of mojitos and other madness: oyster craving?

i've always been quite fascinated by those special foods that need to be eaten with particular cutlery. you've got everything from the escargots that need two fancy tools - one to hold the shell, another to pull the little bugger out....to the old school toothpicks that we use to entice that gong gong or cockle out and off of their shells. in the case of today's post, the fascination for me at least, was how easily the oyster dislodges (and cleanly too, i might add!) from its shell with the humble two-prong fork you see...but in all honesty, we headed for oysters more to tame the oyster itch that g's been harboring!

perle noire's been sitting literally an eight minute walk from my house for a good maybe 2 years or so and it never occurred to me to check the place out. we decided to finally give it shot because all the other oyster serving outlets are either in a hotel and required stuffing ourselves silly at a buffet or a little too far from the eastern side of town where we were at. we sat down and zeroed it on the oyster list. g without hesitation, ordered a dozen, while i explored the rest of the board sized menu. the listings weren't bad, with several interesting sounding mains, from australian air flown wagyu to lobster and even pastas. but both of us were there for the oysters so that ended up as one of our mains! they were pretty good...fresh and not at all briny nor sandy, with a touch of tabasco and squeeze of lemon, these morsels quite literally slithered down ones throat and in a flash, we were left with shells and tummies wanting more....so we had round two!

in addition to the oysters, we had a go at the roasted pumpkin and thyme soup and homemade garlic bread. the soup was decent....nothing quite like that at the soup spoon or cedele but still good. it had an interesting touch with a taste of tofu and went quite well with the piping hot garlic toasts.

with g happy with the oysters as his main, i decided to try the prosciutto wrapped cod served on a bed of mushrooms. fish has always been my way of testing how good a restaurant is, as fish is really really tough to get right. perle noire served a decent cut of cod, but it was a tad over done. wrapped with crisp prosciutto, the entire dish was a little heavy for me. not sure if i would head back for mains at perle noire...the oysters probably, especially on wednesday's which is declared oysters nite at perle noire. guess one needs to have such a place on hand and near to home as you really never know when that oyster craving will hit no? *grin* i'll leave you with my favorite pic of this post....evidence of the pile of oysters that we polished off!