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Chez Jacky — Port de Belon, FR

“NO NO NO JE NE VEUX PAS!” That’s a cool thing to hear from the cook when you ask her for more vinaigrette for your oysters. She was right, though — the Belon plates were so beautifully fresh that it would have been a shame. We never would have come up with the idea of eating them straight-up, especially as the big, meaty creuses and plates you get in France tend to be a bit overpoweringly slimy if they’re not super duper fresh right-off-the-beds.

These were just that, though — straight from the pool out behind the restaurant. There’s not much else to say about Chez Jacky — it’s really simple, with about as much nautical-themed stuff packed into a small house in an out-of-the-way fishing bay as you can possibly imagine. Grab a couple of plates of oysters and some white wine for a late lunch and have fun driving back up the curvy road to wherever-else-in-Bretagne you are headed, but don’t piss off the cook (I can only assume it was Jacky, from her air of authority) by asking for more vinaigrette..

Chez Jacky
Port de Belon - Rive Droite
F-29340 Riec sur Belon
+33 (0) 2 98 06 90 32
http://www.chez-jacky.com/ (argh, why do so many great places have obnoxious background music on their web pages? Turn off sound at work…)

Posted 07 April 2008 † john § French § Lunch § Restaurants § Seafood ‡ Comments (0) °

L’Entêtée — Paris, FR

Cool, we found an Alsatian waiter in France. He’s very fey, and constantly out of champagne, but nonetheless a good guy. In combination with the chef at l’Entêtée, well, a good combination, leave it at that — they’d better be, with the addition of an assistant in the kitchen, that’s all they have in terms of staff. The restaurant is tiny, reservations are essential, and completely out of the way (tip for taking a taxi: tell them to go down Ave. du Maine, then follow Rue Daguerre to the left, then drop you off at the corner with Rue Danville. Otherwise they’ll have no clue) but it’s very much worth a trip.

They change parts of their menu every few weeks; so far, we had the tarte tatin au brie & endives (ugh, leeks, although I know that, objectively speaking, it was probably delicious, at least Karin said so), terrine de foie de volailes (very rough texture but complex flavors) and some other stuff that’s no longer on the menu (the chef seems to love balsamico reductions. Whee.) The last time there, I had a parmentier with blood sausage that was absolutely magnificent; in fact, all the dishes we tried had really beautiful and subtle mixes of flavors.

I think it was cute how insecure the chef was about whether we’d liked it or not when I told her how awesome the parmentier was. Turns out that a lot of people send things back because it’s _too_ interesting for them. Bah. Their loss, more for us. For dessert, try the tarte aux pommes with salted caramel mousse — same deal. I just wish they weren’t always out of champagne, although the Chinon we had with dinner was pretty tasty.

Overall, L’Entêtée is one of the more adventurous and delicious places we’ve found in Paris, and very reasonably priced at that (~105 euros for two people, 3 courses each, including wine.) Check it out.

L’Enêtée
4, rue Danville
F-75014 Paris
+33 (0) 1 40 47 56 81
http://www.myspace.com/entetee

Posted 07 April 2008 † john § French § Paris § Restaurants ‡ Comments (0) °

Le Chalut — Saint-Malo, FR

Funny thing, if the least expensive restaurant you visit on a given weekend is also the best, by far. And with a Michelin star and all. Le Chalut had really good seafood, super service and a nice location, what more do you want?

Parking outside the walls of Saint-Malo was surprisingly easy, possibly due in part to the fact that it was (a) colder than a really cold day in hell, and (b) raining. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the expected spectacular waves crashing against the sea walls, but at least my feet stayed dry. Brown oxfords are not preferred walking gear in an Atlantic storm, just by the way. Plus, I managed to take cool photos without having to wipe droplets off my lens every 30 seconds.

