Marseille

Tonight, Alvin and I went for my birthday dinner at Marseille. It's close to our apartment, but somehow, we have only been there once (for one of Alvin's birthdays!). Dinner was excellent and I will do my best to describe it here.

We shared a half bottle of white wine that the sommelier recommended but I don't know the name of it. Perhaps something starting with a P? It was wonderfully smooth and I liked it a lot. And a plus was that, unlike some white wines, it didn't make me sneeze.

For appetizer, Alvin got salmon tartare. It came between two wafer-thin crackers (I don't know what they were made of) and a side of caper berry relish. I thought it tasted fairly light, something that would actually be pretty refreshing in the summer. I got a baked goat cheese salad, which had two pieces of baked goat cheese over watercress and arugula with some beets and a vinaigrette. It was delicious. The combination of goat cheese and beets with salad somehow always just works. I really liked this salad.

For entree the last time we were there, Alvin got the seafood couscous and I liked it so much that I got it this time. It comes with a side of couscous and the "stew pot" type thing comes with fish, shrimp and mussels along with potatoes and leeks in this saffron tomato broth. It's yummy. This time Alvin got bouillabaisse, which had similar seafood ingredients but a different flavor. It was also good.

Filled with good food, we moved to dessert. We got the date and toffee pudding which came with an orange-caramel ice cream. It was pretty good, but I was getting pretty full so didn't have room for too much heavy dessert. I was glad that they had an interesting assortment of ice creams and sorbets so we got one dish of that too. We went with the sweet basil ice cream (which was pretty good!) and two sorbets - the blood orange and passion-mango. The blood orange was very well done but the passion-mango was excellent. I always forget how good a choice passion fruit is for things like sorbet and bubble tea.

To conclude, it was a great meal and I always say we should go to Marseille more often. But the list of restaurants we want to go to is so long compared with the number of opportunities, since we live in a neighborhood with so many good restaurants (for which I feel extremely lucky). I should write about the good food more often. Maybe later. :)