EATS

While in France, I met with a group of food writers I had known only online, and one day's activity was to shop the Saturday market at Perigueux (pictured), then return to the tower and prepare a meal.

To reiterate, the tower is just that: a tower, with an internal diameter of 3 meters, about 10 feet, that you can rent for a back-country getaway. It probably dates from the Hundred Years War, but no one is sure whether it was a hunting tower or a guard tower. It has little openings for crossbows. Nichola Fletcher (Charlemagne's Tablecloth) and husband John have finished it out so that there's a kitchen on the first floor, bath on the second and bedroom on the third, topped by a tiny loft that holds another bed.

The group of us drove to the market at heart of old Perigueux, held on adjoining medieval squares. To reach them, we had to walk the old, original cobblestone streets. We fanned out, each with his menu assignment: Mine was salad.

You're invited to join beer-lovers around the world in raising a toast to English writer Michael Jackson , as well as raise money to fight Parkinson's disease, which contributed to his death on Aug. 30. The National Toast takes place locally at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium in Addison, honoring the memory of the critic who has probably done more to improve beer's stature in the world than anyone else. He was 65 when died of Parkinson's and diabetes. No crying in your beer, now. The Flying Saucer is at 14999 Montfort.

Nice weather for hitting the farmers market. Look for some late-summer local stuff like pinto beans, some peas, onions, red new potatoes, persimmons, cucumbers and watermelons, as well as yellow straight-neck and zucchini squash. Some of the dealers will have new-crop fall apples, pears, carrots and more from out-of-state. The fall ornamentals like pumpkins, corn and gourds aren't local either, but they're fun for invoking the spirit of fall. Downtown market: Open Saturday and Sunday, 1010 S. Pearl.

Meanwhile, here are highlights from FM1410: Tom Spicer's still got chard from Stonewall Jackson Elementary as well as loads of not-local mushrooms, including Abalone, Maitake, Blue Chanterelles, Lobster and others. He's also got fresh huckleberries. From other points southeast, he's bringing in sorrel, green tomatoes, baby okra and peas, sweet white corn, wild and baby arugula, tons of fresh herbs, and baby head lettuces. The store's at 1410 Fitzhugh near Bryan. Open till 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Better hurry up if you were planning to propose at Antares. (A lot of romance-minded people actually do that, we hear.)

Reunion Tower, that 29-year-old landmark in the southwest corner of downtown Dallas, will be closing in mid-November for a makeover. And Antares -- the revolving restaurant atop the tower -- will be closing along with it.

But only temporarily. When it comes back in a year, the restaurant space will be reconfigured and combined with the adjacent lounge space.

Read about Reunion Tower's facelift.

Many tasty Texas treats were on offer at Thursday night's preview party at the Food and Fiber Pavilion at the State Fair of Texas. Why, then, did I end the evening eating dog food?

Bark for Peace, based in Austin (where else?), offers "100% human-grade" dog treats. The idea is to take a snack break with your dog.

Ever the curious reporter, I agreed to nibble a patch of sweet potato jerky. It tasted like nicely seasoned, not-too-sweet fruit leather. Not that I like fruit leather all that much. I drew the line at the bone-shaped biscuit.

Bark For Peace treats are sold mostly in Austin, but look for them at the Texas Department of Agriculture shop in the Food & Fiber Pavilion during the fair.

Our colleagues over on the Religion blog remind us that the Greek Food Festival of Dallas is this weekend at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church.

A festival lunch and dinner will be served, and many foods will be available a la carte at booths. Cooking demos start tonight at 6:30 p.m. and resume at 12 noon on Saturday and Sunday.

Besides lots of Greek dishes, there will be entertainment by American Idol's dishy Greek, singer and soap star Constantine Maroulis (right). And believe it or not, according to the festival schedule, Constantine himself will be showing the crowd how to make koulouria -- Greek butter cookies -- at 9:30 p.m. tonight.

Flight delayed at D-FW? If you’re in Terminal D, the Grand Hyatt DFW can help fill empty time as well as an empty stomach with its new iTaste and Virtual Menu programs. For $25, you check out an Ipod at the Über Coffee Bar. A video podcast guides you through a cheese, wine or chocolate tasting. For hearty eaters, the nearby Grand Met lets you create you own dining experience with food and wine pairings at the touch of a screen. Both services offered on the lobby level of the hotel. Go to www.grandhyattdfw.com for more details

Stopped in last evening as chef Avner Samuel and his wife, Celeste, celebrated five years in business at Aurora.

