FRUITS DE MER

If I remember correctly I had my first 'Plateau de Fruits de Mer' ie a plate of cooked and raw seafood served cold on a bed of crushed ice in 1979. I was en-route to Switzerland, invited by the WHO to present a paper on 'Delivering Home Healthcare in High Rise Residential Buildings' .. what? I was 30, an eager 'Do-Gooder' who desperately wanted to serve the community, and to prove to my parents their investing in my Tufts and Yale tuition were worth every penny they saved.

And then I splurged on a plateau that WOW me to this date, 36 years hence. Why? It is the 'taste of the sea'. You can have raw seafood anywhere in the world but for some reason these babies taste very different in France and I can only attribute it to the sea water. A normal plateau should consist of : lobster, crab, langoustine, a variety of oysters in season, clams, mussels, whelks, prawns, baby shrimps .. to be served with black pepper mignonette, a spicy cocktail sauce or Dijon mustard cream. Most would order a light white but to me, beer is the only way to go, with a few pieces of crusty bread. After admiring the architecture of how the plateau is built, drooling, my plan of attack is to always go after the largest oyster and start my feast by sipping the heavenly flavor of that sea water. To me this is how life should begin.

We were treated by a local friend who suggested a seafood franchise on the Champs-Elysees. Hello? Hungry but slightly disappointed we showed up, and was greeted by this on the table. Well, can we be more wrong! All I can tell you is, what better way to start our France sojourn. That first impression of WOW did not go away, after all these years and many plateaus later since 1979. By the way the specialty of this restaurant is in fact the regional cuisine from Alsace, which we also ordered and they were decent too.          

L'ALSACE
www.restaurantalsace.com
39 av des Champs-Elysees
Paris 8
33-1-53 93 9700