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Seven restaurants in seven cities in five days.

It's a tall order, to be sure, checking out the most dynamic young chefs in southwest France, crisscrossing the region by car, covering more than 1,000 miles and consuming more than 37 courses — and that's not counting extra treats like amuse-bouche and mignardises — just to see what's cooking.

French cuisine is in a funk, as chefs lose ground to the Spanish and the Brits. But there's a movement afoot among young, forward-looking Gallic chefs who refer to themselves as Generation C — "C" for "culture and cuisines." They're rejecting the notion that great food must be lingered over for hours in a stuffy, expensive Michelin-anointed establishment. These days, the name of the game is casual, unpretentious, often relatively inexpensive bistros and restaurants.

And southwest France, specifically the Aquitaine region, has a great concentration of them. I had just five days to check out the most promising. My husband, Thierry, who was born in Bordeaux, my 9-year-old son, Wylie, and I hopped in a rental car in mid-July, cranked up the air conditioner (France was in the middle of a heat wave) and took off. Anyone saner would probably take 10 days or two weeks to cover the same ground or maybe tackle a small part of it. And they'd make it in autumn or spring, when dining rooms would be cooler.

Here's the bite-by-bite:

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Day 1

ESCHEWING the autoroute, we leave Bordeaux heading southeast through rolling green hills, a farmhouse here, a medieval village there. We whiz by fields of golden sunflowers, a castle on a hill.

A visit to Agen, where we check out a boutique dedicated to pruneaux d'Agen, the city's famous prunes, a stroll through the sleepy village of Astaffort, and before long, it's dinner time.

We come down from our room at Une Auberge en Gascogne and are shown to our table on a pretty terrace, covered by white canvas shades and trees. Thierry and I sip flutes of the house aperitif — Champagne flavored with griottes, or tart red cherries.

The server brings three test tubes of vegetable bouillon and three spoons, filled with what we're told are chopped peanuts. "Keep the peanuts in your mouth," the server says, "then take the bouillon." In go the peanuts, but there are Pop Rocks mixed in.

We sip from the test tubes, and the Pop Rocks explode with the peanuts. It's silly and contrived, but it does what an amuse is supposed to do: entertain the mouth. We have to giggle, which is surely the effect 34-year-old chef-owner Fabrice Biasiolo is looking for. A sense of fun is important to Generation C; the word ludique — "playful" — is one the French media often use to describe their food.

Wylie orders the best thing: Gascon breakfast. It's two tartines lapped with slivers of foie gras; a jam made from pruneaux d'Agen; a cold carrot-mango soup; an eggshell filled with custard and peanut foam; and a big mug with an improvised teabag filled with herbs, dried jambon de Bayonne (cured ham from Basque country), celery, garlic and toasted bread and tied up with raffia.

The server pours a savory duck broth over the tea bag and instructs Wylie to let it infuse a moment. The result is astounding, the foie gras incredibly silky. Hard to believe it's raw, simply drizzled with sherry vinegar, pepper and fleur de sel, a special sea salt.

We dine happily on duck tartare topped with grilled sardines and slow-roasted cochon noir (black pig), enjoying the wines, too — a crisp, dry Jurançon and a red from nearby Duras.