Chef Laurent Peugeot's Le Charlemagne: An Excerpt

The restaurant oozes Japan. From the bamboo garden and waterfall at the entry to the virtual koi pond you walk across to enter the dining room. It's hard to remember that we are, in fact, in the heart of Burgundy wine country.

Chef himself greets us at the door and leads us to the dining room. He is young, handsome, tall, dark with a trendy and permanent two-day stubble, stylish black chef’s coat and pants. It’s the most interesting dining room of them all. Soft lights, hidden in the ceiling and at wainscotting level, change from red to green to blue, very subtly, very pleasing. There are eleven tables in the room seating a maximum of forty. At 8 PM tonight there are twenty diners, including us and a table of four from Chicago.

The table setting is lovely, very Japanese inspired. Chunks of slate hold the cutlery. Everything is coordinated, matching. It’s all glassware and white ceramics, including white ceramic water glasses. Each bowl in front of us has “LP” seemingly monogrammed on it, for chef Laurent Peugeot. There are live plants at the table, unlike the tacky fake plants we;bve seen recently. On the table is a a tall glass cylinder with tea light candle suspended at the top.

Things start out with a cool wet towel. Our server, who is also the sommelier, serves us the amuse bouche. The champagne served with it has a taste something like beer, yeasty, fizzy, very dry. The amuse is three globules of flavour. How do they keep the soupy substance inside the globule, I wonder? They are clever, unique, unusual, but are they truly satisfying?

At the next course I learn that the “LP” on the plates is not part of the ceramic but rather a flavour wipe we mop up with the seaweed "sponge" with girolle on top and a tomato sauce with onion crumble. The sommelier instructs us in how to wipe the seaweed course, then in how to eat the bread.

On the table is a tall, narrow-necked bottle with olive oil and, she tells us, a nori infusion. She lifts up the bottle to reveal a hollowed out bottom in which sits a petri dish of sea salt infused matcha green tea, a sandy brown colour. We are to pour the olive oil into the the designated bowl next to our plate, sprinkle on some of the salt, then dip our bread in it. This dip is superb...