Le Servan
32 Rue Saint-Maur
75011 Paris, France
Ph: +33 1 55 28 51 82
Instagram

Le Servan, Paris

For breakfast on my final morning in Paris, Clarice suggested Le Servan. It's a beautiful yet relaxed bistro run by sisters Tatiana and Katia Levha. The sisters were born in Manila and grew up in Paris, and Chef Tatiana previously worked at L'Arpége and L'Astrance, both of which have three Michelin stars. Le Servan also seems to be popular in foodie circles; when I posted on Instagram that I was in Paris, lots of friends and acquaintances commented saying "You have to go to Le Servan!"

Clamato!

Frozen Peach Pisco Sour - peach granita, bay leaf, lemon, Waqar Pisco - €12

The house bread is from 10 Belles, and is so delicious.

10 Belles Bread

Egg mayonnaise, Neuvic caviar - €19

Look how perfectly that egg was cooked...

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!

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?

10 Belles Bread

It became the boat for the lovely crab meat. GET IN!

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.

Not a morceau remaining!

Verjus, Paris

Verjus
52 Rue de Richelieu
Paris 75001
Ph: +33 1 42 97 54 40
Website

Verjus is a cosy and upmarket restaurant and wine bar in the Palais Royale area, in the first arrondissement. Clarice suggested it for a bit of a blow-out dinner for my visit to Paris. She'd visited a couple of months prior for a special occasion, and described it as "it was one of the most amazing gastronomic experiences of [her] life". I was definitely in!

They offer a sensational seasonal five course tasting menu, and I've since learned that chef Hanz Gueco is actually Australian. (Woohoo, represent!) His Insta account is great, would recommend.

We had a 10pm (!) reservation, so we arrived at around half past nine and got a drink in the downstairs wine bar. I loved the atmosphere, and think it'd be a great spot to stop in for a casual drink, even if you didn't want to do the full tasting menu.

Verjus Wine Bar

We, of course, did want to do the full tasting menu. And we did the matching wines as well. Girls' night out! At the time of our visit, the tasting menu was €78 per person, and the wine pairings were €55 per person, which I think was pretty good value considering the quality, quantity, and variety of the food offering, as well as the location, atmosphere and service. (And actually, we asked if we could share the wines and they were super cool about it).

Let's take a look!

Amuses bouche

The amuse bouches were really delightful - fun, and pretty, and inventive without being OTT. The watermelon sticks with mozzarella dip and tart hibiscus powder were lovely and fresh, and I thought the green cucumber and borage sandwiches and the little egg shells were super cute! My favourites, however, were the little crisp chickpea pancakes (like a socca), filled with fresh herbs, and the deceptively smoky and "meaty" carrot and rhubarb skewers.

Our Wedding Day

We chose the wedding day to be on our twelfth anniversary of being a couple. I self-deprecatingly joke that it's so I didn't have to remember a new date, but really it was that the date was already special for us and that was the date I've been wanting to make official for years. It had to be that date!

We kept the day very small and as low key as possible. I'd think we succeeded in keeping it relaxed - well as relaxed as a wedding day can be when you are both two type-A planners who hate attention on ourselves and have a tendency towards anxiousness.

We decided to have a small ceremony at the Victorian Marriage Registry with my family and our best men in the afternoon, followed by cake and champagne. In the evening we had a slightly larger dinner (for fourteen people) in a private room at our favourite restaurant, Spice Temple. To keep things easy (and for a touch of luxury), we booked ourselves a room at the Park Hyatt for the night before and the night of the wedding. It's walking distance from the Victorian Marriage Registry, the foyer and rooms are lovely and luxurious, and the rooms are significantly larger than average hotel rooms in the CBD, so it was spacious enough to have ten people in there for cake and champagne after the ceremony.

We're both the type of people that have a small group of really good friends, rather than a large circle of acquaintances, so this was exactly the type of celebration we wanted. (And honestly, organising this wedding was stressful enough as it was; I have no idea how people cope with larger weddings with hundreds of invitees, marquees, seat plans, caterers, function centres, the whole works!)

Here are some photos.

Wedding Invitations! Because we had such a small guest list, we hand wrote the invitations and decorated them with photos of us and the guests. (The cards are Kikki-K "Always and Forever" photo cards)

Wedding Favours! We made a little gift bag for each guest.

Wedding Favours! The gift bags were to help our guests continue the celebrations the next day. Homemade wedding granola (recipe here), honey, and a mini Moët! (Inspired by the Vue de Monde gift bags)

Park Hyatt "King with Club Access" Room. Super spacious (60 sq metre) with big bathroom, huge bathtub, walk in closet and large sitting area. Perfect for all the prep we needed and the post-wedding champagne and cake!

