The blog title says it all – I don’t recall we ever spent that much on a meal, so this got to be the most expensive we ever had. How did we ended up here? It started on the very first day of our arrival in Paris. We were at Opera area when I saw a man sitting at an outdoor restaurant, savoring a big plate of seafood platter. I had seen that in TV but it’s a different thing, seeing people eating that in front of me. Since then, seafood platters was on my mind.
Worse, our hotel manager/owner told us he won’t be able to give change to our 500 euros note, which we plan to pay hotel bills with it, despite the bill is already 300 euros. Hence, I had one more reason to opt for fine dining – to get small changes for our 500 euros note.
It’s not convenient to go back to Opera so we settled for the nearest restaurant that offers seafood platter, Le Bar a Huitres (don’t ask me how to pronounce it) in Saint Germain.
Even the condiments were placed so gracefully on our table. The olive oil looks more like a perfume bottle to me.
Other side condiments that came with breads – some sort of onion sauce, pig liver pate, cheese (I think it is) and high grade butter. I left them untouched because seafood platter was all over my head.
We were given a sample oyster to tryout first before the waiter confirm with us whether we were satisfied with its freshness.
Meatballs as appetiser.
We ordered the seafood platter for 2 at a whopping 96 euros (almost RM420 by the exchange rate at that time). CS wasn’t an oyster lover so I ended up eating a dozen of them! Luckily they’re fresh. The mussels were good but the mini escargots were the best, mostly attributed to its texture and sweetness. The only thing was, we don’t enjoy extracting them out from the shells and the as tiny as Malaysian 10 cent syillings. On the other hand, the Alaskan crab and shrimps were unremarkable for being too bland.
When we exchanged Ringgit for Euros all the money changer in Midvalley had ran out of smaller notes. Maybank counter was the only one with some smaller notes but that’s not enough and we had to take a piece of 500 euro note anyhow. We truly thought that we can pay our hotel bills with that.
When we paid for our dinner with the note, the waiter’s eyes almost bulge out. He had to consult his manager and I saw them triple checking the note before he ran to other stores in the street to find small notes. It took him 20 minutes to come up with our changes.
We were actually disappointed with the seafood platter and had since swore off all cold seafood platters. The shellfishes were fresh alright, but were very sickening in that quantity. Also, cold food didn’t seem that agreeable to my weak stomach.
Address : 33, rue Saint-Jaques 75005 Paris.
