Last summer in August we spent some wonderful days in the Côte d’Azur, staying at our friend’s house in Théoule-sur-Mer, not far from Cannes.
We still have such a nice memory of those days, we were with very good friends, in a gorgeous house overlooking the sea, and we just were in the French Riviera, what else to say?
We usually had dinner at home, after a long aperitif, cooking all together, relaxing and having fun.
Only one night, Manu and I went out for dinner in Cannes.
We arrived there around 6PM, took a walk first and then we started looking for our restaurant.
Our friends gave us the right address for a perfect oyster dinner, Astoux et Brun.
It looks like a typical French bistrot on the promenade, in a raw of many other similar-looking places.
But this one was the only having a queue of people waiting outside for a table. At first sight we thought we would never find a place, but then we decided to try anyway. After few minutes a waiter asked how many we were and very efficiently and self-confident told us to come back in twenty minutes.
When we came back our table was ready on the terrace.
We ordered two dozens of “fines de claire” oysters and a bottle of Muscadet.
The wine was really delicious, it’s a dry white wine produced in the Loire Valley (a very different taste from Italian whites) which is usually paired with oysters and shellfish. And also the oysters were simply divine, eaten raw with few drops of lemon juice, you could taste their original, primitive, mineral taste of sea.
Finally we decided to go for a walk on the promenade, and Manu wanted to ask the bill in French, so he asked me how to say. Yes, I speak French and quite fluently, but I never really studied it, so sometimes I do funny mistakes. I told him to ask “la diction”.
So Manu asked the waiter: “La diction s’il vous plaît?”.
The waiter stopped, came back and told him very kindly : “Pas la diction, di-cti-on” and he articulated to let him understand what he meant. “C’est l’addition”.
Well, it was a useful lesson for both, but I felt so ridiculous when Manu told me laughing “Hey, are you teaching me wrong things?…
The French couple sitting next to us was looking at us smiling.
“Uh – I said, standing up – I feel a kind of tipsy with all this wine…!”