The Hungry (Greedy) Hippo: Paris: L'Ecailler Du Bistrot

The second most memorable meal we had during our trip was at L'Ecailler Du Bistrot (will blog about the most memorable one later). Ecailler is the French word for "scale", and this place was a real seafood paradise. Their menu features oysters (huitres), scallops (coquillages or St Jacque - named such appparently because the Catholic saint St Jacque is featured holding 2 scallop shells), homard (lobster), poisson (fish - but we already knew that from our A maths classes) and other types of seafood. But top on the list is oysters - they have a ton of different types from all over France like Normandy and Brittany, and it's fairly mind-boggling trying to figure out which is which.

The restaurant as viewed from the street

As you walk in, there's someone at the front shucking oysters and de-shelling the other shellfish. He seemed very amused that I wanted to photograph him.

Hard at work.

Not a very impressive window display, but that was fine by me.

The herbed butter and bread was very nice. What I loved about most of the French restaurants that we went to was the abundant supply of good crusty bread, which was automatically topped up without question.

As there were 4 of us, we decided to order 2 dinner set menus (which comprised of 12 oysters, a half-lobster and a dessert for 46 Euros) and a seafood platter (Plateaux de Fruits de Mer) for 2 people at 67 Euros. Our tools for the job at hand.

We wanted a wine to go with our meal....settled on a You Are So Bubbly rose for 24 Euros a bottle. I really liked it because it looked so pink and pretty in the glass. Ok it tasted pretty good too...not too dry.

Our seafood platter arrived and we went absolutely insane taking photos of it from every angle. There were prawns, clams, cockles, snails, shrimp, crab and oysters, oysters and more oysters.

Close ups of the various fruits de la mer

They gave us 2 types of oysters; cupped and flat. I preferred the taste of the cupped ones...I suppose I'm more used to the cupped type which is commonly found in Australia. I found the flat ones slightly more fishy tasting.

Snails....nice and chewy.

I couldn't quite get used to the taste of raw clam though

After we managed to finish the seafood platter, we had the main course of a half blue lobster with butter sauce. The butter sauce was really rich, thick, tasty, sinful and mindblowingly good, while the lobster flesh was firm, succulent and extremely flavourful. We cleaned up every last bit using the bread to mop up the sauce.

After dinner, our friendly English-speaking waiter started chatting with us, and asked if we wanted to see the live blue lobster. Of course we said yes. So he ducked into the kitchen and came out with a live lobster which was frantically flapping its tail and waving its claws. No wonder it was so yummy....the lobsters are killed and cooked according to demand. Apparently the tail bit (where he's pointing) is really sharp.