THE REBELLIOUS POWER OF A SLOW LUNCH
Many still remember the pleasures of leisurely lunches, particularly those of us who grew up in places like France or Spain, at a time when all work used to come to a grinding halt and storefronts would shut down punctually in the middle of the day, while people returned home to their families or sat at their favourite restaurants to partake in two or three course meals, before retreating for an afternoon nap (yes, siestas where once a reality – can you imagine it?).
Filet de cabillaud poêlé et lentilles
But life inevitably moves on and things change. Some cherished rituals slide agonizingly into extinction, while new routines, good and bad, take hold.
Yet, all of us like to rebel in our own ways against the frantic onslaught of life’s demands and the relentless shouting for attention blinking and beeping from our portable devices
Some of us do it with food. We find it joyfully subversive that some restaurants, even in North America, stand as immovable epicurean heavens where the pleasures of the table take precedence over the race against the lunch clock.
Filet de bœuf à la sauce moutarde et gratin dauphinois
While perfectly willing and able to accommodate with maximum efficiency those of us who absolutely need to be “in-and-out in 45 minute or less”, these establishments nourish us with food that is anything but fast.
Our own Parisian brasserie, Le Pois Penché, in the middle of Montreal’s downtown hustle and bustle, is a bastion of slow food, where lunches come in the form of beautiful dishes whose components often require more than a day to prepare, as demanded by the traditional techniques of French comfort food: complex sauces, braised meats, slow-cooked duck and tuna confits, handmade pastas, fish filets cut with precision from the freshest catches of the day, refined classic desserts, and crates of lobsters, plump shrimps, oysters, and other wonders of the sea.
Crème brûlée with Madagascar vanilla
Our time constraints appear less constraining when we eat slow food and beautiful Cuisine with a capital C. Sometimes, we are even inspired to find proper excuses to extend our lunch, an hour or two, and enjoy good company for a little longer with another glass of Bordeaux.
French comfort food, the way it has been prepared for decades, sometimes centuries, and continues to be prepared at places like Le Pois Penché, is pure magic. It has the power to stop time in the middle of our day, if only for a few fleeting, but, oh, so delicious moments.
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