Six Inches High and Rising: Comfort Food, French Style

This has been one of those weeks. You know, the kind where you get to Friday and you just want to treat yourself to something comforting. For me, that equates to comfort food and no place does it better in Savannah than Papillote.

Cooking en papillote means to cook in parchment paper where the contents are steamed, and it also refers to a traditional French Christmas candy wrapped in shiny gold paper containing a fortune. The Savannah version of Papillote has been in town since February of 2009, and the menu promises "fresh, delicious food available to everyone and to be eaten anywhere." And therein lies the beauty. There aren't any linen tablecloths or exorbitant prices. Just good, accessible food that's always interesting and made from scratch on the premises.

Chef Hervé Didallier was trained at some of the finest restaurants in Europe including Le Beau Rivage in Geneva, Switzerland and Orsi in Lyon, France, as well as the renowned Parisian culinary school Ecole Superieure de Cuisine Francaise. Of the restaurants on his resume, eight are Michelin recognized establishments including La Tour D’Argent, Paris. The face of Papillote, however, is his trusty sidekick Ann Marie Apgar, who previously worked as a technical services manager for an energy and green consulting firm in New Jersey. At Papillote, she made sure that green building practices were incorporated into the shop, and a majority of the packaging is 100% recycled or recyclable/compostable.

The menu is divided into salé (savory) and sucré (sweet). Yesterday, I tried the special roasted fig salad - figs wrapped in prosciutto, roasted with honey and served on a bed of arugula with vinaigrette, watermelon "medallions" and shaved Parmesan cheese.

The figs and prosciutto were the perfect balance of the salé and sucré; the meal was the epitome of comfort food. Too bad I had to return to work and couldn't go home and take to my fainting couch.