• Green bean and lobster salad with tomato-chervil vinaigrette
• Chanterelle mushroom and summer squash soup with fried squash blossoms
• Grilled Sonoma County Liberty duck breast with roasted figs and onion marmalade
• New crop Gravenstein apple tart with wild blackberry ice cream

What do you recommend to drink?

Wow, chez panisse. I've always wanted to go, you choose based on budget (and I hope someone else is paying...)

For whites:

• 2002 Sancerre, Les Monts Damnés, Pascal Cotat (this is one of my favorites, its sauv blanc from the best part of sancerre called Chavignol, incredible stuff, when you come here we can drink some)
• NV H.Billiot Rosé, Brut (believe it or not, champagne is food wine, this one is fantastic rose)
• 2002 Riesling, Heiligenstein, Bründlmayer, Austria will be incredible with lobster, 02 was a great vintage)
• 2001 Riesling, Gueberschwihr, Domaine Zind-Humbrecht (excellent value, great Alsatian Riesling will go well w/ lobter)

For reds:

• 1999 Saumur-Champigny, "Les Poyeux", Clos Rougeard (its an incredible bottle of wine and if I was with you I would insist we get this)
• 2002 Bandol, Domaine Tempier. (you kinda hafta try one of these at chez panisse as alice waters learned all she knows about cooking from lulu peyraud the owner of this estate, 2002 was a subpar vintage however)
• 1995 Nuits-Saint-Georges, Les Vaucrains, Robert Chevillon (ONLY if someone else is paying...)

For dessert: Get someone to buy you the bottle of avignonesi vin santo, its mind blowing stuff.

Let me know how it goes! Have fun!

There is not much time because I live like a savage these days and I have to leave the house in 10 minutes despite the fact that it is only 06H25.

Anyway, we didn't get any of the whites you mentioned because they didn't have the Sancerre you mentioned and I totally spaced on the Riesling. We got another Sancerre which was good — much better than the one we had the night before — whose name I've managed to forget because I am kind of an airhead, that way.

I will, however, remember 96 Clos Rougeard. Amazing. We were only three which, I know, is no excuse not to have ordered another bottle. By the end of the night, I was ready to order the Bandol (actually, I was ready to order another Saumur but we can pretend) but we were the last one's left standing and the staff looked ready to leave. Or at least ready to get out of the glare of all the people who kept tromping through the kitchen snapping their cameras while they maintained a creepy Alice is watching zombie-like calm.

Next time.

The food, too, was fantastic with the exception of the roasted potatoes which were noticeably out of place in their lameness. The duck, the salad (less for the lobster or any one ingredient than the combination and the dressing) and the mulberry ice cream were defintely the highlights.

We helped the busboy/waiter in training say fougeres rousse or at least we think that's what he was trying to say but passed on the cheese plate because, really, California has other strengths. We had a funny moment the night before with a French waiter discussing the possibility or impossibility of a "Morbier californien."

Okay. On that note, I am off. S. & M. are driving up the coast, I think, this afternoon to buy oysters and tonight we will eat at home; carbonara and profiterolles with the fresh eggs that came in the CSA box. We have a Sangiovese from Unti and whatever else they pick up along the way.