I apologize in advance for not completing timely trip reports of our June 10-23 trip. They do take a commitment of time to write out and I preferred living in the moment, taking notes of our activities and experiences (photos fill in the details for me), then posting when we returned home. Once arriving back home we got caught up with life and I am just now getting around to finding time to start posting again. I will try to get a report up, at least every other day, to catch up with our vacation fun. They will most probably less detailed, as we tended to do the same thing each day, but for this one I had to tell the story of our scallops.
I begin with where I left off last (Saturday morning, June 17th)….
Saturday afternoon June 17th
We walked down to Bikini Beach Bar around 2pm, but I left my paints back in the studio. As we arrived, a waitress, who also serves as a bartender, very pretty and by this time recognized us as frequent patrons, met us and asked if she could help. We indicated that we would like to sit out further from the bar at a table nearest to the beach. She had a French accent, but spoke English very well. She indicated that those were tables for a different waitress and that her seating area was closer to the bar. We told her we would really like to sit further out and as we talked a guy came over, who we assumed was one of the managers, and asked if he could help us. She mentioned where we wanted to sit and he said that it was fine and they would work it out. I said, smiling, “Yeah, because you’re the boss!” He smiled and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Yeah, I guess.” We smiled and began to walk to our table of choice and as I turned toward it I heard the guy say to her, “The customer is always right.” I made sure our waitress knew how grateful we were the she was still our waitress and we could sit where we wanted.
We walked to the table close to the beach and we each had a cocktail before ordering dinner. It is very peaceful sitting by the ocean a short distance away beyond the still positioned umbrellas and lounge chairs, looking out at the varied blues of the water and the beautiful cloud formations in the sky. Little did we know our dinner was going to be an experience we will most likely, no, will never have again. The waitress, brought over the menu written with blue and green chalk. One color was the different offerings in French, the other, written in smaller letters, was in English. Of course, we couldn’t read the French but a casual glance of the English indicated scallops were one of the choices. Since we both love scallops we both ordered scallops. We continued to take in the slightly cooling breezes coming in off the ocean, sipping our cocktails and making sure we were hydrating with plenty of water. Our waitress, accompanied by another waiter, appeared with two huge plates, of scallops, and simultaneous sat them down in front of us. “Bon Appitit” they both exclaimed with smiles. They had to see the looks on our faces when we glanced down at two huge plates…of raw scallops, sliced as incredibly thin as the radishes serving as garnish. We said, “Thank you” and smiled politely hoping that appearances would be no indicator of how good these scallops were going to taste. I said to my wife, “That moment when you wish you knew French! Or at least wished you had taken the time to read all the English beyond “scallops”. Maybe we would have seen that these were going to be raw, not cooked the way we enjoy, with butter and garlic and parsley . There was also a huge honken white thing, about the size of a bagel, sitting on the side of the plate. It turned out to be mozzarella that was like no mozzarella I had ever had. It had a skin and was more liquid inside than firm and cheesy. As we ate our “scallops” they didn’t have much of a taste and were gooey, my wife sharing they reminder her of oysters, which she does not like; and it seemed there was no finishing them. I said, in my best Chandler Bing voice, “Could these be more raw!?!” I swore, the more I ate the more there were. They kept creeping from under the lettuce and radishes. I remembered the Three Stooges movie when Curley was eating a bowl of clam chowder and the clams kept spitting at him. Another scallop appeared from under the lettuce, “Oh, a wise guy!” I thought about having dinner with a group of 12-15 work associates when the guy sitting across from me decided, having never had sushi before, that he was going to order a main course plate of assorted sushi. Now, I like sushi, and by the looks of things it seemed he was enjoying it also as he worked his way through the huge assortment. Three quarters of the way through the meal he exclaimed out loud, “There’s nothing that taste good here!!!”. This was our experience with our scallops. Thankfully, the dish came with a bowl of french fries…I suppose to make the peace. We will go back to Bikini Beach Bar again, but will never order the scallops again. We could have sent it back, or taken it home and fried them up in garlic, olive oil and parsley. We figured, “our bad”, and at least we had the experience of trying out something we never had, or will have again.
After dinner we decided to have a glass of rose and enjoy our setting. Sans scallops. By this time, the position of the sun cast a golden glow on the billowing clouds which further complemented the blues of sky and ocean; Green cay and Tintamarre competing for our gaze. The beach boys began to gather up the lounge cushions piling them 8 high and carrying them to their evening resting place. Quite a feat. I would not survive as a beach boy at my age. The waitress did the same with the cushions of the bench area just in front of the restaurant deck. Kite surfers were out and sailboats dotted the horizon, while children scurried about on the nearby sand throwing corn hole bags at one another. Behind us, a substancial, random and growing crowd of about 30 people sat watching a rugby game on a makeshift theater of two large tv screens that had been set up, yelling and cheering, in French. The French team was no doubt winning. It could have been two French teams for all I know.
We eventually headed back to our studio but first needed to pick up some bottles of water in the Ocean Star grocery store. I handed cash to the woman cashier and she was having some difficulty explaining to me that she was short on coins but had just enough. I said thank you, went up to our studio and grabbed about six dollars of varied coins we had received up to this point during the week, some of which were US coins, and brought them to her. She exchanged them for bills, smiled and said thank you.
The rest of our evening we lazed away reading and then ventured out to our deck and had some salami, cheese and crackers accompanied by a glass of rose. We then watched an episode of City on Fire and closed out the evening with rum nightcaps on the deck, sitting with cool breezes blowing and watching the bustle of people leaving the village, I assume, after having dinner in the plaza of restaurants that is La Place du Village, Baie Orientale.
