after dinner sneeze

t says:  I’d like to know what you were thinking as you read the title of this post.  Maybe you don’t know of Pierre Calmels, in which case, you might suspect that I’m talking about a character onsome sort of Jersey-Shore-meets-France crossover.  It’s not.  Sorry.  (Actually … I’m not sorry.)  For those of you who know that Pierre Calmels is one-half of the dynamic duo responsible for Bibou, a perennial favorite of adsz, maybe you’ve stumbled across this post thinking that I’m going to reveal some sort of sordid indiscretion he committed.  It’s not.  (And shame on you for thinking that Pierre could do something like that!?)  So what is this post about?  Quite simply, this post is here to further illustrate Pierre’s uncanny ability to make grown men cry and women swoon … through food.

March 2012, Friday Dinner, Party of 6.  g and I were dining with a, v, and a’s parents.  That’s right, it was time for us to “meet the folks” (g had already met them, but I had not).  And, because a and his dad are real big into wine, I was super-excited about what kinds of wines were going to show up.  They didn’t disappoint (more on that later).

Now, with so many adsz posts already dedicated to Bibou, we don’t want to go into such great detail about ever dish again.  Yes, the pig’s feet rendered v speechless.  Yes, g got the steak again and had no regrets.  The escargots were still ridiculous.  a and v’s parents had the fish entrees – maybe they’ll have a word or two to say in the comments!

But let’s talk about me – after all, that’s what I do best.  After tackling my first ever plate of frog’s legs with g (that’s right – g went for frog’s legs … and liked it!!), I wondered if I was going to regret going for the “special” instead of the steak or the pig’s foot, both of which are my faves.  They’re just both so consistently delicious!  Had I made a mistake?! … And just when I thought Bibou couldn’t possibly be more delicious …
Pierre goes and does something like this …

... and totally crushes it.

What you see in the above pic is a duo of pork.  I eschewed the pig’s foot and the beef in favor of this “special” which included [essentially] a T-bone of pork and a slab of pork belly.  Yes, there were greens and a root puree.  But I need to draw focus to the pork belly.  Now, my favorite pork belly has long been Lee Styer’s at Fond.  This one is nothing like Lee’s.  There’s no dense crust.  The portion is fairly petite.  But the flavor!  O! M! G! (Don’t you love it when I do that?)  The flavor!  The rich fat disintegrates in your mouth instantaneously, letting out a deeply piggy flavor framed in such a wonderful sweetness, but not in a cloying way.  And it just keeps going.  I was brought to silence, and, had I had enough wine, perhaps a single tear could have escaped from my eye.  It was so beautiful.  It was like seeing a baby being born (except that I don’t proceed to eat the baby).  And in that instant, Pierre stole the crown from Lee.  It. Was. Epic.

The best part was that when I told the server about how delicious the belly was, he said, “that’s great!  you should also go to Fond and try theirs”.  I told him that I did and that Pierre’s was superior.  He was impressed.  And then Pierre himself came around.  He did his usual super-humble-Pierre routine, where he thanks you, tilts his head, and flashes his bashful smile, as if he just “doesn’t know how it happened”.  He said something like, “the secret’s in the pig … we get it from <insert source here – I couldn’t hear him>”  Sorry Pierre.  That’s bull$h!t.  And you know it.  Unless you have some sort of genetically engineered pig that eats chocolate and craps cinnamon buns, I can only conclude one of the three possible explanations:
1) You are in possession of some kind of magic wand and aren’t afraid to use it.
2)  You are straight-up lacing your food with some kind of French cocaine
3)  You are a brilliant chef.
Regardless, it’s more than just the pig.  And so, for refusing to rest on your laurels and continuing to produce entrees that repeatedly blow us away, we salute you.

(And yes, we salute Charlotte and the rest of the Bibou staff as well … they are top-notch, too!)

a says:  Pork belly was AAAAAAAamazing.  The pig’s foot and steak was great, as always. Fish dishes were good but didn’t have enough to remember major themes.