There were champagne toasts and, for hors d'oeuvres, an assortment of tiny crostini topped with some of Avner's favorite ingredients: foie gras and fig, beef tartare, and lobster, avocado and caviar.

Guests got to take home an elegant little book filled with recipes for some of Avner's signature dishes. While we doubt we would ever get ambitious enough to try making Aurora's amuse-bouche, a brown eggshell filled with egg custard (this recipe is for the wild-mushroom ragout and maple-syrup cream version), the carmel avocado parfait is something we would actually attempt. Just as soon as we can afford some Royal Iranian Osetra Caviar.

Avner told us he is getting this year's very first shipment of white truffles to reach the U.S. He's planning to use a special new see-through humidor that'll allow guests to view the truffles before opening the box for a sniff. He will be serving the truffles (which are from Alba, Italy) next week, Wednesday through Saturday. To reserve for the special truffle menu, call 214-528-9400.

(Shay Forson photo of Celeste and Avner Samuel, courtesy of Aurora)

You might think of the State Fair as being more of a biergarten kind of place -- but lovers of the grape will also have a place to gather during October, which is Texas Wine Month.

The State Fair of Texas Wine Garden will let fairgoers explore the world of Lone Star winemakers. The state has 135 wineries and 210 commercial vineyards in operation, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture, which is presenting the wine garden with sponsorship by Kroger.

There will be scheduled tastings throughout the Fair, which starts today and goes through Oct. 21. Experts will answer questions and conduct "Wine 101" classes for those who want to learn more.

You can find the Texas Wine Garden on Nimitz Drive, across the street from the Creative Arts Building.

I was listening to KLIF-AM this morning when local PR guy and Slow Foodie Brian Cummings came on to talk about his cookbook, Get This Cookbook First: It's Full of Stuff Mom Should Have Taught You. Brian polled his kids' friends to find out what they wanted to know to set up their first kitchens, and this is the result. "I teach 'em what a knife is, how to buy a saucepan...." Brian said on the show. The book contains 100 recipes, shopping lists, shortcuts for seasoning and more. Sounds very cool for new-crop cooks.You get it at www.lulu.com/briancummings for $19.19 plus a $2.50 download fee. The Atmos Energy cooking site also uses a lot of the recipes and information, if you want a preview.

One of Napa Valley's premier wineries is Opus One, a cab-based Bordeaux-style blend that debuted in 1978 as a joint venture for Robert Mondavi and the Baron Philippe de Rothschild.

So for North Texas oenophiles, it's big news that Bijoux will be debuting the 2004 Opus One wines in Dallas.

Chef-owner Scott Gottlich and his wife, sommelier Gina Gottlich, have planned a wine dinner for Oct. 17, with a vertical tasting of the Opus One wines. Each of the four courses in this meal will be paired with an Opus One vintage from 2001, 2002, 2003 and finally the debut of 2004. Guests also will attend a pre-dinner reception at 6:30 p.m., with caviar and hors d’oeuvres accompanied by a 1995 vintage Krug Champagne.

Chef Gottlich's menu has a first course of toro (Japanese belly tuna) and foie gras, followed by squab with ravioli, then an entrée featuring Kobe beef and lobster, with bittersweet chocolate cranberry cake for dessert.

The event is $500 per person. For reservations, call 214-350-6100.

I ate foie gras so often in France that I almost had to say, "Oh no, not foie gras again."

Nah. That didn't happen. But there definitely were two peak experiences with the wonderful stuff.

One was when my host in Saussignac, Henry Stuart (right), whipped up a little foie gras at home on the last night of my visit. This is the same Henry Stuart that built Addison Airport. Moniseur Henri lives half the time in Dallas and half at Chateau Fongrenier-Stuart, his rambling, 400-year-old chateau near Bergerac.

The other peak moment was pate-stuffed, plumped figs at a gathering of some writer friends at a tiny, remodeled tower (more about in a moment) halfway between Bergerac and Perigueux.

Casey Thompson, executive chef at Dallas restaurant Shinsei, is one challenge away from potentially winning Bravo TV's third season of Top Chef.

Despite leaving her elk chops a little too rare, and serving a cauliflower side dish criticized by lead judge Tom Colicchio, Ms. Thompson made it to the final round of the competition during Wednesday night's episode.

