn’t matter a jot, indeed it was a good thing since we must have an enhanced appetite. We soon saw what he meant.

We sat in an old-fashioned dining room with old-fashioned symbols of abundance hanging from its stout ceiling beams: sides of bacon and of ham, bags of white beans, braided garlic. We recognized the red-pepper dusting of some of the hams as the signature of the product of Bayonne in the Pays Basque. The bean bags were stenciled haricots tarbais, denoting white dried beans from Tarbes in the northern foothills of the Pyrénées.

Path not taken: had we had not reveled in the best and freshest of fish the previous day, we would have leapt at chipiron à l’encre, small squid in its ink. But instead of that we pushed inland, gastronomically speaking, for

Points d’asperges ventreche: White asparagus with a white sauce flavored moderately with French bacon, and a strip of French bacon laid over all. We were surprised as well as delighted at the way the mild, wholesome character of French bacon penetrated and reinforced the inherent flavor of asparagus.

Culinary query: what is the meaning of "ventreche"?

Salade Etchégorry. Laid out around the plate were marinated salmon, air-dried duck, air-dried giblets of duck (practically black, chewy and very tasty), cherry tomato, green beans, lettuce with pine nuts, avocado, and foie gras with a particularly strong and good flavor.

The French at Table department. We observed the one other customer in the dining room. A thin man with a beaked nose, he ate slowly, with evident concentration, occasionally taking a sip of wine and pausing as if to assess its interaction with food. Finally he sat still for a long time, seemingly in a reverie. Had we spotted a specimen of that rare species, the bec fin?

Le magret de canard grillé à la fleur de sel (ordered à point): Long, narrow slices of duck breast with fat removed and cooked to a medium-rose color, laid over a pile of sliced, browned potatoes vitalized with a heady infusion of garlic. This was accompanied by a mâche salad.

The magret was dense, full-flavored and easy to cut—not rubbery or floppy and not stiff, either. In short, all that a duck breast can be.

Le cassoulet aux haricots blancs de tarbais: Large (2 cm) white beans bursting with the hearty savors of the meats included in this traditional dish—chunks of mutton with a definite mature-sheep character, nuggets of pork and of bacon, disks of sausage flavored with red pepper in the Basque manner, a chunk of ham. An unforgettable feast.

We drank thin, strong, deep-red Madiran Domain Coustaü 1994, an excellent match with both main courses.

Upon leaving, we told Mr Laborde that our lunch had brought to mind some of our best experiences in Pays Basque (1990). This did not surprise him in the slightest. The Basque way with food is the simply the best, he boasted, and "Here we are more Basque than the Basques."

The total at Etchégorry was F525.