Everything is all roses, despite the guilty feeling I had all day. I didn’t tell anyone what happened in my stage meeting because I felt like I had stabbed Brian in the back. He really had been talking about going to another restaurant where the staff all spoke English, but what if I “stole” his internship? That’s a shitty thing to do, but I did it anyway, heartless wench that I am.

Sitting in demo, the superior cuisine chef walks in points at me and gives me a thumbs up. Already??! I’m in at Les Bouquinistes! Wow! Hooray! And then I realized that the whole class saw this exchange and that everyone knew what it meant. The questions would be coming…I would have to admit where I was going in front of Brian. I had been kind of hoping that he would never find out. He did find out after class. I could see a flicker of disappointment (and was that rage?) cross his face, and then he seemed really excited for me, although I still feel guilty and have a slight inclination to sleep with one eye open. Serves me right.

In other rosy news, our Superior Class dinner was tonight and was absolutely gorgeous. Every level has a dinner, and ours went from bad (Basic dinner food was not good), to really great (everyone raved about the yummy food at the Intermediate dinner)), to undeniably superb. We gathered at 7:30 at Ledoyen, a classic, three Michelin-starred restaurant that’s tucked away in a park on the Champs Elysees. It is Paris’s answer to Tavern on the Green. The outside of the place was so incredible; I was excited as soon as we stepped out of the cab. We had their reception room on the ground floor, and it was draped in gold from top to bottom. We had an open bar aperitif (champagne all around) with fois gras on raisin brioche and little tapanade squares. The we sat and had a lovely dinner: an amuse bouche of melon gelée with prociutto, a first course of smoked salmon on a purée of horseradish potatoes (sounds weird, but was totally delicious), a main dish of filo dough wrapped four-spice chicken with chanterelle mushrooms, a palate cleanser of lemon-thyme crème with pink grapefruit, and a dessert of a modern fraisier, kind of like a strawberry mousse, and then coffee and little petit fours of homemade lemon marshmallows, vanilla macaroons, mini strawberry tarts, and nougat. They had very nice wine picks, whose names I cannot recall because they flowed so steadily. The dinner did lack certain finesses and touches that I would expect from 3-stars, but it was kind of like a banquet, not a regular restaurant experience. I had a fabulous dinner and really enjoyed being so chic with my classmates. It made me kind of sad at the end of the night that school is quickly coming to a close. This has been such an intense experience and I have met so many amazing people, how can I say goodbye?