Back to Le Chalut — we had a subtly-done St. Pierre with lemongrass, and a turbot filet; for starters, you can’t go wrong with Bélon plate oysters if they’re as fresh as you get them here (beware of even day-old ones, they get weirdly bloated and fishy-smelly. Gah.) There’s not much else to say about the restaurant — it’s a great place for lunch, small-ish with tasteful decor (not so sure about the canned tuna hanging from fishing nets overhead, but I won’t question French restaurant aesthetics at any cost. Especially if there’s a risk of having a large-ish can of tuna knocked on my head if I complain too much.) Check it out.

Le Chalut
8, rue de la Corne de Cert
F-35400 Saint-Malo (Intra-Muros)
+33 (0) 2 99 56 71 58

Posted 25 March 2008 † john § French § Luxury § Restaurants § Seafood ‡ Comments (0) °

Relais Franc Mayne — St. Emilion, FR

“If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.” Kind of ironic for a winery hotel to have a Dean Martin quote about drinking on its web page — especially considering that they’re 8 miles from nowhere.

That’s not to say one should hold that against them, just that the frogs ought to reconsider their policy about drunk driving. Just designate 2230-2400 the drunk drivers’ hour, let only people with a minimum .1 blood-alcohol level hit the roads, voilà. Especially around places like St. Emilion, one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in France, like Tuscany with a bad attitude. Oh by the way, it’s full of wineries. And great restaurants that aren’t necessarily close to your hotel. Click on that link, by the way.

Franc Mayne overlooks its own vineyard just outside St. Emilion; it’s not really a chateau (although every bricked-in goat stable in this area calls itself that) but a nice old villa with a few tastefully decorated rooms and generous, classically furnished common areas (including a shared breakfast table where some dipshit had the nerve to steal my croissant. I hope he gets done for drunk driving.) Make sure you go on the tour of their wine cave, the underground storage is pretty cool.

It’s a really, really nice place. Check it out.

Le Relais de Franc Mayne
14 La Gomerie
33330 St. Emilion
+33 (0) 5 57 24 62 61

Posted 17 March 2008 † john § French § Hotels § Luxury ‡ Comments (0) °

La Tupina — Bordeaux, FR

If you’re looking for food inside the old city walls of Bordeaux — note to prospective guests: unless you have serious parking karma, take a taxi. The locals are even more ruthless than Parisians when they get behind the wheel, and you. Will. Not. Find. A. Spot. I did, but then again, I’m good at that. Not much else, though, including restaurants — that’s Karin’s job.

She cottoned on to La Tupina after it was voted the second (?) best bistro in the world by the International Herald Tribune (what do they know? In this case, spot-on.) The decor is already nifty, built around a huge fireplace where they roast god-knows-what, and two cozy dining rooms worth of tables wedged tightly together.

Service is stellar, and the food was amazing. Some of the dishes I recall were a foie gras poêlé au raisin, and a gigot de 7 heures (Karin loved the beans, I went for the pepper fries.) My only complaint is that the duck was cooked an infinitesmal smidgeon too long — well compensated by the fact that it was so excellent. All with a bottle of some sort of Irouleguy recommended by the waitress (note: the moment an otherwise already competent staffer doesn’t hesitate an instant when pushing wine, consider listening to her. She may be right.) French restaurant tip: you need to specify tap water when ordering a pitcher. On the other hand, we were allowed to take deep whiffs of the 80 euro/glass cognac precariously perched on shelves overhead — notwithstanding the fact that I’d always be iffy ordering booze more than twice as old as I am.

Best food we had in Bordeaux, two thumbs up, check it out.

La Tupina
6, rue porte de la monnaie
F-33800 Bordeaux
+33 (0) 5 56 91 56 37
http://www.latupina.com/anime.html

Posted 17 March 2008 † john § French § Restaurants § Traditional ‡ Comments (0) °

L’Envers du Decor — Saint Emilion, FR

Proof positive that service can make or break a place. Our concierge at the Franc Maynes recommended this place in the middle of beautiful Saint Emilion (it really is stunning.) It didn’t seem terribly dressy like some of the top-notch-looking places in the region, and you usually can’t lose with local food, so we gave it a shot.

