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| Clamato! |
We're back to Paris for today's post! All about lunch at Clamato.
Clamato
80 Rue de Charonne
75011 Paris, France
Ph: +33 1 43 72 74 53
When we were planning the activities for my most recent Paris visit, Clarice suggested: "Clamato for a seafood platter", and I was more than keen! Both Clarice and I are partnered with non-seafood eaters, so any chance to indulge in seafood is a total treat!
Clamato is a casual and friendly restaurant in the eleventh arrondissement specialising in fresh seafood. They don't take bookings, and we don't do queuing, so we rocked up about twenty minutes before opening time and were basically the first through the door.
I started with a drink - well, I was on holiday! A frozen peach pisco sour. I'm used to pisco sours being thin sweet cocktails with a layer of raw egg foam on top (like the lovely ones at Harley House), but this one was more of a fruit slushie. Super refreshing!
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| Frozen Peach Pisco Sour - peach granita, bay leaf, lemon, Waqar Pisco - €12 |
The house bread is from 10 Belles, and is so delicious.
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| 10 Belles Bread |
We splashed out on some eggs with caviar as a starter. I loved the generous toppings - big dollops of fresh mayonnaise, a blanket of chives, and a spoonful of caviar. Absolutely gorgeous!
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| Egg mayonnaise, Neuvic caviar - €19 |
Look how perfectly that egg was cooked...
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| Egg mayonnaise on the inside |
I think my in-laws would have been shocked to know that we spent €19 on a single egg! (Although I suppose if you count each individual caviar sphere as an egg, then there'd be dozens on that plate, heh).
And now, the pièce de résistance, the seafood platter! So beautiful!
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| Plateau Panache - half crab, whelks, 6 almond clams, 6 palourde clams, 6 prairie clams, 6 natural oysters, with spiced butter, grainy mustard mayonnaise, and aioli - €65 |
Woooow! The platter included three types of clams (almond, palourde, prairie/Venus), natural oysters, half a crab, and whelks. These were served on ice, with fresh lemon, spiced butter (piment d'esplette I think), aioli and seeded mustard mayonnaise. Amazing. Everything was incredibly fresh and gorgeous.
I absolutely adore clams, and it was such a treat to try three different varieties! Whelks were an unusual but very welcome addition. They're like a sea snail; you dig them out of the shell, dip them in the aioli, and eat! They're a little chewy and very flavoursome. I've never seen them outside of Asia before, and I have vague memories of eating/seeing whelks (or a similar species) at seafood restaurants in Penang and Kota Kinabalu, where you order them live from a tank and they're usually served hot. But back to this platter. Fresh oysters are always lovely too, and crab is a lot of hard work to crack and eat, but totally worth it. With crab, I usually start by cracking a bit and eating a mouthful, then crack another bit and have another mouthful, and then I apply all my concentration on cracking the crab completely and amassing a pile of precious crab meat, which I can then enjoy all at once.
So, remember that bread I showed you before?
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| 10 Belles Bread |
It became the boat for the lovely crab meat. GET IN!
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| Crab on bread, heck yes |
As we were hoeing into the platter, it struck me that, of course, the seafood platter here was completely different to a seafood platter you night get in Australia, because any seafood restaurant worth its salt would naturally be going for local and seasonal items.
After all that food we somehow found room for dessert, and shared the maple syrup tart. (I'd seen it on their online menu during my pre-trip research and had to have it!)
The tart was encased in a perfectly crisp pastry, and filled with a warm flowing maple syrup filling. The giant quenelle of whipped cream and gentle sprinkling of fresh nutmeg on top were just right, the bland airy cream balancing out the intensely flavoured filling. Impressively, the filling wasn't too sweet, and had a pronounced maple flavour rather than just pure sweetness. Perfection!
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| Maple Syrup Tart, whipped cream - €8 |
The tart was encased in a perfectly crisp pastry, and filled with a warm flowing maple syrup filling. The giant quenelle of whipped cream and gentle sprinkling of fresh nutmeg on top were just right, the bland airy cream balancing out the intensely flavoured filling. Impressively, the filling wasn't too sweet, and had a pronounced maple flavour rather than just pure sweetness. Perfection!
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| Not a morceau remaining! |
Amazing lunch, fab atmosphere, super friendly staff. I'd definitely recommend hitting Clamato up if you're a seafood lover! Thank-you Clarice for the excellent suggestion!
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2 comments
Hehe I also make crab meat sandwiches! It's the best use of the crab and bread especially if you have aioli. I'm not a huge fan of whelks. I think they're a bit too chewy for me.
ReplyDeleteYum yum yum, now I'm craving a crab sandwich!
DeleteI get what you mean about whelks; they can be a challenging food!