Alain places the menu in front of me, then immediately keeps one hand on it before I can open it.
“No,” he says.
I look at him. “No?”
“You do not need this.”
“I don’t?”
“You came here to eat what the room does well, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then I bring lunch.”
“That’s a bold assumption.”
“That is why I made it,” Alain says.
I lean back in my chair. “What if I hate offal?”
“You do not.”
“You know that how?”
“You looked pleased by the smell outside.”
I stare at him.
He smiles. “You are not difficult to read.”
I hear Diana’s voice in my head, dry and immediate:Everyone is difficult to read if you are bad at reading.
Alain is not bad at reading.
“Bring lunch,” I say.
“Wine?” Alain asks.
“What are you pouring?”
He names a Côte du Rhône with no salesmanship whatsoever.
“Yes,” I say.
Alain takes the unopened menu away like it was only ever ceremonial.
The first plate arrives with a country terrine, cornichons, mustard, and bread so crusty it leaves flakes across the cloth the moment I touch it. The terrine is dense, coarse, and deeply seasoned, the fat cold enough to hold, soft enough to melt. The mustard snaps through it. The cornichon bites back. It tastes like a kitchen that expects you to arrive hungry and refuses to apologize for how it solves that problem. I write one line. Then I take another bite and write three more.
The second course is quenelles in a sauce Nantua that smells like crayfish, butter, and old technique. The dish arrives pale and unshowy, the kind of thing a lesser kitchen would try to modernize out of embarrassment. This one does not. The quenelle is light without vanishing, almost cloudlike but not precious, and the sauce has enough depth to make me sit very still for a few seconds after the first bite.
Alain passes my table and sees my fork suspended above the plate.
He stops. “Yes.”
It is not a question.
I look up at him. “Yes.”