In short, the food was great, but the staff (save one really cute but slightly lost waitress) was just weird. They varied between friendly and kind of strange; the headwaiter refused to make eye contact with Karin when we ordered wine, despite my continued attempts to make it clear that she’s the resident oenologist, and his colleague abandoned us in mid-sentence when we asked for dessert recommendations (he was spot-on about the fluffy chocolate thingy, though.) In combination with the couple next to us who kept staring at us and our plates (they turned out to be really friendly, just interested in what was coming next because they’d ordered the same menu — they’re not all psychopaths, you know) it gave us a bit of a weird vibe.

The food itself was fantastic — we had an all-singing all-dancing all-truffle menu, starting with truffle bruschette, whipped egg/cream with truffles, turbot with truffles and hand-mashed potatoes, noisette de veau on mashed celery (with truffles), goat cheese (also with truffles) and aforementioned fluffy chocolate thingy with a chocolate truffle inside — Karin ordered some sort of yoghurt called “cailled de brebis” with honey. No truffles. Everything good quality and delicious, even if the truffle part mainly consisted of truffle shavings dropped on top. The fairly rustic à la carte portion of the menu looked like a good value and reasonably delicious.

Letdowns: service, wine recommendations (yes, we know that powerful wines might muscle out the subtle flavor of the truffles — did I mention there were a lot of truffles involved?) but the overpriced bottle of 1998 Despagne Grand Cru really wasn’t all that spectacular. Then again, maybe we’re just not civilized enough to spot the subtle elements of some Bordeaux. At the time, it just seemed kind of wimpy. On the whole, I think this place would be good fun to go to if you want a casual, tasty low-key dinner with a bit of local color.

L’Envers du Decor
11, rue du Clocher –
F-33330 Saint-Emilion
+33 (0) 5 57 74 48 31

Posted 09 March 2008 † john § French § Traditional ‡ Comments (0) °

Le Chateaubriand — Paris, FR

So, the best way to create some sort of mystique around your place is to be as unavailable as possible — the more difficult it is to reach you, the more people will want. To. Get. In. PLEEASE PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE LET ME IN! Thus, the inscrutable logic behind placing 30-IQ-point bouncers outside clubs (like the some of the awesome places we saw in Singapore that were so amazingly elitist that they let nobody at all in! At least, I assumed that’s why they were empty) or articles advocating slipping a maitre d’ a $20 bill (about 2 euros by now), something I utterly and categorically refuse to do (what, bribe someone whose job it is to stand out front and say hello to, oh my god, do what they were hired for??!?) I will rather spread venomous slander and calumny about a restaurant to every person within earshot if they insist on seating me by the toilets because I didn’t kowtow to the greeter (and, vice versa, sing the high praises of restaurants that exhibit class and style and great service, for what little my humble opinion is worth.)

Wait, what was I ranting about before ranting about something? Right. The seeming impossibility of getting through to Le Chateaubriand to reserve a table. Until I decided, on a whim, to try again after giving it a rest for a few days, and voilà, in we were.

The interior reminds me of a lot of sort-of-traditional neighborly French restaurants, with antique wine menus (5 Francs for a bottle! Woo!) and those bentwood bistro chairs, yeah, you know the ones. I won’t go into the details of the menu, suffice to say that it’s a fixed 5-course affair that’s pretty well done (except for the long-cooked beef which was beautiful quality but just too damn bland) and nicely presented. Good solid food for the price, great atmosphere, and service that’s fun and friendly (with very competent wine advice) when you can get the attention of one of the harried waiters (who are probably going nuts because some idiot keeps trying to call them to make a reservation.)

Le Chateaubriand
129, Avenue Parmentier
F-75011 Paris
+33 1 43 57 45 95

Posted 06 March 2008 † john § French § Paris § Restaurants ‡ Comments (0) °

Oosh — Singapore, SG

When in a country that consists of malls and condominiums, where the weather, even in the cooler seasons, is a humid 360° full-body blast furnace, 24×7x365, you’re best off with a stiff dose of air conditioning, because even doing nothing will turn you into a torrid, dripping sweaty mess within seconds. Then again, the moment you step outside, your clothes will seem to be disintegrating and sticking to the very fabric of your pores, to say nothing of how you’ll feel the moment you actually engage in any physical exercise, such as, I don’t know, carrying groceries, walking, blinking, whatnot.

