“As long as it’s conducive to a social dinner.”Īnd what makes a great plateau? It should convey a sense of abundance and have a wide variety of seafood: shrimp, lobster, crab, oysters, clams, periwinkles and scallops. “Either way works,” says former Bastide chef Alain Giraud, who is opening a brasserie in Santa Monica, complete with oyster bar and, of course, plateaux de fruits de mer. So is it a first course or a main course? Traditionally, the plateau is served as an appetizer, but with a salad and bread, it’s a fantastic main too. The excellent oyster selection might include buttery, full-bodied Watch Hills mild, crisp Sinkus sweet Totten Inlets those pristine Raspberry Points briny Olde Salts from Virginia or crisp-bright Coromandels. (When you order it at the table for more than one or two people, the traditional aluminum platter is used, and a tier might be added.) Our neighbor at the bar kept looking over, longingly, then ordered an adorable plateau for one that came on a napkin-lined glass plate, topped with ice and his own mini-extravaganza of shellfish. On a recent visit, a friend and I sidled up to the bar to tuck into an extravaganza of Raspberry Point oysters, littleneck clams, Mexican white shrimp, steamed mussels, Dungeness crab claws, lobster and periwinkles - diminutive saltwater snails that were propped up in the ice on little sticks. Care is taken to make sure their liquor’s not spilled (and no shell fragments in there either). The lobster’s perfectly succulent, the shrimp plump and tender, and the oysters are a thoughtful selection of what’s most wonderful at the moment. The Water Grill pays meticulous attention to everything that’s going on the plateau. With the mignonette and cocktail sauce, there’s freshly grated horseradish (great for oysters). Right now it includes three types of oysters (Blue Point, Kumamoto and Kusshi) littleneck clams shrimp lobster calamari salad dressed with olive oil and lemon juice, red onions, chives and a little red bell pepper albacore ceviche marinated with lime juice, tomatoes, red onions, mint, and orange and lemon zest and mussels with a cucumber vinaigrette. Alongside comes mignonette, cocktail sauce and a bright tarragon mayonnaise.Īt Fraiche in Culver City, the grand plateau is a three-tier affair (the petit plateau has two tiers). “It’s so spectacular.” Here the spectacle might be either the plateau or the grand plateau, both served on a single large ice-filled, seaweed-strewn platter, with Malpeque and Skookum oysters, clams from Prince Edward Island, stone crab claws, Maine lobster, shrimp and mussels. “I just had to have it on the menu,” says chef-owner David Myers. This is food for the swells.Īt Comme Ca, the swells are out en masse, and the shellfish platter is bountiful. Eating out suddenly feels more cosmopolitan, and diners want some elegant excess: a martini before dinner (gin, of course it happens to go great with oysters) and a plateau just to kick things off. In New York, they’ve been big for years, most notably at Balthazar and Blue Ribbon, and now at long last they’re taking off in L.A. And this is the perfect moment to partake in a plateau we’re heading straight into full-swing oyster season as more and more varieties hit their peak. The plateau de fruits de mer, a traditional French feast, is showing up all over L.A., on the menu at Hungry Cat in Hollywood (where a raw-bar expansion is in the works), the Water Grill downtown, Fraiche in Culver City and just-opened Comme Ca in West Hollywood. It’s a plateau de fruits de mer (literally, a platter of fruits of the sea), and in the golden light of a brasserie, with a glass of Champagne or Chablis, you feel like, well, the world is your oyster - and you happen to be quite the ostreaphile.
Tucked in between are wedges of lemon, and served on the side are little bowls of cocktail sauce, creamy mayonnaise, and perfectly vinegary, shallot-spiked mignonette.
Those frosty-silvery platters overflow with a dozen or more oysters on the half shell, littleneck and cherrystone clams too Dungeness crab a split Maine lobster tiny periwinkles steamed mussels big, succulent poached shrimp and pretty bay scallops in their pink-tinged shells. Something big is about to happen.Īnd then it arrives - a tower of ice-filled platters of seafood, three tiers stacked high. The space in the center of your table is cleared, and everyone in the restaurant looks your way. Cocktail forks and crab crackers are at the ready.
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