Continuing the journey … this night was special, at @pimpantsete, a bar à vin in Sète, just opened by our friend @mariepimprenelle, who many people will remember for her brilliant work in the wine bar at the Dolphin Hotel in Sydney. And the wine we drank, Zingara, is made another strong and brilliant woman, @mylenebru! The bar is what you want it to be - a place to drop in for a snack (like fried small fish) but with a menu that’s substantial enough to make a meal, with dishes like like this lamb tartare!

Behind Banyuls-Sur-Mer @vinaigrerie_la_guinelle_ is where the magic happens, including the spiced Banyuls Rouge vinegar in the bottles at the back in this first photo. It’s an indirect infusion of spices, which you can see in the bags below the lids. The spices are not submerged but the daily heating and cooling of the vinegar (it evaporates then cools and returns as a liquid) means it gently passes by the spices. The spices are only introduced in this final phase in demijohn. Prior to that the vinegar ages in barrels. The usually bubbling creek that runs the length of the vinaigrerie is dry though, the story of a harsh summer with no rain. The perles are tiny bubbles of vinegar formed with an alginate (we are very close to Ferran Adrià country!). They are very beguiling. La Guinelle can be visited for a tasting without an appointment on week days (not at lunch time of course) if you are travelling in this part of France. In the meantime we are about to release quite a selection!

Carbo - a dog who knows how to stay cool on a hot afternoon on the middle of September in the south of France!

Exploring the vines of @mataburro.vins with Laurent Roger and Mélissa Ingrand, our conversation was as much about how to protect and enhance the soil, and the difficulty of achieving that when faced with months on end of heat and no rain, as it was about wine. And there was plenty of family history too. Most of their vines were planted by Laurent’s grandfather and father, including some they were able to purchase recently (the previous owner wanting Laurent to have them because of the family connection). These first photos are from their largest plot on the outskirts of Rivesaltes (3 hectares of vines always in the family, including the 80 year old Grenache vines that make Otium). There is also a little Carignan, Grenache Gris, and Macabeu, all harvested together. In the same place, but with much more clay, is merlot, planted by his father, and about 30 years old. Photo 1 and are of the Merlot and 2 is the grenache - metres apart but quite different A second plot (2.3 hectares) is in Espira-de-l’Agly. These are the vines which they were able to buy but which were planted by Laurent’s grandfather. It’s a mix of clay with lots of rolled pebbles in the soil. The Macabeu for Memo comes from here. Photo 4 and 5 are taken here. The last photos, just a few kms north-west are dramatically different. It’s partly black schist but sections are also limestone and quartz. There is virtually no soil, just rock. Both parts total slightly less than a hectare, with Mourvèdre and Grenache. The country is a little wilder here so unfortunately boars raid the vines! So much variation in the places the work. This tour of the vines was very important for us. At such a busy time of year we are especially grateful.

It’s been a while between posts but even though this lunch was a couple of weeks ago it’s still firmly planted in our minds. @_oiseau_oiseau_ is the restaurant Sven Chartier, whose Paris restaurant Saturne we had always loved, opened with his wife Marianne last year in country France. (He also visited Sydney many years ago to cook a meal we enjoyed very much at Sixpenny.) This was a perfect lunch, a seasonal celebration of some wonderful produce, eaten in a dining room full of laughter, children and pleasure. Green beans, figs (variety Bourjassotte, which we have not knowingly eaten before) and fresh goat cheese Clams hidden by lardo and with a hint of pumpkin (the ancient variety tromba d’Albenga, which seemed fitting with lardo di Colonnata) House-made bread Stunning ris de veau and young chicken, both served with crisp potatoes and tomatoes and a dollop of a yellow tomato purée seasoned with Vietnamese mint, perhaps the only hint of his more complicated cooking at Saturne. To finish strawberry sorbet, strawberries and shiso and mirabelle plums with vanilla ice cream topped with an arlette (the last photo shows what was underneath it). A delicious wine list, both by the bottle and glass (eg bubbles by the glass were Bouju Festejar and Charles Dufour #10, the former our apero and the latter with dessert). About 2 hours west of Paris in the beautiful Perche region, it’s a restaurant to travel for!

Sunday lunch at @le_doyennerestaurant_ - not all the dishes and not always in the order they arrived. We particularly wanted to start the photos with this salad served with the cheese, which we ate outside late in the afternoon, in sight of the garden it came from. You can only serve something as seemingly simple as this if you have utmost confidence in your produce. It was beautifully dressed with a complex (because of the intensity of the flavours) herb-flecked dressing but the real creators of this dish were the gardeners. So thank you @t_spreds and the team of people you are part of - possibly also still @surrealjamesnelson and others we don’t know. The second photo is a gaspacho - and it can happily become our template for what gaspacho should be. Lots of length and a silky but not silky texture. The perfect expression of the first summer at @le_doyennerestaurant_ and a reminder that great dishes don’t need reinventing. We chose a photo of the canette after we spoiled the plating but to show the polenta, made from this season’s corn. It was even more memorable than the meat. And some more things, not everything, are here too, as well as some of the best bread you will taste. There are no compromises here and there is a team of wonderful people who cooked for and served us, each going out of their way to add to our memorable meal. Merci beaucoup to all of you. A very good return to Europe after such a long time!

Follow us into @le_doyennerestaurant_, a project that sounded so daunting when @james_edward_henry_ and @shaunbarneykelly began to describe it many years ago. We walked through the space with them in April 2019, years after hearing their vision, and marvelled at the intricacy of their planning and their capacity to imagine, as we walked around a near-derelict building exactly what they would create. In the meantime, as the plans slowly came to fruition, they worked full time to establish the garden, becoming small-scale farmers along the way. There is a team of gardeners now but all the planning and the initial spadework was done by them and for some years, as well as managing this building project, they sold their vegetables to some of Paris’s best restaurants. During covid lockdowns if you lived in Paris you could order boxes of vegetables to collect from friends’ cafes and shops. As they planned, they are sourcing all the vegetables and fruit used in the dining room from the property. It’s a goal of so many but so rarely achieved. It also adds a certain frisson to menu planning. Much more will be written about them and inevitably the tables will become harder to secure. Ideally we would want to eat here at least once every season because the menus inevitably will be so different. For the moment though we feel an immensely lucky to have made it, especially with tomatoes at their peak and the most glorious weather. A truly wonderful day, and somehow even better knowing James had spent time before service separating and tattooing pigs. This is not a venture by celebrity chefs. There’s a photo specifically for you too @emgillies

Just a bunch of Tasmanians who weren’t really planning to see each other drinking a bottle of @dmeure’s 2013 Tasmanian Pinot Noir with @james_edward_henry_ and @tibo_ch after service at @le_doyennerestaurant_. Thanks so much Dirk for entrusting us to deliver it!

It was a long, hard journey - from Hobart to Paris via LHR (about 36 hours in planes and airports) - but we can’t think of a better way to start the recovery than with these vegetable dishes at @delicatessenplace. Delicious food that you can feel undoing the damage as you eat each mouthful. Thanks @hugh__corcoran for nourishing us when we were barely capable of making a decision. Our stomachs thank you too.