OOoooohhhhh….. a lovely weekend in a luxury hotel, just off the Champs Elysées! Mr French and I couldn’t wait to be out exploring, but first we were starving. Taxi, check-in, room check, luggage. We were in such a rush we barely took the time to admire our gorgeous suite (although I did have the time to notice the Jacques Genin chocolates on our pillows, AND the JG caramels on the desk).

According to the menu posted across the street, we were at “The Indian restaurant in Paris”, Annapurna. We went in. Really fresh, really spicy, over priced. I wouldn’t return.

We were ready for a stroll. Past the Hustler Club, near the Crystal Bar and through the Queen nightclub crowd, we arrived on a Champs Elysées teeming with humanity from across the globe. It was not our Paris scene, and it was kind of fun watching the staid German families walking out of the Lido cabaret, unaware burka clad ladies passing drug dealers and young girls hobbling comically by on stilts disguised as shoes.

The next day we decided to play it Rive Droite, lunching at an anonymous café, checking out the illuminating Neon exhibit at La Maison Rouge, exploring the Village St Paul and ending up at Auld Alliance to catch the final match of the Six Nations rugby tournament (excuse me while I stop to polish my girlfriend halo.)

And I wrote all that just to get you to dinner. Dinner. I’d been wanting to try this restaurant ever since I first read about it in FigaroScope a year ago. Wood-lined walls with fishing nets, newspapers on the tables, slop buckets on the floor and sailor clad waiters… these guys had Parisiennes wearing bibs and eating with their fingers! Le Crabe Marteau specializes in crab and anger management, which explains the wooden mallets on every table. You’re served a large stone crab and authorized to whack it open, sending bits flying before picking out the succulent meat. When you’re ready for a break from the physical labour, there is a wooden pail full of the sweetest, steamed new potatoes with raw milk butter to melt away in your mouth, chewing optional. I felt like I’d died and gone to Brittany….

Weapons of mass digestion

Le Crabe Marteau

ps… a major THANK YOU to Elle, who made this weekend possible. Bises!!!