Boulud Escargots a la Marc Aubry...

Lunch yesterday was in Gourmand. I had talked to N about how I very much enjoyed the Escargot I had in Daniel Boulud Brasserie in Las Vegas during my last trip, So he asked Chef Marc if he can replicate it. Marc willingly agreed to give it as shot. We gave him the link to my blog and based on what he saw, he would create the same dish for us.

We also had a nice surprise during the lunch: A Special bottle from N that he wanted us to taste blind to see what we thought of it. As we arrived, we proceeded to chill our 07 Domain Rimbault Pouilly Fume, which we were going to have with our Escargot. N's wine was open already, wrapped with a newspaper since he wanted us to taste it blind.

As we we poured the wine, my initial assessment was that it was an old vintage, since it had that brownish earthy color, not as dark as other younger reds that we had. Basically that's all I could decipher from that wine. It had a particular smell, which I thought was the glass, but eventually as indicated by N, it was 'bottle stink', a stale, somewhat stinky odor that sometimes exists when a cork is first withdrawn from the bottle. Bottle stink usually dissipates fairly quickly. We let the wine in our glass for another 20 minutes and after the 2nd sip, it seemed to have opened up more. S said he thought it was a very old vintage and was only 2 years off from his initial guess and R said he thought it was from Margaux. While they were thinking all that, I was just enjoying the wine...

Finally we removed the newspaper to reveal the wine. It was a 1978 Chateau Siran. The wine was re corked in 2005, which is a normal practice for wines of that age. We continued to enjoy the wine but after a few more minutes, the wine seemed to have lost a bit and fell apart. This is probably the oldest wine I have tried, so thank you N for sharing this with us. At the end, we all had our guesses but R was right by saying it was from Margaux and S was pretty close on the year - I think he said it was 76...so pretty close...

So on to the food: We were initially served with the Boulud Escargots a la Marc. The dish was plated beautifully, almost an exact replica of the one I had. The taste was superb and everyone enjoyed it. The bread was smothered with garlic butter and the poached egg was perfectly done,with all the goldy egg yolk oozing out. The chicken oysters (Oysters are two small, round pieces of dark meat on the back of a bird near the thigh, regarded by some to be the most flavorful and tender part of the bird) were ok but I remember mine being crispy, which gave the dish a bit more of texture, but never the less this dish by Marc was excellent (so much so that S ordered another one as his main course). It is not on the regular menu but we told him that it should be part of his menu already since we would be ordering this more often.

For main, I had the Seared Lamb Tenderloin with Tomato and Garlic Butter and Saute Potatoes. The Lamb was perfectly cooked (medium is the way I like my lamb) and was a perfect match with the Tomato and the Saute Potatoes). With this, we had 2 wines form Rhone, which we had purchased some time ago for a Rhone night dinner. E. Guigal Gigondas and an E. Guigal Cote Rotie. Both are AOC's in the Southern and Northern Wine Region of Rhone. Both wines are mostly made of Syrah. I can't remember the vintages of the 2 wines but all I can say is I enjoyed the Gigondas with my lamb and it also was a good match to the Cassoulet that N and R ordered.

For dessert, we had Poached Pear in Red wine with Nougatine Ice Cream - delicious. The Pear was still quite 'crunchy' and sweet and the Nougatine Ice Cream was a perfect. It also had some lemon rind which I think was poached with the red wine. I am not sure if this is on the regular menu, but if it isn't, then it should be placed as it was really delicious.

We finished at around 4 PM with some double espressos. Great lunch as usual and would like to thank Noel and Marc for coordinating everything...I hope we can repeat this soon...