All is not well at Nobu?

I've only been back in the country for a week but friendly hospitality banter tells me all is not well at Nobu.
Unconfirmed reports tell that Ben Jager the GM has given notice and a few key local staff were sacked yesterday.
Apparently the 'cookie cutter' formula of bringing Nobu to Melbourne, as put some staff at loggerheads with the long term Nobu staff, who have been brought in from around the world. The local expertise shall we say, was a little disregarded.
Makes me a tad cautions of dining there too soon. Ed seem to have a good time, but maybe I'll wait.
Jack

The taste of summer

The cold weather, has reminded me of these beautiful strawberries I ate in Marseilles, France.
They were sold in the pretty little wooden box with pale blue trim and wrapped in paper in the store. The were probably the best strawberries I have ever eaten, so ripe that the fragrance was intoxicating and that the stalks pulled away from the flesh in your lips.
Bring on summer!
Jack

Percebes (!!??!!)

Weird looking little suckers aren't they!
Before the recent trip to Spain, I was doing some research on Chez Pim and came across an image of these in one of her posts. They instantly went on my must-do food list, along side looking at a broccoli romanesco, eating some northern waters fish (posts to come) and eating as much unpasteurised cheese as possible (hey look, Australian Government, I'm still alive...!)
Any way... After seeing the percebes at the Barcelona food market, La Boqueria and a few other Spanish markets that I dragged PDC through, I knew I had to find them on a menu sometime before we left the country.
Percebes are a Spanish delicacy, also known as a gooseneck barnacle (food nerd, I know!), they grow on rocks on the north-western Spanish coast, and apparently are quite dangerous to harvest.
Up close the percebes are quite scary looking, perhaps like a small clawed leg from a strange bird, with a hard shell at one end and a leathery tube that attaches to the rock.
They are typically steamed or flash boiled (I read a beautiful story that locally the women cook them in boiling water for as long as it takes to say the Lords Prayer).

The correct way to eat them is to squeeze the leather tube right near the shell and then twist, and suck the flesh out. We didn't know this at the time and because we couldn't ask our intimidating waitress, there was no way to find out how to eat them once they were in front of us. So I just dived in, knife in hand and prised open the shell like a oyster and then just torn it apart to get to what I assumed must be flesh of some kind inside. After a few I had developed a technique to suck them out once breaking open the shell.
Since I had insisted on ordering them (at 110€ a kilo! -about $200AUD) I guess PDC decided to sit back and watch me go first with the breaking open and eating. Slightly warm from being cooked, the flesh looks like a soft mushroom with a strange filament thing on top. The taste was quite intriguing, some what like a fresh briny oyster with the texture of a clam or mussel. The overriding memory is of a delicate fresh sea taste and trying not to get the squirty juices all over me.

We shared 300g of these over a bottle of Veuve Clicquot as an entree and found them messingly interesting and perfect with the champagne, but 300g was definately plenty. A fun food adventure that I look forward to eating again next time I'm in that part of the world.
Jack

Lou Pescadou

After more than a week of city and town life, as fantastic as it has been, (back posts to come -featuring the amazing food we have been experiencing!) craving the sun and the beach, we headed along the French coast from Marseilles down towards the Spanish boarder and closer to our next major destination Barcelona.

Following a day on the most amazing black pebble beach, we headed out of dinner, intrigued by what Lonely Planet referred to as a restaurant that had been serving the same menu since 1965! Gosh they must be good at it by now... so we headed into Lou Pescadou, also partially intrigued since it was 15€ (about $27 AUD) per person set menu for 5 courses, VERY cheap compared to what we had been eating.

Essentially, for people like me that only possess school French (and in my case supplemented by a decent dose of food and wine French), the menu was a simple version of fish bisque to start served with crotons, raw garlic to rub and grated gruyere cheese. We were given a large pot to help out serves from. Like magic the raw garlic was grating straight onto the croutons that we where then to throw into the soup. Unfortunately from the stench of our skin the next morning we went a bit crazy with this.After the soup we were served some mussels that had been steamed with what I suspected was some wine and Provencal flavours; local herbs, tomato, garlic and some white zucchini and capsicum.

Next was a huge cast iron pot of a house made pork pâté, that we were given a knife and left again to help our selves, it was incredibly rich with what I’m sure is every type of offal imaginable.After the pâté we were offered a beef or fish course. The fish was a lightly floured and pan fried plate size flat fish, perhaps like a sole? Served simply with a wedge of lemon.The final sweet course was a slice of what when I was a kid, I’d call Neapolitan ice cream. The quality was very basic but it was served with a generous glug of some type of local liqueur, as if we needed it by this stage, as the only beverage options at Lou Pescadou was carafes of wine; local white or rose, served by the litre carafe... Well what more can I say than, one was not quite enough but two was a little foolishly holiday spirited! Especially for PDCs head the next morning hehehe
Though the food was basic, it was delicious, interesting and obviously had a strong local following from being squeezed between locals at long tables running the length of the dining room, all night.
The value and sense of generosity was outstanding, the wine was burdenly cheap at 5€ a litre, and the staff where smiley, what more can you ask for?

Jack

Clafoutis as it should be

Just had to share this image of a market snack the other day, while we were in Lyon.

Clafoutis is a traditional 'pudding' for lack of a better term, it is served in a modern Australian sense with any type of fruit and a cake-style batter poured over the top and baked.

In the traditional sense, as pictured it is black cherries, stones in as they impart their own level of flavour intensity, and the batter is a very basic crepe or pancake batter.

The pictured clafoutis was amazingly texturual with the soft, seasonally beautiful black cherries, the firm yet slightly savoury batter and the seeds to be spat out as you go...

Jack

Laduree, Minums, Les Deux Magots, L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon

What a day!!!
No touristy sites yet appart from the food ones.
Laduree; macaroons to die for, in a selection of seasonal/daily flavours. Think crunchy outer and heavenly soft centres that nearly fall apart once bitten; blueberry, cherry and raspberry were the picks.

Minums; next door to the famed, Maxims. It was the little brother of Maxims, and very similar to France Soir on Toorak Road. We sat at a gorgeous old bistro table at the front and drank Cote Du Rhone rouge by the carafe and ate the clichés... very cheesey gratinated onion soup, a rich bisque soup with rouille, steak tartare and fries -listed as pomme allumettes - straw potatoes, and I had a green salad on the side, missing my greens!

Dinner at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon
You know you have a successful restaurant when you can tell a late walkin table -we arrived at 10pm, that if they come back at 11.30 you may have something for them... and then they come back... and then happlily waited until midnight to be seated! But we had to go to this restaurant based on SO many recommendations from friends
*** -images and details to come

**More to come (I am trying to type on a French keyboard...very slowly)**
Jack

Paris at last

Well here I am, at last in Paris.
After a long flight; Melbourne, Hong Kong, London and then Paris, and down one bag... we have arrived. Feeling like a easy bistro meal and a decent nights sleep, it was lucky Gabby could not we could get us a reservation at L'Ami Jean until 10pm or we would have missed it!
Arriving slightly late we did not realise what we were getting ourselves in for...
**More to come**
Jack