So what does that leave us with? Sex, idleness and food seem like pretty obvious candidates for passing the time (those, and spending days on end in overly cold lecture halls at your friendly neighborhood business school. I don’t know what it is about hot countries that makes them feel they have to turn any indoor space, and even some that aren’t, into subtropical versions of Iceland in January. It smacks of borderline sociocultural schizophrenia, seeing people running around carrying parasols with sweaters tied to the grip for the moment they set foot in their local icicleville.) Sex is out, particularly if your girlfriend is on the other side of the world (and you’re surrounded by repressed locals and ladyboys), idleness — well, that pretty much translates to beaches, and if you’re Singapore, there’s Sentosa with its entry fee and artificial sand stretches from where you can watch the colorful sheen of leaked container ship fuel oil bobbing on the waves.

So, food. Food, and company — especially when you’re surrounded by a horde of short-timers on a tropical escape from the bracing cold of the French winter.)

Oosh is, for me, typical of the best that a place like Singapore, with all its plasticky Disneyesque artificiality, can and should come up with. Considering they’ve let whatever colonial cultural and architectural heritage (probably not much, considering this place was a malarial, fly-blown pesthole not 50 years ago) slide to hell, then tore it down and put up several generations of shiny condominium parks on top of it, the fact that there exist verdant, reasonably quiet areas in which to place a bar/restaurant that’s not either on the 50th floor of something or inundated by bored-looking hipsters, is pretty remarkable.

The service is sweet-but-mediocre, like in most “good” places we went to in Singapore. Nobody will so much as blow their nose without a work order, in triplicate, but staffers are generally caught in a weird triad of either (a) completely apathetic, (b) officiously formal, or (c) terribly sweet and welcoming. It can go all across the board, really. But when they’re nice, they’re really really nice.

Like our waiter — not terribly competent, but once my ultra-French friend Bertrand gave him a good friendly talking to about not stressing so much when removing peoples’ plates, he wised up. Or getting them to relax about letting people smoke 1 meter outside the smoking zone (an arbitrarily designated area) — although maybe that was just due to them being tired of dealing with a bunch of inebriated Europeans. They were very sporting about letting some of our guys do very bad karaoke, to the chagrin of the non-barbarian patrons.

Nonetheless, the evening was tremendously pleasant, the environment (outdoors, dark, quiet, natural, fragrant, mmh) was beautiful, especially the water fountain, and the food was excellent. I ordered grilled baby octopus and stingray (always excellent), preceded by a river prawn salad. Funny enough, the grilled portions were half the price and twice the size of the prawns; they both came with a heavy (hoisin?) sweet spicy sticky sauce reminiscent of my weather description in paragraph 1 (great example of predictive alliteration there) — it was a bit much for the delicate stingray, but in terms of taste it really hit the spot. The ingredients were obviously very fresh, and while the heaviness of the sauces wasn’t enormously subtle, it was still delicious.

When in Singapore, one inevitably misses a good, diversified wine selection, and the various open reds we had weren’t all that great — at some point, you just decide to stick with cocktails, which can be decent enough if you manage to talk the bartender into mixing in an adequate amount of booze. Oh, and don’t forget to make sure, if you’re with a large group, that your guests pay their own damn bills, to avoid embarrassment at the door. Again, they were good mighty good sports about it, but not without some hefty negotiation.

