Today, thought we would treat ourselves to lunch in Oxford, using the Pear Tree park & ride.  Rosemary as usual insisted we had the front two offside seats on the upper deck of the double decker “ride” bus.  First stop was the Ashmolean Museum to see a temporary exhibition called Spectacular Miracles: Images of Supernatural Power.  Umm, to us a very odd exhibition of recent photographs of statues and pictures believed to be capable of supernatural powers, from shrines in and near the city of Genoa.  I am afraid Oxford does not do temporary exhibitions as well as the Cambridge where we both saw an excellent exhibition of illuminated manuscripts back in September at the Fitzwilliam.

We arrived at Petit Blanc for our luncheon.  A very slim, cute, French waitress seated us.  This being the festive season, their good value menu prix fixe was not available, being replaced with a Christmas menu.  We decided to eat off their a la carte menu.

We started with an aperitif of Ricard, while we studied and dithered over the menu.  Rosemary started with the Bleu des Basques cheese, chicory and pear salad, and I am always tempted by terrine, so had to have the foie gras, Lincolnshire pork and Armagnac prune terrine with apple chutney.  These dutifully arrived on their white bowls (to our great glee, because they were rather like the ones we just lashed out on) and were consumed with great gusto.  Rosemary is definitely going to try to make the salad at home.

For the main dish, Rosemary selected char grilled Lincolnshire pork escalope with harrissa & lemon butter (which she promptly got down her jumper, having threatened me with dire consequences should I be so careless), while I had pan-fried calves liver, sage & shallot mousseline with pan juices.  The liver was cooked rare and was delicious, a special treat as I very rarely have liver at home.

We finished together with crème caramel and espresso coffee and after paying walked back to Oddbins to buy some fizzy GF Cavalier wine for the festive season.