Barbra Austin

This has to be one of the most useful signposts in all of Rome, communicating two things every tourist needs to know: How to get to the airport and how to get to the gelato.

Though I’ve eaten there twice and enjoyed both meals immensely, I have no photos to share of Le Cotte Rôti. It’s not because I didn’t have my camera: I have learned to take it everywhere I go. The fact is that I don’t really enjoy taking pictures of my lunch or dinner. I mean, who does that? Who takes pictures of their asparagus soup?

Oh right. I do.

If I were the type of person who had her whole life mapped out, I never would have had lunch at Itinéraires last Wednesday.

At La Cabane à Huitres, you can eat the only oysters in France still cultivated in direct contact with the sand and mud of the sea, without a protective bag. Francis Dubourg, the patron and a fourth generation ostréiculteur in the Arcachon basin, says he is the last one in France to do it this way, and he does it in the name of that very French concept of terroir. The sacks, you see, act as a kind of filter, and M. Dubourg believes that his oysters are more flavorful for being grown in the buff.

I went to L’Écume St. Honoré for a half dozen spéciales, but it’s a single scallop that I keep thinking about.

One of these days I will plan ahead far enough that I can actually secure a table for dinner at Le Comptoir. But until then, lunch will do just fine.

This is a little late, I suppose, a little autumnal for early March. But every stand at the greenmarket seems to be selling apple cider these days, and there are still some Bosc pears to be had, long in storage and looking for a home.

I am familiar with most of the more common cuts of meat, but I simply cannot commit to memory the full lexicon of butchery. I can’t remember what comes from where and which is better for what. It’s a recurring resolution of mine, to learn every name of every part of the cow/pig/lamb, but I’ve yet to make good on it.

If I need meat, I call Florence.