Wednesday, January 14, 2009

All dessert, all the time

This is my last French Laundry post. I'm a little bit sad about it. No more reliving the meal through blogging and I'll probably never get to eat there again (at least not for 20 years or so). Oh well. All things must end.

We start with the first dessert course - a buttermilk sorbet with what I believe were candied walnuts (or pecans maybe?) and a sour cherry.


I took a little bite of it before I took the picture. Whoops!

We moved on to the choice of what I think was a yogurt panna cotta and berry sorbet with some kind of snow.....


Or some kind of pumpkin gelato and chocolate hazelnut mousse? I'm bad with desserts. Doesn't this one look like a train?


They both were really good. At this point, I got very sad. I was like "aw man, the meal is over. Boo hoo." And then the waiter set this down in front of me:


An empty silver plate. But why? I was so confused. Then he brought out this:


That's right, three tiers of petit fours! All handmade and delicious! My favorite was the salted caramel (that's very hip right now) and the chocolate eclair was great as well (oh yeah, we ate the whole tray. We don't do things half way). To accompany the over the top petit fours were these:


Chocolate covered caramelized macadamia nuts. Oh man. I'm salivating again. It's a good thing there's chocolate in my house now. Or maybe a bad thing.

At this point, we're like, okay it's really really over. No more meal. And then the waiter brought out these:


Handmade chocolate truffles! Coconut, passion fruit, yogurt, pumpkin and.....I forget the last one. But they all very great. And very shiny.

Then, you're really done. But they bring you little bags of shortbread to take home and eat later!


See the little clothespin next to the cookies? That was holding my napkin together. I stole it. It's in my purse.

Then we paid the bill (and by we, I mean Zack), and said goodbye to the French Laundry. Goodbye, blue door!


And back over the bridge we go.


Zack thought the fog was really cool. I tried to explain to him that this is very common in California, but he liked it a lot, so I took a picture. Oh California. I miss you.

3 comments:

Meredith said...

That is the best meal ever, and I'm insanely jealous that you ate there before me. You should tell my boyfriend that I'm not speaking to him until he takes me there. Just kidding. I'll talk to him, but I won't like it.

Those desserts are so pretty. But not too pretty to eat.

AHR said...

I would totally flip out if every time I thought the meal was over, they brought more stuff. Seriously, I would lose it. I'd be so happy.

Leila S. said...

You really are a good writer! I re-lived our wonderful experience at the French Laundry reading your blog. Your experience seems more decadent and wonderful than ours was. I think it is just the haze of "older" age and the distance of time (we did go there many moons ago) or it could just be that you described it so much better than I remember it.