Meal fits the bill.

• Author: Bailey, David
• Position: La Chaudiere Restaurant Francais - Expense-Account Dining

You're going to order a seven-dollar piece of bread!" I screeched as my wife snapped La Chaudiere's menu shut with I've-made-up-my-mind finality.

"No, BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA is," Anne replied. "Besides, when I was a child and my parents lived on zip, one of our treats was bread pudding. So there's sort of a delicious irony in ordering it."

And when I was a child, I said to myself, I was raised to count every red cent as if our family were living on less than zip. Sure, I had grown up in a comfortable, middle-class household, but both my parents had been through the Great Depression, as had the parents of my cousin Reid, who, with his wife, Amy, had joined us that evening.

Reid had his eyes safely focused on the ceiling, and I knew I'd lost the argument. But I said what I usually do when I find myself in that predicament: "Yeah, but it's the principle of the thing." Still, I knew I wasn't arguing from a position of strength. I owed my wife this meal. Anne -- whose taste for things Gallic (and facility at spending money) presumably comes from her South Carolina Low Country Huguenot heritage -- had prior commitments both times I'd previously reviewed French restaurants. She'd long ago put in dibs on coming to La Chaudiere, which has earned a reputation over the past decade as the Triad's most elegant and, perhaps, finest restaurant. BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA had given the restaurant a stellar review in 1987. In September 1992, Winston-Salem real-estate mogul Bill Benton bought the place, completely redecorated it and reopened La Chaudiere Restaurant Francais with a brand-new menu. And so here I was in his new digs having a crisis of confidence. Could someone who had been raised with his father's Scots-Irish thrift and his mother's Pennsylvania Dutch frugality fairly judge a restaurant that charged $12 for an appetizer of grilled vegetables? No way, Anne said. For tonight, the ladies should decide all matters of relative value, she insisted.

First, let me say that we were instantly impressed with the wait staff's panache. In getting us seated and served, they smoothly convinced us that we were their guests, not just another round of customers. The setting -- the not-too-rude rusticity of exposed beams, tile floors and stucco walls -- put us equally at ease.

La Chaudiere is part of Reynolda Village, the remnants of R.J. Reynolds' 1917 stab at creating a self-sustaining feudal manor around the 60-room "bungalow" designed by Philadelphia architect...