At Calder's, in Saché as in Roxbury, dinner is not a numbered course or a French entrée-plat-dessert service: a large country table is set where everything arrives together, people share, help themselves, and toast. It's a workshop table—warm, generous, cobbled together like a mobile, where preserved charcuterie, Loire fish, bread filled by hand, and dried fruit circulate to the rhythm of conversations, always accompanied by a Loire wine.

The Touraine soul of this table rests on two things: the butter emulsion mounted on a reduction of white wine and shallot (beurre blanc), and the Loire wines—pale and nervy Vouvray, red and supple Chinon—which serve both for drinking and cooking. The butter, rich and fresh, is the wire that holds it all together.