Oosh
http://www.oosh.com.sg
2 Dempsey Road
Singapore 249679
info@oosh.com.sg
+65 64750002

Posted 03 March 2008 † john § Hep Cats § Restaurants § Singapore ‡ Comments (0) °

My Favorite Indian Food Court Stall — Singapore, SG

Singapore is amazing. In many ways, it reminds me of Santiago de Chile — a dump that’s pulled itself up by its bootstraps to become a shiny, prosperous and orderly model of progress in the midst of corruption and poverty. See, I have a theory that societal development moves along an upward parabolic curve through three main stages:

- Poor (low point.) Ideal goals: putting food on the table (or mud floor), not being eaten by a water buffalo
- Developed (high point.). Ideal goals: big shiny highrises, cars, factories, industrial products
- Prosperously mature (low point.) Ideal goals: a luxuriously simple lifestyle, sitting outside a Parisian café knocking back cappucinos

You know the the kind of thing I’m talking about. In societies that have comfortably evolved away from festering in a steaming malarial shithole, a lot of people want nothing less than to live in a (luxuriously clean) old farmhouse with all-natural furniture and yoghurts produced by happy peasants — look at the prevalence of organic foods and resort holidays at beautifully small, countryside spas without electricity offered in Switzerland, New York, whatnot. Between the two, you have a desire to go for the most visible signs of progress possibly attainable; an understandable and respectable ambition for people who may have grown up in aforementioned malarial shitholes.

Nonetheless, for those of us privileged enough to have been raised in reasonable comfort, it’s sometimes sad and difficult to understand how countries with a natural and cultural richness could do seemingly stupid shit like tearing down old buildings, bulldozing coral reefs to build luxury resort beaches (like next door to our hotel on Mauritius, what a damn shame) and sacrificing the richness of traditional food and other products for the sake of manufactured, processed, packaged artificial crap. Nestlé actually pushes powdered milk in Chile as being more hygienic than the natural alternative — I’m no Slow Food anthroposophic all-organic fanatic, but that just strikes me as somehow bizarre.

And yet, some countries evolve beyond this middle ground of “having made it”…and don’t stop developing. They become ever shinier, ever more modern, ever more artificial — q.v. Hong Kong, Santiago de Chile, Tokyo, and Singapore. Apparently there’s a rule here (please do feel free to debunk this) that apartment buildings are inevitably knocked down after 20 years and re-built…just out of principle. It’s Disneyland for grown-ups, a clinically antiseptic wasteland of malls and condominiums, immaculately trimmed lawns and (probably sexually repressed) hard-working, efficient and very obedient happy campers.

In Singapore, places like Little India (and to some degree, Chinatown) don’t fit in. They’re loud, (comparatively) dirty, chaotic and fun. To one of the local central planners moving their little centrally planned Lego bricks around their no doubt immaculately centrally planned planning desks, these areas must seem like objectionable stains on the artificial bling that defines this city. Add to that list the food court in the HDB (subsidized housing) block off Dover Road, beyond the end of Dover Rise. Especially Roti Prata, my friendly neighborhood Indian food joint.

I don’t even know the food court’s name; the Indian dude has one of several garishly lit holes in the wall clustered around a covered concrete patio with plastic deck chairs, cheaply faded Chinese New Year’s decorations on the walls and bizarre Malaysian sitcoms blaring from a badly tuned TV. Random people who barely speak English walk around selling canned drink, while grizzled old Chinese guys plow through buckets of large bottles of local beer. The web site of the “restaurant” doesn’t work. If the Singapore health standards weren’t (I assume) so high, you’d think this was an express ticket to hepatitisville.

The owner is a pockmarked Indian man who sits around smoking outside — it’s such a great pleasure when a proprietor knows you and comes to shake your hand, especially in such an alien place as this. The mutton murtabak (a meat-filled crepe that you dunk in greasy gravy-like sauce on a tin food tray straight out of an army mess) is filling and frankly one of the tastiest dishes I’ve had since arriving here. He also makes killer pratas — egg, butter, garlic, onion, banana, whatever, at SGD $2 a pop. I love it.

