RIDING THE <i> FOIE GRAS</i> EXPRESS

We were sitting in a cafe in Cassis, watching fishermen wander in and out of the restaurants along the old port. The air smelled of salt and licorice and the sun went skittering across the water. We had just finished the world’s best ratatouille-- eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers and onions cooked slowly into a sort of hearty jam. Patricia Wells was taking notes. “I cook the vegetables separately, madame,” said the proprietress, “and only combine them at the last minute.” Wells nodded sagely and wrote some more. James Villas looked up, pointed at Wells and in his impeccable French said: “In America, she is our Michelin.”

It’s true; no American interested in eating would think of leaving for France without a copy of Wells’ “Food Lover’s Guide to France” tucked under the arm. Wells has spent the last seven years eating her way through France, and she knows the edible landscape better than anybody. (The French think so highly of Wells that her book is now being translated by a French publisher.) In an increasingly industrialized nation, Wells has made it her mission to seek out the fast-fading France of handmade food; she knows which shepherds still make cheese, which bakers still use wood, and come fall you’ll find her in the countryside watching old-fashioned presses crush bitter black olives into liquid gold. And should you happen to find yourself in some little village off a back road in France, chances are that Wells knows the best bistro in town.

So when Patricia Wells invites you to spend six days in France with her, eating in all her favorite places, it’s a little like winning the lottery. Throw in Paula Wolfert, cookbook author extraordinaire (her recent “The Cooking of Southwest France” is the bible on the subject) and James Villas (author of “American Taste” another bible), and it starts to sound like food heaven.

At least until the schedule arrives, and the pace becomes apparent. We are, it appears, to dine in a different town each day. For a finale we will fly to Strasbourg in time for dinner and depart the next morning at dawn. Do sane people behave this way? Will I survive the foie gras express?

Poudenas (Gascony)

Wells and Wolfert have been greeted with little cries of pleasure while Villas stood off to one side, looking slightly annoyed. Three hundred and nine people live in this old stone village, which is 17 kilometers from Nerac in the heart of Gascony; most of them, it seems, were standing by the side of the road to wave us in. But now Marie-Claude Gracia, chef and owner of La Belle Gasconne, is standing in the shade of a huge chestnut tree, stroking a dead duck. “Feel this,” she says, pushing down toward the tail of the duck. “Can you tell where the foie gras stops and the harder fat begins? This will be a very nice foie .”

You can, in fact, feel that point where the liver ends. Still, it is a surprise when Madame Gracia cuts the bird open and exposes the enormous fatted liver that fairly fills the cavity. She sets it off to one side and begins to cut off the magrets , the breasts. Picking the duck up, she inhales and says, “I love the smell of the fat.” It has a fresh, almost buttery scent. In two strokes of her knife the duck is nothing but a carcass. “I wish I could do it that simply,” says Wells, looking wistfully at the bare bones and adding that, simply grilled, this is among her favorite foods. “Ah yes,” says Gracia, “I’d like to serve grilled carcass, but it is not a restaurant dish. It must be eaten with the fingers, with a big napkin tied around the neck.” She sniffs and adds, “I wouldn’t serve it to people who would eat it with a fork.”

The meal she does serve us in the cool, ancient stone restaurant is strictly fork food, but it is quite incredible. To begin there is foie gras --more foie gras than I have ever seen in one place--scooped onto the plates and served with grilled country bread. The terrine is unctuous, almost painfully delicious, and so generously served that for the first time in my life I am faced with too much foie gras . “Stop me,” says Villas, “before I hurt myself.” It is served with a cool local Jurancon wine. Then there is Chateau de Gueyze, another local wine, to drink with the civet de canard , a homey stew of duck cooked in its own blood. With it are little cornmeal cakes called armottes , which have been sauteed in lots of butter, and zucchini cooked in nothing but cream. The zucchini is soft and rich and filled with flavor.

Then there is fromageon , fresh soft goat cheese mashed with sugar and splashed with Armagnac; it is like a grown-up version of the petit suisses favored by French children.

Now the desserts arrive: millas , an eggy, bright yellow flan rich with soft black prunes that taste like they have been soaked in Armagnac for eons. There is an opulent gateau au chocolat and a sorbet made of melon so flavorful that its perfume comes wafting through the ice. “Is this a Cavaillon melon?” asks Wells. Gracia looks offended at the very idea that she would use a Provencal product. “This melon is not a foreigner,” she says earnestly, “it came from just down the road.”

And that, of course, is what is so wonderful about the food here; everything on the table came from down the road, and with each forkful you inhale the flavor of the land.

We have much the same experience later in the day, when Wells leads us into the nearby Domaine de Cazeaux. Here Armagnac producer Michel Kauffer, a toothpick of a man, takes us through his chai . The operation seems so simple, Kauffer so very low-key, that I dream, barely paying attention, my mind still on ducks. Then we start tasting, and as the Armagnac flows out of the barrel and into my glass I suddenly start listening; this is wonderful stuff. Just-made Armagnac is a clear liquid, but it gets progressively darker as it sits in the barrels. Kauffer tosses back his glass of Armagnac, puts his hand over the empty glass and swirls it. Then he lifts his hand. “Smell,” he says. It has the exact odor of prunes.

There are no prunes in Armagnac--it’s made entirely from grapes. But this is a land of ducks and prunes, and their flavor permeates the soil.

“You know,” says Wells as we leave, “an amazing number of French people have never been to Paris. When I was working on the book, I discovered that to country people the fact that I was coming from Paris made me more foreign than the fact that I was not French.”

