91. By Accident - A Fine Restaurant - SaQuaNa

Some readers beware!  More boring food stuff!

We just happened across this excellent restaurant called SaQuaNa, meaning 'fish' in Japanese.  

It was opposite our crooked little apartment building in Honfluer, where the Seine meets the sea, in north west France.

The interior decor was very elegant.  Three minutes after taking this photo there were ten local people filling the empty table.  The restaurant seats a maximum of 24 and opens for only seven sittings per week - so what does that tell you? 

Reasonable? No!  Expensive? Yes!

Two Michelin stars - chef Alexandre Bourdas. Japanese influences.  Try the link:

Alexandre Bourdas

The amuse bouche was really different. 
 It was a sweet/savoury pancake.  Pancakes or crépes are huge in Normandie and this one was a sweet crepe mix with chives, made in  two layers with a smear of local Calvados cheese in-between.  'Divide it between you as you desire,' we were instructed.

A whole loaf of home-made sourdough plus Normandie butter, which has to be about the best butter in the world.

And our first dish on the nine course degustation menu turned out to be my 'piece de resistance' - it was all the flavours of Asia and of home.  I nearly cried with homesickness as I ate it.  

'Poached monkfish (called lotte in France) with lime, lovage and coriander in coconut broth with Japanese combava oil'.

It could have been Thai or it could have been Japanese.  No matter - it was fabulous!

Combava is kaffir lime leaf oil.

Lotte or monkfish is not pretty and when you see it at the fresh fish market it looks gross - but gently poached, it tastes like flakey lobster.

Next came 'Scallops with mango, carrots, fresh goat's cheese, tiny pak-choy, orange blossom butter and cumin'.  Very nice, but scallops (called Saint-Jacques in France) always leave me a bit cold.  The vegetables were beautiful, though.

'A slowly steamed pollack with grated cauliflower and semolina, and chermoula vinegar'.  Technically excellent and it tasted great, but the presentation was a bit "dotty".   Chermoula is a bold, garlicky, spicy sauce used all over Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.  Its base is usually a mixture of garlic, cumin, sweet paprika, coriander or parsley and lemon juice.

Notice that I had consumed half of this dish before I remembered the camera.  It was fabulous!  

Perfectly steamed 'Salmon fillet, sudachi, triangles of fried chicken skin and tiny little morsels of deep fried shrimps'.

Sudachi is a small, round, green citrus fruit that is a specialty of Tokushima Prefecture in Japan. It is a sour citrus, not eaten as fruit, but used as food flavoring in place of vinegar.

Even though this was shaped liked a thick disc, it was called 'A grilled rice ball with lobster, lemon verbena and marinated sansho in foamed shellfish boullion'.  

Quite unique and delicious.  

The disk was crisply fried on the top but with soft  and seperated rice grains underneath and a centre of luscious lobster.  

Despite its name, sansho pepper is not actually a pepper. It is more of a spice - earthy and tangy with a bit of lemon, typically used on grilled foods like chicken or eel.

The last main dish and also the meat course, was called 'Roasted pré-salé lamb with clams, shredded fennel, a curl of cucumber, jus, spiced cream and sesame seeds'. 

Pré-salé lamb grazes on the salty pastures surrounding the bay of Mont Saint-Michel.

As you can see the lamb is quite rare and I was wondering where one draws the line between 'nearly raw and nearly cooked'?  

Was it that the clams were nearly raw and the lamb was nearly cooked?  Or was  the lamb nearly raw and the clams were nearly cooked?  

Whichever, this was a great dish.

Cheese came to the table by means of a special attachment to the furniture.  It was an excellent and generous cheese board served with salad and extra bread.  Paul opted for the camemberts and the blue, while I chose the local goat cheeses plus  a hard cheese from Laguiole, near Millau, where they make the knives.

Although the first of the two desserts had a fancy name 'A white minute gateau with salted butter caramel, apples and a light bergamot and orange cream', my grandma would have called it stewed apple and cream with a biscuit on top.

Paul loved this because it was very subtle, but I wasn't impressed.  That's not to say it didn't taste good but these two desserts were not up to the same standard as the savoury dishes.  It was called 'A pancake with saffron, some wild blackberries and roasted white peach mousse'.   The blackberries were fabulous.

These delicious coffee and chocolate treats were served with coffee and were much better than the two desserts included on the menu.  

On the left were two coffee macarons with salted caramel filling sitting on top of a little pot of fabulous vanilla ice-cream and frozen milk chocolate ganache.  On the right are two brandy snap cases with coffee cream.  Oh, so good!

And the coffee was perfect.

This meal cost us more than equivalent restaurants in Paris, which means it was very expensive.  That's why Monsiuer Bourdas can afford to open for only seven sittings per week.