This is not one of the famous seafood restaurants in Saint Jean de Luz on the famous Rue de la Republique.
It is simply a superb place that is not on the standard list.
It IS Michelin rated if you need to have a famous French food critic tell you it is okay to eat there.
Everything we had was absolutely magnificent - and that's good enough for me.
I started with the house cocktail, gin with peach liqueur and grapefruit juice.
Went down like a Shirley Temple. Created dreams like a Marilyn Monroe.
The garnish of a gin-soaked strawberry was a nice little touch.
On the advice of the grandmotherly waitress,
we switched the order of our main dishes and appetizers, having the first course last.
It was a wise wise choice.
The main course - now starter - was a remarkable tureen of Txorro which is Basque fish soup.
I love fish soup.
This was one of the most satisfying bowls of fish soup I have had in my life.
A broth not unlike a traditional Mexican fish soup.
Wonderful wonderful clams. And I am from New England where I am used to high quality clams.
The biggest langostino I have ever seen in my life, boiled till it was white. (The flesh inside was perfectly cooked.)
A lot of morel - an almost-eel fish with a lot of nice big bones. Bones add to the taste of a fish soup. Big bones are easy to see and take out of the tureen unlike little bones that go down your throat and stab you to death.
Good fish, good shellfish, great stock, a huge tureen.
This was just the warm-up act.
Being practically full, I had no idea what could possibly follow.
What followed were the best scallops I have ever had in my life.
Coquilles Saint Jacques - a dish that normally suffers excruciatingly in the hands of minor cooks and indifferent scallops.
These were some of the freshest tastiest scallops I have ever encountered.
They were sauteed in massive amounts of butter.
Butter makes everything perfect.
Add bread crumbs, garlic, parsley - and for this version, a few sauteed micro-shrimp.
Micro-shrimp are one of the most savory flavoring ingredients on the planet. They sing in perfect harmony with butter and garlic.
Perfect scallops. Perfect seasonings. A perfect world.
Dessert - or anything after those scallops would have been a crime.
The significant other had a Basque version of a salade nicoise for a starter and a cod in a rich tomato sauce as a main.
It was one of the richest tomato sauces I have ever seen on a fish dish - made mellow by fish stock and an absence of tomato paste.
But nothing could have topped those scallops ... even a tomato sauce made by Escoffier himself. read more