Bordeaux

Riding in a car, it is only a few hours to Bordeaux, but taken non-linearly it is quite a leap. The twisting country lanes smooth out into neat roads and picturesque villages give way to the ordered sophistication of wine country where ornate chateaux stand sentinel over proper vineyards. One of the most beautiful of the chateaux is Giscours, where the proprietress has thrown her arms around Wells, greeted Wolfert with reproaches (“We hardly ever see you anymore”) and subjected us to an extraordinarily pretentious film, slide and sound presentation about the vine which “will be born in suffering and pull its strength from its weakness.” By the time we leave the Medoc and drive across the gorgeous old city of Bordeaux to the restaurant, Le Chapon Fin, we are starving.

Hunger does not prevent Villas from retreating in horror. He sets one foot into this turn-of-the-century fantasy of a restaurant (complete with an enormous grotto growing out of one wall), stops short and exclaims, “Oh no, domed food!” Indeed, a waiter is bearing down on us carrying a tray topped with a silver dome. “I hate that pretentious nonsense,” says Villas, noting that one of the chief pleasures of Wells’ book is its emphasis on restaurants with the sort of simple charm so often overlooked by guidebooks.

But Villas need not have worried; Le Chapon Fin may be fancy, but the food is bold, gutsy fare whose flavors are firmly rooted in native soil. Francis Garcia, chef and owner of the restaurant, demonstrates what happens when the best local products are combined with the imagination of an audacious and well-trained chef. And he demonstrates it in a meal that lasts the better part of the afternoon.

To begin, there is marinated lotte and then fruity, sharp, fresh-tasting gazpacho surprisingly topped with lobster. (“Is there pepper in this?” asks Villas. “No,” says Wolfert, who has an annoying habit of being right, “finish your soup and examine your mouth. The heat comes from raw garlic.”)

Next Garcia presents a plate with three little tidbits; the most amazing is an oyster wrapped in a thin slice of salmon and sauced with a dollop of tarragon beurre blanc . The richness of the fish enclosing the lean coppery taste of the oyster is absolutely brilliant.

Then there is duck served with peaches in a hauntingly sweet sauce. “I use cherries in the spring,” says the chef, “peaches in the summer, grapes in October, currants in November and December, and apples the rest of the winter. It is always good.”

By the time we get to the cheese course we have gone through the ’78 Cheval Blanc and moved to the ’62 Canon. With it we eat cheeses of a freshness and flavor I have never before experienced. My favorite is an aged gouda--yellow with age, sharp in flavor, with little crystalline bits in each bite. “The cheese?” says Garcia. “It comes from the shop across the street.

In the shop across the street, Wells is once again greeted with ecstatic cries. “She knows cheese,” says proprietor Jean D’Alos, making this admission as if he were conferring an honor. He leads us down to the cellars--there are three of them--where his cheeses sit gathering age.

There is passion in this musty cave. As D’Alos runs his hands across the surface of an enormous wheel of cheese, his fingers caress the rind. “We know every person who makes our cheeses,” says his wife proudly, “we’ve watched them work. They are the best. Our cheeses are more expensive--but they’re worth it.”

D’Alos offers a tray of his favorites. “Taste the cheese as if it were wine,” says Wells, “break it with your tongue and draw air across it.” We do, and suddenly there are new flavors to be found. We try the Fribourg, Tete de Moine, Fourme de Rochefort, Brebis from the Pyrenees. “But this is my favorite,” she says, slicing off a piece of Beaufort d’alpage, which comes from the mountains of Savoy and is made only in the summertime, when the grass is high and the milk in its prime. I have never tasted cheese as good as this, and I would be quite happy to sit here in cheese school for hours. But we must move on to the next meal--it is already time for dinner.

This we have in a warm, cozy little bistro called La Tupina, where the meat is grilled right in the open fireplace. The chairs are straight-backed, the tables bare, and all around the room are jars of confit , bottled beans--and hundreds of bottles of Cognac.

We are in the heart of the city, but this is country fare: First there are rillettes and then the local “ham” made out of duck and served with thick slices of tomato. Now little cakes of potatoes are put before us, crusty on one side, soft on the other with the brisk flavor of fresh sardines cutting through the creaminess. They are followed by whole baked tomatoes stuffed with snails, garlic and more of that duck ham. And finally local lamb, well cooked inside its crunchy, garlicky skin and served with the most wonderful white beans.

The dinner could go on; chef Jean Paul Xiradakis is so thrilled to see Wolfert and Wells that he would happily feed us for hours. “I always love this food,” says Wells, “but please don’t eat too much. We’re flying to Marseille early in the morning, and just wait until you see what we’re going to eat there.”

Villas turns to Wolfert and grins at her. “I’m so glad we’re leaving the southwest,” he says wickedly. “From now on you’ll just be one of the crowd.”

“We’ll see about that,” says Wolfert.

La Belle Gasconne, Poudenas (53.65.71.58). Menus at 100, 150 and 220 francs.

Domaine de Cazeaux, Lannes (53.65.73.03).

Le Chapon Fin, 5 rue de Montesquieu, Bordeaux. (56.79.10.0). Menus at 265 and 290 francs.

Fromagerie Jean D’Alos, 4 Rue de Montesquieu, Bordeaux. (56.44.29.66).

La Tupina, 6 Rue Porte-de-la-Monnaie, Bordeaux. (59.91.56.37). Menu 250 francs.