Bloggate

I seem to have caused a bit of a rumpus following my blog after last weekends birthday bash for Anna.

I used a comment that was made to me in private - I know, blatant plagiarism - and it appears that some people may have taken offence - well, that seems to be the implication but I haven't spoken with or heard from anybody directly so this is all rather second hand knowledge. Anna and Debrah have had a bit of a heated falling out and have now hopefully made up again - lordy.

That's the thing about writing a blog though - you hope people are going to read it and, ironically, more people seem to have read it this week than ever before. I put it out there so I have to expect that not everyone is going to agree with everything I write and there is of course a certain amount of exaggeration of situations or events for, hopefully, humourous effect.

So, lets get two things straight, with no exaggeration or attempted humour involved at all. Firstly, as I said at the beginning of the week, it was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend with a great mix of people, all of whose company I enjoyed. Secondly, I never meant to cause any offence and apologise to anyone who feels at all offended in any way whatsoever.

Hopefully, that is the end of the crisis, without the need for resignations, court cases or 'Hello' photo-shoots.

Meanwhile it has been one unbelievably busy full-on working weekend here with guests out on Friday and Saturday and new guests in on both days and both leaving today and two new sets of guests arriving. I have the most impressive washing and ironing mountain ever!

The weekend guests all arrived from the UK - two Australians came in on the plane from London and two Americans on the plane from Liverpool - to stay with an Englishman living in France. "Doesn't anyone live in their own country anymore", quipped one - well, apparently not.

There was an architect working on top class hotels and restaurants in London and a marketing man in charge of business partnerships for Liverpool FC - all of which meant that we talked about food and design and sport all night, over dinner and a wine tasting, which couldn't have been better to be honest.

You might ask "what does an American know about football?" - but he doesn't need to as long as he knows about marketing and business partnerships which he clearly does and I now know someone who can get hold of Liverpool tickets which I think is called a 'football result'.

I also know that a top top chef is opening a new restaurant but I don't know where because I wasn't told but I do know who but I'm not going to say because this blog seems to get me into enough trouble as it is - blumen hell!

Le Parc

I collected Debrah from the airport on Friday at twelve thirty and we went straight to the restaurant for lunch. When I had phoned the day before to make a reservation for one-thirty, or 'treize et demi' (thirteen and a half - French custom dictates the use of the twenty four clock to communicate correctly) I was told in no uncertain terms that I musn't be any later than that. Right. It's almost as if they were doing me a favour by opening and serving food rather than me providing them with a living by turning up to eat and pay for our lunch. French arrogance never ceases to amaze me but I love it nonetheless.

As a result, we hot-footed it around Carcassonne to 'Le Parc', a newly decorated Michelin-starred restaurant, situated in a quiet road, intrigingly called 'chemin des Anglais' right underneath the Cite. This restaurant was opened a couple of years ago and Frank Putelat, the chef has, apparently, spent a fortune on the build and design, as well as going all out to get that revered Michelin star.

We were there by one o'clock and the car park was absolutely stuffed - clearly we were late. Indeed the restaurant was packed to the point where we felt a bit self-conscious walking to our table when everyone else was already past the aperiftif stage and onto first or even second courses.

The place was clearly expensively, though not necessarily tastefully, designed. Everything seemed to say that they were trying just a little bit too hard to impress - the monogrammed plates and butter pats, the carved stone cutlery holders with precise dents for fork. knife and spoon, the red tinted water glasses, the piped birdsong in the toilets, the crazy Philippe Starck type designer coffee cups with bent Uri Geller spoons hanging off them - it was all a bit extreme.
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Which would have been fine if the food had lived up to the hype. I had been told that the fixed price lunch menu was superb and excellent value for money. Sadly, the reality didn't live up to the billing - the canapes and the petit fours were excellent but the three courses in between were a bit of a disappointment, which was a real shame. When we can afford it, we would love to come back and try the rest of the menu including the bizarrely named 'Action .... Reaction' menu where the chef chooses your food and you pay a very large amount of money for the privilege!

As it was, the food and everything else didn't really matter because all we were interested in was seeing each other. If the coffee cups really had been able to hover, as I imagined they should, then maybe this blog would have had a different emphasis, but then again, maybe not.