Descending the spiral staircase from the private dining rooms upstairs, a sommelier appears at our table. Hank has already picked out a white to accompany the entrée, a Macon-Milly 1999. We ask for assistance in choosing a red, and are guided to the southern Rhone on the menu, a Cotês du Luberon 1998. Unsurprisingly, both prove to be very good wines and excellent matches for the dishes we have ordered.

"The _chef sommelier_ pauses at the serving station, scans our order with a fingertip, and moves to our table. He is tall and pale, with lively, intelligent eyes in a drawn face. He cannot be much over thirty, and with his pallid skin against his dark hair and black jacket, and the arrestingly elegant, flat black apron that reaches nearly to his shoes, he cuts a romantic and somehow tragic figure---a matador, perhaps, or a consumptive Russian painter."

- A Meal Observed, p. 63