Read the full story by Bill Addison.

This week, Restaurant Critic Bill Addison reviews two new burger joints in Fort Worth: Dutch's Hamburgers from chef Grady Spears and Pappas Burger, which gets its ground meat from its sibling restaurant Pappas Bros. Steakhouse. Bill also takes a first look at Fearing's in his Diner's Notebook column (Fearing's starred review will be published later in the fall).

Also reviewed this week are Arlington's Cacharel and Plano's Shandiz Mediterranean Grill and Market.

Do you agree? Disagree? Leave a comment below.

The San Diego-based buffet chain Sweet Tomatoes is set to open its first Dallas-area location Oct. 15 at 15225 Montfort Dr. in Addison, east of the Dallas North Tollway and across from Prestonwood Town Center. It will be open daily for lunch and dinner, serving a rotating menu of more than 100 dishes including salads, soups, pastas, muffins and desserts. Sweet Tomatoes also will be open on Sundays at 9 a.m. with a special breakfast menu.

If you're into interior design, you've surely heard of the immortal Dorothy Draper, who was recently the subject of an exhibit at the Women's Museum. Dorothy designed the interiors for Dallas' own Stoneleigh Hotel. But we bet she never designed her own coffee brand. Her protege, Carleton Varney (who continues to run Dorothy Draper & Co.) has done that very thing. Carleton Coffees come in nine regular and five decaf varieties, all arabica beans from coffee-growing regions such as Hawaii, Sumatra, Guatemala and Kenya. To order online: www.carletoncoffees.com.

My trip took me to Perigord, the foie gras capital of the world.

Cover your ears and shut your eyes now if you Don’t Want To Hear About It.

I’m not about to defend the French foie gras industry any more than I would defend any kind of factory farming. But foie gras is as seminal to the French food experience as steak is in Texas. Besides, in a fit of hypocrisy for which I do not apologize, foie gras is one of my favorite foods.

The best foie gras stop: an artisanal ferme auberge in Lunas between Perigueuex and Beregac. La Ferme de Biorne has a restaurant, and my food-writer colleagues with me explained that 90 percent of what it serves must be produced on the farm. Since this was a duck farm (happy ducks pictured), foie gras was on the menu. And since we were food writers, we got to see the duck-to-pate process.

I'm still mulling over the chocolate tortilla chips I posted on a coupla days ago.

Too odd for good junk food by themselves, I decided. But what about as as the base of a more elaborate tower 'o junk? Like: Top the chip with a dollop of whipped cream. Add sliced berries. Shake on some chocolate sprinkles (or grate on some good chocolate if you want to go top-shelf). Drizzle with caramel sauce.

Messy enough to be an honorable homage to the original nacho, I'd think. I wonder how it would taste?

If you are a normal American of any age, you probably love cupcakes -- something that every bakery in America has discovered in the past few years.

But as the New York Times' Sarah Kershaw wrote on Sunday:

The cupcake is at something of a crossroads. Edible icon of Americana, frosted symbol of comfort and innocence, it may not have faced such an identity crisis since first appearing in cookbooks sometime in the 18th century.As we know, cupcakes have had a whopping resurgence: they are retro-food chic, the thing to eat for people in the know. But cupcakes have also recently been marched to the front lines of the fat wars, banned from a growing number of classroom birthday parties because of their sugar, fat and “empty calories,” a poster food of the child obesity crisis. This was clear when children returned to school this month to a tightening of regulations, federal and state, on what can be served up between the bells. And it has led some to wonder whether emotional value, on occasion, might legitimately outweigh nutritional value.

On this cupcake dilemma, I come down firmly on the pro-cupcake-as-school-birthday-treat side. Of course, my kid was in elementary school 20 years ago, before cupcakes were chic, and also before childhood obesity was such a problem. But I doubt my daughter would have many fond memories of her schoolroom birthdays, if I'd turned up in her classroom with a plate of crudites and a bowl of yogurt dip.

(DMN file photo: Cupcakes from Tart Bakery)

We finally had dinner this weekend at Doug Brown's long awaited Cliff Cafe at the Belmont Hotel. (Locals have already dubbed it "the Cliff".)

