So, yes, we assume it's all the very best: artisan this and Côte de Nuits, organic tender baby things, happy meat from boutique pastures, all hand-chosen, harvested and delivered mere hours if not minutes from whatever appropriate field or root or reef of Earth, superlatively prepared, plated not with generic plebeian squirts, but Zagat Jackson Pollock.
The owners breed Charolais cows at their farm in Moravia, ensuring the meat is organic and tender.
But it is much more than just a pretty space: the food is hugely enjoyable, from starters like tuna tartare chopped and layered on wonton crisps and zesty beef empanadas (forget the less interesting cheese ones), to flavorful ostrich fillet in a seductive raisin-brandy sauce and tender organic calf's liver with caramelized onions and mashed potatoes.
The two leads exchange almost no dialogue throughout the film, yet the chemistry between them feels achingly real and tender, as organic as the dust on the ground.
Also noteworthy were twin venison chops with lingonberries, a half pear poached in red wine, chestnuts and red cabbage, and a classic coq au vin featuring three tender pieces of organic chicken in a wine-rich brown sauce with mushrooms, pancetta and pearl onions.
A roasted beet, arugula and Gorgonzola salad with pomegranate vinaigrette fits the bill, as does the pistachio-crusted salmon, a tender, pan-roasted slab of organic fish paved with a crunchy layer of ground pistachios and chopped herbs.
Appetizers include golden fried soy bean curd tossed in kochujan oyster sauce and served on a bed of organic mixed greens; green asparagus rolled in thin sliced marinated tender beef and seared; and diced Chinese eggplant fried to tender and seasoned with slightly spicy soy vinaigrette.
It was a time that we recall not for its principles — yes to organics, no to preservatives — but for its endless assaults on our tender young palates.
Less spectacular entrees were seared venison steak (tender and well cooked) in a fresh cranberry sherry glaze, and organic milk-fed veal steak in a slightly oversalted wild mushroom brandy sauce.
But it doesn't take much for this physicality to turn organic and primordial, for the zeppelin can also suggest the soft bulges and tender, shimmering skin of a huge chrysalis.
What right did I, or any of us, have to give them this kind of world to grow their tender hearts in?" At the time, I owned a small fair-trade, organic coffee company.