We spent the night before the wedding chilling at the hotel, eating room service and watching (of all things) Bride and Prejudice

Yes, I bought us matching "Bride" robes and monogrammed PJs to wear while getting ready, and I'm not sorry. They're from Le Rose.

We went to get our hair done in the morning, then came back to the hotel to get our make-up done by make-up artist extraordinaire Stephanie D'Aquino. She is THE BEST! My bro was taking photos, and my best man Jimbo delivered us iced coffees and sandwiches to the make-up chair.

Wedding Bouquet! I'd asked around, and the average price for wedding bouquets was $200 each. NO THANKS! I got my best man to buy two flower jars from The Road Stall and bring them to our room while we were getting ready. Only $30 and so beautiful! They've since gone up to $40, but still way better value than a wedding bouquet.

On our way to the ceremony. Literally the only time I've ever walked faster than Sandra when there wasn't some kind of free canapé involved.

Photos from the ceremony, at the Victorian Marriage Registry. Yessss making it official! You'll also see our joint best man An holding both bouquets. I don't believe in the "tossing the bouquet" tradition, but he was the only single one there so we just directly handed him the bouquets after the ceremony, hehe.

Wedding day walk #2, on our way back to the hotel

The Happy Couple! Instagrammable wall is in the driveway of Park Hyatt Hair: Eunji at Tony and Guy Georges Makeup: Stephanie D'Aquino Sarah's Dress: Oxford Lane Dress from Review (I bought it 2 days before, and it was only $200, yay!) Sandra's Dress: Lillian West Sarah's Shoes: Wittner; Sandra's Shoes: Nine West Flowers: $30 flower jars from The Road Stall

Yes! We did it!

Champagne! Time to bring out the good stuff

Always. Be. Influencing.

Wedding Cake and Champagne. The cake was Beatrix's Red Velvet Cake, we pre-ordered it and my best man went to pick it up while we were getting ready. I'd bought the pointy-boobed bride cake topper from Cake Deco Supplies a few weeks before. Champagne from the brides' own collection.

The Nu Wa Room at Spice Temple. We loved the dinner! The booking process was so easy - we liaised with the functions team over email, making a custom banquet menu, pre-ordering wine and advising them of dietary requirements. They printed place cards for us, and we were assigned a waitress who took great care of us, paced out the meals to fit in our toasts, and kept our drinks floooooowing.

Wedding Banquet Menu! We basically picked all our favourites from our many previous visits to Spice Temple, following the format of their existing banquet menus. This one was $89 per head (and they also swapped in some different dishes for our different dietary requirements - vegetarian, coeliac, pescetarian, no beef, no seafood).

Dinner! So delicious! Yes, I'm aware lots of these are out of focus. They were the best ones I took - it was dark and I was tipsy and overwhelmed with fun times and love from my wife (WIFE!), family, and friends.

The Spice Temple team even surprised us with a round of complimentary cocktails! One key requirement we had for the wedding was ABSOLUTELY NO SPEECHES, as Sandra and I are incredibly uncomfortable with big displays of emotion. However, our chief best man An crafted a fun "story" (technically not a speech) about our friendship which was lovely. This was followed by very nice non-emotional toasts from my father and my best man, and a succinct but heartfelt "thank-you all" speech from me.

Peeps at the wedding dinner! So much fun! So much love! Please also note the fur stole and ballerina wrap that Sandra and I are wearing, both from Review. We sent my best man out to get them during the day when we realised we didn't have coats to match our dresses! He even got the staff member to allocate the purchase to my customer account so I could get points. "Wow, you're well trained", they said. (Yeah, we worked him very hard that day, sorry Jimbo).

Mr Walker, the Park Hyatt's canine ambassador, perfectly summing up how we felt the next day

And that was our wedding! We were totally exhausted by the end of the day but also so happy! We managed to do it exactly how we wanted, and were floored by the amount of effort and love from our friends and family. My dad couldn't sleep the night before; my mum was awake and dressed before anyone else in the house was; my bro flew in from Japan with two tuxes; my best man Jimbo and his fiancée Jenni flew in from Malaysia hand-carrying a heavy and fragile gift (and he spent the whole morning zooming around town doing errands for us); Sandra's best man Suryadi came even though he had a one-month old at home (and of course the thanks go to him and his lovely wife Jean for enabling him to come out on the day); our joint best man An had literally flown in from Europe the morning of the wedding and still got everywhere on time because he is an organisation machine. People dressed up, brought thoughtful gifts, joined in the celebrations and were generally awesome! It was the best day ever! Yaaaaay!

More wedding-related posts:

• Engagement Party
• Bachelorette Weekend
• Wedding Granola
• Wedding Tea in Germany