It was the food equivalent of being nestled in mother's arms. A skillet of hot mac and cheese was a stringy delight with homemade cheese sauce, fresh basil and tomatoes. The chicken fried steak (top left) was piled high with grilled vegetables and a hearty homemade gravy. Other must-haves include the steaming Bourbon pecan pie topped with melting vanilla ice cream and the Belmontini cocktail.

Embrace the carbs. I did.

Next month's issue of Decanter magazine (November) looks at the carbon imprint of wineries. But even before it hits the newsstands comes this tout from Cono Sur Vineyards & Wineries, some of whose vineyards are located way, way, way down in southern Chile.

The winery is the first in the world to achieve global CarbonNeutral delivery status in accordance with the CarbonNeutral Co., which evaluates CO2 emissions from shipping and helps companies achieve a zero balance through offsets. One of those for Cono Sur is support of a wind-energy project in Turkey.

Cono Sur wines are available locally. I can't wait to see how the rest of the wineries shake out.

Hot gossip overheard: Stephan Pyles has apparently signed a letter of intent for a restaurant space not too far from his current eponymous spot. It will supposedly be a more casual concept, along the caliber of Houston’s, which will serve lunch and dinner seven days a week. Early projections estimate the place opening around March or April 2008. More details forthcoming as they emerge.

Let me set this up for you: The lamb at right was part of a smallish dinner at the home of Robert Drouhin, patriarch of Burgundy’s Maison Joseph Drouhin wine family, who lives in Beaune, the region’s winemaking nerve-center. The table included me; three other journalists; Robert; two of his children (winemaker Veronique and viticulturist Philippe); Veronique’s husband; and Drouhin’s publicist.

We had worked our way through several courses when the lamb arrived – sorry I shook the camera a bit – prepared according to an old family recipe, Robert said. Exquisitely caramelized yet astonishingly tender, the meat played against nothing more than herbs and its own bright juices, having been left to braise for seven hours. No knife needed.

Robert explained that “the idea is to extract the best of what it is.” Which of course goes for lamb or wine. Or, in this case, both. To caress the simple, elegant dish, he brought out a 1985 Griotte-Chambertin Grand Cru. The lamb was like a sluce that opened the floodgates to the wine's lustrous, mahogany flavors: think smoky figs, dried cherries and clean hay-straw. And the interplay went on and on. Was I on a roll, or what?

I was ecstatic to hear that my favorite barbecue joint, Hard Eight, had finally made a foray into the Metroplex, opening a restaurant in Coppell. Before I could make a visit, reviewer Kim Harwell awarded them a single star -- "generally disappointing" in the lingo of the star system.

This was not good news. For my money ($8.99 a pound, to be exact), the original location in Stephenville consistently turns out the best ribs in the state. Last weekend I needed a rib fix, and we decided not to take any chances: We would head for Stephenville. Before we left, my sister the bullriding fan called to remind me to be on the lookout for Ty Murray, whose ranch is near Stephenville.

We didn't see Ty, but the ribs were worth every one of the 253 miles we drove that day. I ordered five -- hey, the guy was slicing from the short end of the rack -- but wisely stashed one in a to-go container. The ribs, coated in coarse black pepper, were textbook: smoky, meaty and moist, not fatty. The bones slid right out as I picked each one up.

I've been to the Brady location a few times and it's never quite up to the Stephenville spot.

Tell us: Have you been to any of the Hard Eight locations, and how was the food? Where else do you go for ribs?

I don't blame Christopher Wynn for feeling suckered over the inflated plant price at Home's Depot's Landscape Supply. I'm not as miffed as he was, but I am curious what makes a head of frissee at Central Market worth twice the price of bulk frissee. Over where the heads are tucked, the price is $9.99 a pound (and no, it's not a mistake). But walk 10 feet further and the loose, bulk frissee is $4.99 a pound. So you pay an extra $5 for what? The privilege of pulling it apart yourself?

A resort in Sri Lanka is charging $14,500 for "a fruit infused confection complete with a chocolate sculpture and a gigantic gemstone," according to the AP. It's called the Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence.

Languid lunches have become a lost art. It’s the nature of our culture right now: We’re all too antsy and over-scheduled to sit at a table in the middle of the day for any length, and most restaurants have reacted by scaling back their offerings to light, simple (often overly simple) fare that doesn’t inspire lingering.

But my friend Ralphie and I had a lunch at Toulouse over the weekend that reminded me how pleasurable a slow afternoon meal can be.