Joe Ray
Food & Travel / Words & Photos
EATING
THE
MOTHERLAND
Food writer and photographer Joe Ray's gastronomic visits in Europe - the home of his ancestors - and beyond.
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
ORACLE’S INSTINCT
I imagine people like Wylie Dufresne or Ferran Adrià sitting around conceiving dishes - thinking of flavor combinations, what goes with what and how to make it work. Three-star chefs also tend to try to dazzle – they work hard to blow your mind.
Jean-Marie Amat is like The Oracle – the little old lady from “The Matrix†who bakes cookies and knows the future – his conception process comes naturally. He just knows.
How else do you come up with a forkful of roasted squab coated with cinnamon, soy, cumin and powdered sugar? And how do you know that if you put a little bit of raw fennel tips from the garden on that same fork, your feet start doing the uncontrollable happy dance? He doesn’t need to set out to wow, it just happens.
It’s the last step in cooking - to know and execute as a matter of instinct and reflex. What else do you need after that?
There’s a customer who eats at Amat’s restaurant in the Chateau de la Prince Noir (love that name) once a month, all by himself. If Amat makes the rounds, they have a conversation that lasts about 30 seconds, max.
Eating by yourself is a skill that makes you call on your inner M.F.K. and half the time, you’re either self-conscious or bored out of your mind, plowing through a book and shoveling your food, alternately praying that the host will keep you company or leave you alone.
Here, by myself, I just wanted to learn by eating.
Lunch prix fixe 30€

Dinner prix fixe 50€

A la carte, count on 100€ without wine
Restaurant Jean-Marie Amat MAP

Château du Prince Noir

26 bis, rue Raymond Lis

Lormont, France

+33 5 56 06 12 52

http://www.jm-amat.com/

Full disclosure: I ate at Amat’s while working on a story for The Boston Globe and spent the first half of the dinner service in the kitchen shooting some of the photos. I paid my bill. I saw versions of what I ate go out to other customers and the only difference between my experience and theirs was that I knew what my meal would look like when I ordered it.