Maybe the Singaporeans haven’t yet figured out that this is the best stuff in life. It sure beats running around Clarke Quay, grinning at spoiled local children competing to see who can dump more hair glue into a super-emo style and look cool sitting in the wheelchairs-cum-seats of the hospital-themed (I kid you not) bar in the middle. Apparently there’s a law that says every citizen earning under a certain amount per year has a right to a free HDB apartment (simple but clean places, thanks to which I managed to not go completely bankrupt in Singapore’s completely madly overpriced housing market during my two months here) — and HDB courtyards spawn these kinds of food courts. Good for them. I just hope they figure out the allure of this sort of joint before someone decides this part of the city needs a more uniformly hypersanitized image.

Posted 23 February 2008 † john § Indian § Restaurants ‡ Comments (0) °

Weekend Blitzkrieg: Cebu, PH

At risk of sounding like the whiner I am, I have shitty luck with weather and sights. For example, with all the spectacular scenery we ran into in Ecuador, for example, it rained like mad a lot of the time we were there, and no pink river dolphins or capibaras in sight. The same happened during our trip to Malapascua off the Philippine island of Cebu last weekend — rain, rain and more rain, with the exception of a few intervals; the sun came out the Monday of our departure.

Boatsmen

Stop, back up — we headed out to Cebu on a fairly spontaneous trip from Singapore via Cebu Pacific Airways on Friday night, arriving at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning. A 3 hours car trip and half an hour by outrigger motor boat later (low tide and high waves meant we had to transfer to the boat via a tiny cockleshell of a dinghy from the dock in Maya) the three of us arrived at Malapascua, off the Cebu “mainland.”

The island is tiny; while we didn’t really go explore, we probably saw most of it just knocking around between bars in the evening. That said, we spent most of our time there either diving, knocking back beers or catching up on well-deserved rest. So much diving that we pretty much headed straight out with Thresher Shark Divers, owned by a bunch of friendly but canny Brits (whose motto should be “trust but verify”…)

Scorpionfish

My colleagues Martin & Hanno (very German weekend, this) are pretty experienced divers, leaving me the tyro of the bunch. Nonetheless, we went on 3 dives the first day, mainly checking out ok-ish coral fields (and my first night dive.) Unfortunately, the weather was horrid, with the drizzle that had started to plague us on the ride from Maya continuing to plague us during the day.

Malapascua (”bad easter”?) seems to be mainly populated by German and Swiss expats with a smattering of constantly giggling Pinoys running the various small bars and restaurants. Our hotel, the Sun Splash (organized by the dive shop) was cute enough, with an ample supply of greasy food and beer to keep us amused when we weren’t diving; the rooms are rudimentary but comfortable, although the salt water coming out of the taps were an amusing twist. Whatever, we weren’t there for a 5-star resort. The food, almost without exception, was brilliant — spicy, fresh and tasty. I especially recommend a small place along the main beach owned by an older Swiss guy, as well as the Kokay’s Maldito, a beautiful seafood restaurant a bit off the waterline. Ask for your food to be made extra spicy at the latter, though.

Unfortunately, our first dive adventure the next day turned out to be a disaster for me. We’d mainly come to see thresher and whale sharks; the weather precluded going out far enough for the latter, and when I finally managed to make my way into the incredibly choppy water for my first deep dive, I just couldn’t keep my breathing straight. It just gutted me, having to wait on the boat while the others were able to descend and hang out with pelagics, and I’m still annoyed about it. I consoled myself with the idea that I was actually more interested in manta rays than some dumb old sharks, and one of the kids working at the dive shop suggested I check out Costa Rica (Playa del Coco, specifically) for these. Seeing whale sharks would have been pretty damn cool, though. At least, the second dive was at a location called Lapus Lapus, one of the most spectacular coral beds I’ve ever seen (I haven’t seen many, but this was pretty nifty.)

All in all it’s a beautiful and relaxing place if you want simplicity and not too many tourists (and don’t mind hordes of teutonic underwater explorers trampling around.) I think I’ll return to the Philippines if it’s all like this.

The Beach

Posted 20 February 2008 † john § Adventure § Beach § Diving § Philippines § Travel ‡ Comments (0) °