Pork chop

Eastside Road, December 12, 2013—

DINNER IN TOWN, well, not our town, the next town, with a couple of friends. This is a curious restaurant, determinedly French, but often — as tonight — seeming like a hotel restaurant in a small provincial French town thirty or forty years ago. They know the proper techniques, but they're more dedicated to the local kitchen-garden produce, and the pigs from local farmers.

We split a house salad to begin with — lettuces, a carrot or two and segments of a beet, both nicely blanched and tender. It was well salted, nicely dressed with a mustard vinaigrette.

Afterward I had a pork chop, grilled, served with well cooked potatoes and apple sections, with a few deep-fried onion rings on top. I think there was some ginger involved, and a hint of garlic. Again, a sober, sound, nicely prepared dish, taking me back a few decades, in a very good way.

Lindsey's vanilla flan was very nice, but I chose to make dessert of a glass of Armagnac. We'd been in France, after all.

Pinot gris; Pinot noir, both local, in the glass

• French Garden Restaurant and Bistro, 8050 Bodega Ave, Sebastopol, California; (707) 824-2030