We sorted out our stuff and arranged it in the appropriate rooms
and found Ian and Jacquie had a basket of snacks laid out for us
with an assortment of beers from Brasserie de la Vezere, the semi-
local craft brewery in Uzerche, about which more later. Cheese
sticks, possibly homemade or from the bakery down the road, potato
chips, regular and the shockingly weird Lay's roast chicken flavor.

As they were out for the evening, they'd made reservations at
this place down at the foot of the hill, where the semi-grumpy
cook and his thoroughly grumpy partner-waiter greeted us, the
latter vouchsafing that four was as many clients as he cared to
serve, and he wished that the other two (a French couple) would
go away; Lilli having stayed home sick in bed, she wasn't there
to fan his misogynistic flame.

Our table off at the end was the site of a number of pleasant
but not hugely memorable meals in years past when there was
nothing that called our names from La Souvigne's pantry.

The meal started with an amuse of butternet soup with cepe oil,
actually okay but with a touch of the dreaded blue cheese.

What was represented on the list as Larrivet Haut Brion 15 turned
out to be the Bordeaux de Larrivet Haut Brion, a lesser wine in
the same way that Mouton Cadet is lesser to Mouton Rothschild.
No wonder the price was so advantageous. Nonetheless, it was a
perfectly average Cabernet-Merlot, quenching and intoxicating
but not massively interesting.

I got the formule, starting with salad with thin slices of smoked
magret, a not too generous amount of protein, a substantial amount
of greens, in an unimpeachable balsamic vinaigrette, followed
by civet de boeuf with beer, a take on carbonnades but supposedly
thickened with blood (this I highly doubt). It was sweetish and
okay, not a patch on the stuff served farther north. On the side,
tartiflette aka au gratin potatoes, with a blob of chard and other
vegetable trimmings. A mache salad.

For afters, an okay chocolate mousse with sliced strawberries on
the side and a glass of decent quite ordinary Port.

Swisher had a steak frites, pretty good all around, with nicely
done frites. Again, the cut of beef was unidentifiable, partly
because they butcher animals differently in France.

Toward the end of the evening, a German couple came in, and the
waiter, whose name I forget because it's Frisian, perked up,
practicing his not so great charm and not so great German on them.

At length we took our leave, with Michael the proprietor reminding
us to look both ways when crossing the highway, as he can't afford
to lose customers to such things as death. Remember, he said, the
French drive like maniacs. That's because they are, I growled back.

We returned jollily to the gite and installed ourselves comfortably
in our respective abodes. Lilli was decidedly under the weather, so
Pepsi Max had been her dinner, worse for her.
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