26 sept

Saulieu. The town of Le Cote d’Or, the restaurant Bernard loiseau made famous. I read a book in the early nineties about the manic but charming wayu in which he got his three Michelin stars. In the years afterwards he built up an impressive cooking empoire with all kinds of nonsense, like Loiseau sauces and Loiseau napkins. The building of the empire, being only possible with enormous amounts of debt, got the better of him. When there were rumours he would loose his third Michelin star, he committed suicide.

A tragic story, becoming even more tragic because he would never in fact loose his Michelin stars, his successor now, and main chef then, still being able to convince those food credit agencies that this is the highest of standards.

The story became even more enchanting to me after watching Ratatouille, definetely within the top 5 of best movies. It is vaguely based on the story of Loiseau, although Loiseau himself was not as fat as the cook there, and his restaurant was of ourse not in Paris, but in Saulieu. We had a brief peak at the prices at the restaurant. Around €70 for a starter. The menu degustation would have been ours for only €215. confronted with these kind of astonishing numbers I still get back to guilders, almost 450 of them…. for one person! It explains the Maserati’s and Rolls Royce outside.

We strawled off for humbler activities, eating lunch with a pain au chocolat for the also exorbitant price of €1,10. We visited the church and saw some more delightful 12^th century sculptures. The advantage in Saulieu is that they’re not hanging as far away. Julie thaught they were also more expressive than the ones in Vezelay.

Then we went on to Dijon, where we are now standing in a very busy street waiting for our alarm to go off at 3.45, this all to make sure that Claire cabn wake up (15 minutes), wash her hair (15 minutes) and have breakfast (15 minutes) before it will take 15 minutes, at most, to get to the trains station, where we will arrive 15 minutes early. I walked over to the station to check if we could not park there, but this is a large city that charges Loiseau like prices for the convenience of being close to the station at night.

This busy street it will be, our neighbours, in the house in front of which we have parked, have just stopped there Middle Eastern variation of disco, 80 year old grandpa swinging with 3 year old granddaughter. Now we just deal with the honking mad french who want to get to the other side of the Place de la Republique. The serenity of Asquins, or even of the church in Saulieu, is suddely very far away.