Both of us took the daily menu, a real bargain at 15, which we
made up for with the wine.

So the formule came with caprese to start, and I said I'd pay
extra for the "crispy calf's head" from the regular carte. The
caprese came with a perfectly ripe sliced tomato and three balls -
not bocconcini, more like tennis balls, more than a normal person
would ever eat - of fresh buffalo mozzarella, dressed with okay
factory olive oil and balsamic that was quite a bit better than that.

So what makes a calf's head crispy? Wrap up underdone bits of it in a
phyllo wrap. The sauce was okay, a mustardy but not too sour gribiche
that went well enough. I don't know if this rareness was intentionally
epater les bourgeois or a mistake, but I kind of liked it.

A "piece of beef" was the second course - we both ordered it rare;
hers came rare, mine medium-rare, both okay. It was I believe part of
the top round, both of ours oddly shaped as if made from different
cuts, but they probably weren't. Excellent frites and a supernumerary
Bearnaise that went better with the potatoes than with the meat.

I asked for a bottle of Cotes du Rhone, and the sly waiter pointed
out that for less than double I could et the Vacqueyras 18 from
Chapoutier, so being in a nonthinking mood I fell for that and found
a really smooth if underage wine of some pedigree. Ripe plums,
spice, to be fair a fine beverage and maybe twice as good as the
standard issue one that I'd almost bought.

Dessert was a moelleux - a small cannonball of chocolate cake that
had had a molten inside, but it had cooled down since its birth a
day or some days before, blobbed over a superb vanilla caramel
flan. Quite a fine dessert, actually; it would have been better had
the blob been at least nuked a few seconds.

Our visit to the Chateau de Chantilly did not go as planned. The
hotel called a taxi, which charged the flat fee of ten bucks, fine,
but Lilli got sick on the way, so we made a detour to the guest
quarters of the Chateau, where the driver talked the staff into
letting her use the facilities. She reported that the accommodations
looked to be worth the 400 Euro a night that is the going rate.

Well, the cab didn't have room in the trunk for our stuff, so we
got dropped off at the palace, where we tried to get the Chateau
office to store it, but they had no place to check it, and as Lilli
was getting another queasy spell anyway, she had the lady at the
ticket office call the taxi driver back to take us to straight to
Roissypole, where half an expensive hour later we reinstalled
ourselves at the Ibis.

As an Accor elite, which I didn't know I was, I got a free drink.
a nice frosty 1664. It's an interesting dodge, because to keep
company with me I had to bribe Lilli with a glass of Cotes du
Roussillon 18 (Chapoutier), a pleasant, middle-of-the-road
low-budget Rhone-style wine which cost as much as two beers.

Owing to a massive influx of Chinese ladies all dressed in the
same bright red outfits with yellow trim (the Communist flag
colors), they were out of the charcuterie plate and the cheese
plate, and the sardine plate was out of the question. So after
the crush we went across the lobby to the pizzeria, where we
ordered the diavolo (pepperoni pizza), which was close on totally
bland, with fluffy bland mozz, little sauce, and what appeared to
be Genoa salami without any pepper. This we washed down with wine
and beer. I ordered a large 1664 and Lilli a glass of red wine.
The waiter said large or small, to which the obvious answer
obtained, which turned out to be a 500 of undistinguished red
plonk of probable Gamay origin, but what the heck, it was pretty
cheap and quenched well.
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