Brown Bag Discarded

I sold out Jeff Davis for Chez Foushee with nary a nerdy look back.

Just as I was getting dressed to go hear a brown bag lecture about the inauguration of Jefferson Davis at the Museum of the Confederacy, a friend called to ask, "What are you doing today?"

Chalk it up to my northern birthplace, but I forgot all about spending my lunch hour learning more about the Lost Cause and agreed to be at Chez Foushee twenty minutes later.

If nothing else, it was going to be a far shorter walk to the restaurant than it would have been to the MOC.

And it's not that there wasn't going to be any learning at lunch. Good conversation always leads to learning something or other.

Walking in, I was directed to my lunch buddy's table by one of the staff that knew him well.

We started with a bottle of Perrin et Fils Reserve Cotes du Rhone Blanc, because that's what restaurant people do and that's what he is.

Is there anything as delightful as honeysuckle notes at lunch?

As the ladies who populate Chez Foushee sat down all around us, I tucked into the seared Brussels sprouts salad with bacon, bleu down cheese, walnuts, red onion, fresh mint and  red wine vinegar.

A former boyfriend once told me that my favorite things were all strongly flavored (tequila, stinky cheese) and this salad proved his point in spades.

But it was the delicate mint undertones that really made this salad sing.

The salty bacon, the pungent bleu cheese, the strong-flavored Brussels sprouts were a combination made for those with strong tastes.

I loved it.

As we discussed the restaurant business, bad dates and clueless bartenders, it occurred to me that there was no way Jeff Davis could have been half as much fun.

I mean, I'm a history nerd par excellence, but there's nothing like a lunch that ends with that most old-school of all desserts, the molten chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and a little more wine.

Especially when surrounded by ladies who lunch and a man who likes his wine, liquor and men white.

In that order.