Dijon Day 2: Wine and Food

Today is Friday in Dijon, and despite still being rather tired, we fully invested ourselves in the local culture of wine and gastronomy (and some art, too). The day began with a visit to Les Halles, the main marketplace for the city. To be honest, I wasn’t sure where it was exactly, so I just followed an old woman pulling a shopping cart, and sure enough, she led me right there.

 

Oh, how I wish I could do all my shopping here, at the fishmonger, the meat market, the farm stand, the cheese seller, the tea trader, the olive seller, etc. etc. There was beautiful, fresh food for miles. Nothing from a tin, or in a box. Nothing overly processed. Nothing but the most beautiful ingredients for the home cook. Very jealous.

 

To make myself feel better, I turned to today’s Pastry of the Day: A gorgeous apricot tart, which I enjoyed with a cup of green tea at an outdoor café. 

                                        Great morning of people-watching near the marketplace.

 

John joined me mid-morning, and we headed to the Musee des Beaux Arts, which is the second largest art museum in France (only the Louvre is bigger), with 130,000-plus artworks from ancient to modern. It’s housed in the former palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, who lived there until the French Revolution booted them out. Some of them, however, rest here for eternity.

  

The tomb of Philip the Bold in Marble and Alabaster. 

Self-portrait by Yan Pei-Ming, a Chinese painter who studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon.

A portrait of Francois Pompon, a sculptor who is famous for his stylized animals. His polar bear, which he made for the 1922 Salon d’Automne in Paris, is here in Darcy Park, where I visited it this morning. I’m not the only one to take a selfie with the bear, as you can see in the photo below from the Nazi occupation.

Fortunately, Dijon’s buildings were spared from a lot of destruction. The Jews here sadly were not.

 

We returned to the City of Gastronomy for lunch prepared by the chef du cuisine. The highlight of the meal was this decomposed gazpacho made into salad, with mozzarella mousse on top. Simple and the most delicious. 

John’s trout was also beautifully composed on a sea of puréed baby peas.

   
After lunch we attended a workshop with a sommelier and viticulture expert who taught us about Burgundy wines (Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) and the impact of the climate on various vintages. All in all, a damned good day!