France, part 8 - seafood dinner

After the beach, Franck and Phillip took us to this crazy French restaurant on the beach. Because it was on the beach, guess what kind of food they served? You guessed it! This is what I saw on the way in... needless to say, I was slightly nervous.



Here is our menu. Feel free to enlarge it. With no pictures this time, Franck and Phillip spent a lot of time detailing the menu for us. It was a three-course meal. For the starter, I got the white fish with coconut, for dinner, the bas, for dessert, the chocolate cake with red fruits on top. Let's see how I fared...


Here's the white fish with coconut. Umm... they forgot to mention that the fish was raw!!! Eww! Gross. I didn't even realize it until my fork was almost in my mouth. Y'know, the point where you just can't stop it. And once it was in, I couldn't just spit it out. Talk about rude in a fancy, shamancy restaurant. So I swallowed. But not w/o gagging first. I had no napkin in hand, so I just put my hand in front of my mouth to hide my rudeness. But JP saw the horrible look on my face and busted out laughing. I quickly swallowed and drank a bunch of water and joined her in her continued giggling. We both giggled randomly throughout the rest of the night. In fact, if you mention it to her, I'm sure she'll start giggling again. Needless to say, I did not even attempt to finish that one. Tom finished it and Dennis got really close. Kudos to both of them. (Though, I did see Dennis struggling with a straight face a couple of times.) The stick in front was some sort of pastry and it was really good. The cherry tomatoes to the left were super potent (Travis' worst nightmare, I'm sure) and the brown stick they were sitting on wasn't a stick, come to find out, it was some sort of tomato paste. Remarkably good, actually. (Thanks to JP for being brave and trying it first!) Oh, and what's that stuff on the garnish that looks remarkably like bits of raspberries and blackberries?


... caviar! (Gross. And no, I didn't eat it.)



Now on to the main course. The sea bass. This was decidedly more tasty. Quite good, in fact. It is sitting on top of a bunch of apparently really expensive mushrooms. "Ehh.. not too bad. Probably two one hundred euros per kilo." That's like, $300-400! "But eet ees not as expenseeve as zee ... what you call it? black, under zee ground [we later figured out they were truffles]. Zose sell for one or two sousand euros per keelo." No wonder these people have no problem forking out 38 euros for dinner as if it were McDonalds.


Check out JP's shrimp! That thing is huge! Though, once you got past the shell and all that (which she had to pull off by hand), it ended up being about the size of the shrimp back home. She ended up trading her plate with Franck to have the same thing I had. (That was the plan from the beginning. They'd get different plates and she'd try both. If she liked his better, they'd swap.)


Finally, dessert! Once again, the French have outdone themselves. This chocolate cake was super moist, even still a bit doughy (but in a good way... like undercooked brownies) with really delicious french vanilla ice cream on top. It's sitting on top of some sort of sauce that I couldn't quite place. It was a little tart, but really sweet, too. If that's possible. There was also some raspberry sauce at the bottom which was amazing. Then there was one raspberry (which was a shame, because that raspberry was packed full of flavor) and one... I dunno what. It's the orange thing on the left. It looks like a cherry tomato when you bite into it, but it doesn't taste like a tomato at all. More like an... apricot, maybe? The flavor was familiar, but I couldn't place it. Tom said he accidentally planted some one year in his garden... he thought it was a tomato plant. It had some clearish leaves (That turned yellow upon drying) that apparently grow around the fruit. Anyone know what it is? And lastly, there was the stick-looking thing. If you recognize it, you know what it is. A pastry-like thing with chocolate flavoring. Mmmmm.. Seriously... the best way to end any dinner.


And lastly... guess what I ate? You'll never guess. Escargot! That's right, snail. Don't believe me? I didn't think you would. So JP took a video for us. (After I did it, the pressure was on. Tom did it, then Dennis (I have pictures of both), then JP did it. She was rather nervous, but we peer pressured her into it. And we got a video of her, too. Now no one can doubt!) (Also, I kept the shell to bring home as a souvenir. Though, they took it with my plate and I had to have Franck ask for it back. Every time the waiter came near our table for the rest of the meal, I guess he said something about it, then would leave. Finally he brought it back. Did you know that when snail shells are wet, they are really super soft? To the point of easily tearing? Learn something new every day. Don't worry, it's really hard again, and you can't even see the torn part unless you know where it is.)



It's not as easy to see on this little screen, but the couple on the right of the video realize what I'm doing halfway through and are really entertaining to watch. She looks so full of pity for me. Bless her heart.