35
Dinner is a simple but delicious affair of bread, oil, and herbs, and a creamy seafood soup called bourride, all of it set off by the light honey beer they brew here at the abbey. (It’s as delicious as Brother Xavier made it sound—crisp and floral and the perfect amount of sweet.) And while the meal is silent in theory, it’s a light silence that settles easily over the room.
At Semois, there was a thickness to the quietude that made it feel watchful, almost like a sentient thing, but here the silence comes as gently as a breeze, lifted by smiles and the inevitable happy food noises that we all make as we eat. Noises that turn in ahhhs and excited claps when two of the brothers emerge from the kitchen with cast iron skillets of something called flaugnarde—which is a custard-y thing
