Eat Like Ushi

For the final meal in Perros-Guirec, the most well reputed restaurant in the best situated hotel had to be it. Luckily I was staying at the hotel also and could enjoy the beachfront location, the sunset and the moderately warm outdoor spa.

The a la carte was reasonably priced at €62 for 3 courses.

Pitted olives and vegetable crisps were presented first. The amuse bouche was a tuna maki piece showcasing an excellent piece of fish.

Entrees
- Saint Pierre/John Dory (with yuzu, small pickled vegetables, avocado cream, gomasio powder) - often I'm concerned about how well a place can cook fish. As expected from an upmarket restaurant along the beach, the fish was soft and good quality;
- Lobster (with Colonnata bacon, green asparagus, peas, lobster sauce) extra €5 to set menu - 3 lobster pieces adorned a mild sauce with the other highlight being nice crunchy fresh peas. I don't think the amount of lobster justified the extra €5 price but sometimes you just have a craving for lobster.

Main
- Signature Sea Bass (in a salt crust, mashed potato with truffle, vegetables, vierge sauce) - a bit of fish theatre with the cracking of the salt crust, deboning the fish and serving it with the olive/onion/herb/oil sauce, very very strong truffled potato and some buttered vegetables. The fish was cooked perfectly.

Dessert
- The Szechuan (crispy pecan, chocolate cookie, creamy Manjai & Jivara chocolate, Azelia raised ganache with Szechuan berries, chocolate icecream) - lots of chocolate forms on a plate;
- Souffle (with pan-fried apricots with honey & rosemary, almond icecream from Provence) - stunningly soft and warm souffle with the warmest sweetest apricots and a hint of rosemary.

Petit fours finished the enormous amount of food with chocolate ganache and lemon curd on biscuits.

Overall the ingredients were excellent quality and the cooking techniques were skilled. There isn't much competition in the area but it's clear to see why this is the highest rated restaurant in Perros-Guirec.

It was difficult choosing dinner this evening. We didn't want to bother driving anywhere, we'd eaten a lot of crepes and many of the other open places were on the expensive side. Le Mao was also closed (I wonder if the restaurants cycle between who closes when just to balance things out).

After an unexpectedly excellent experience at Le Mao (http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/le-mao-ploumanach-06-2017) I wondered if Au Rest'a Terre might do the same. The ratings online are quite average but the bar area looked nice. Instead we were seated in the more dining side (which is fine) where the sunset glared directly into my eyes. All that can be forgiven, but the service errors can't.

We ordered Moules Marinieres and the Pasta with prawns and salmon. I was excited when the food came out and it went to the table next to us. We were amused they ordered the exact same dish. After a few minutes the diner next to us got up and a waiter came and took it back to the kitchen. Then it came back out and was given to me. If it hadn't been touched/eaten I wouldn't mind - but it clearly had displayed prawns and a squeezed lemon discarded on the plate. I complained at being served used food and it was taken away by an unfriendly waiter (the bill he brought at the end said "director" so maybe he's the boss) without any explanation or apology. As soon as I complained he took it away - he knew exactly what was going on and upset he got caught.

We considered walking out but there wasn't much else open that day. And the mussels had arrived and looked fine.

Whilst waiting, two other waiters came and asked where the food was. Clearly they had no idea what happened. One even made a joke we didn't know where the plate was. They were overall nice unlike the other guy, so I didn't mind.

A new dish came out and the unfriendly director put it on the edge of the table next to me, not in front of my partner who ordered it. He stared at me with no words. Then after a stare-off he left without saying anything.

The pasta was housemade (good thing) but the pasta itself with the sauce had no flavour. I had to add mussel sauce to flavour it. The salmon was ok and the prawns tiny.

The mussels I got were obviously from the other table's order as it had cream in it. But not worth complaining about. The mussels were bigger than I ate in Perros Guirec and tasted ok to be fair. I had to ask multiple times to get bread, where the table next to me got several serves. Funnily enough it wasn't until that table had their meals cleared (including their bread basket) did we receive bread...

Go somewhere else with better food (eg. Le Mao is equally priced and much better). The "director" is an idiot and needs to learn customer service and food hygiene standards. He was also the one who served our dishes to the other table so noone else to blame.

All good seaside towns need to have a gelato place. In Ploumanac'h this is the one. It is advertised as artisanal which is reassuring considering its the only one in town. Other restaurants do serve gelato also but a dedicated place is always better.

The pistachio here was extremely mild and tasted more like vanilla with a little sweetness than pistachio. It was quite disappointing for a strong flavour person like me. The kouing-amann was also selected considering it would be the regional specialty flavour. It was very sweet like caramel, with pieces of the pastry chewy through it.

It wasn't the best flavourwise but the texture was fine with no ice crystals either. I'd happily go again, albeit partially also because there aren't any others in the area.

There was a lot of time spent and wasted trying to figure out where to eat dinner the first night in Ploumanac'h. The hotel restaurant La Table de Mon Pere was the obvious choice and best rated restaurant in the whole of Perros-Guirec, but it seemed fitting to leave that to another night.

On a Monday it seemed many places were closed - Le Cabestan, Le Ker Louis, Le Bistrot du Port - and the remainder were expensive places and/or hotel restaurants - Des Rochers, La Cotriade.

Against my better judgement, we ended up in Le Mao. A place that wasn't that highly rated and had a displayed menu in 4 languages. How wrong my judgement was on this occasion though.

- Soupe de poissons maison (croutons et fromage rape) €5.9 - this started my endearment for Breton fish soup. It reminds me of the incredible bouillabaisse soups I had in Marseille back in 2009. This was one of the best I've had, rich and thick and full of incredible fish flavour. The cheese melted and swirled through and the croutons gave it a bit of extra bite. Exceptional;
- Plateau de Fruits De Mer €28.9 for 1 person - this platter for 1 could easily feed 2 on its own. It comprised of a full large spider crab, 3 oysters, 3 whelks, 3 prawns, 3 langoustines, and lots of mussels and sea snails. The food was fresh, well cooked and very flavoursome. My favourite would have to be the whelks with their strong ocean salinity;
- Galette, champignons et fromage €5.5 - a nicely cooked galette with a crisp buttery outside and the savoury wheat flavour.

This was my favourite meal in Ploumanac'h and Perros Guirec.