October 18, 2016, Dinner at Le Repaire

phil62

Senior Insider
Little traffic in Gustavia and 39 parking spaces available for cars...our lucky night. At Le Repaire we were seated by the railing overlooking the motorcycle parking zone and it was relatively quiet. A warm welcome from Host Eric in his whites and the new servers who are so friendly. One server told us she is from Lisbon and she speaks Portuguese, French, Spanish and English. I say "Brava" for the multilingual Lola

OK, serious food copy now follows.

We enjoyed succulent Shrimp Tempura over a tangy tomato based cocktail sauce.
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Phil had the al dente tagliatelle with concussed, think crushed, tomato and shaved hard cheese toppings.
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I had the outstanding tuna tartar with tiny chopped wakame, seaweed.
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For desserts, plural, Phil enjoyed his hard sugar crusted creme brulee.
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I went with the evening's dessert special meringue topped citron tarte with a delicious pie crust and served with raspberry sorbet and graham cracker crumble.
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Préparer une concassée de tomates is one of the basic elements of most kitchens' mise en place. You destem, peel, deseed, finely chop, and then sauté fresh tomatoes in a bit of olive oil with perhaps an aromatic such as shallot.
 
Thanks Cass. I knew it was a tomato preparation, but not how involved the method is.
 
Thanks Cass. I knew it was a tomato preparation, but not how involved the method is.
Not involved at all if you do it all the time. If they use fresh tomatoes they have to be peeled using a fast hot water bath. Otherwise most jarred or canned tomatoes are already peeled and seeded and some chopped.
 
Yes, in front of the restaurant there are narrow lines painted wide enough apart for motorcycles or quads. This leaves more large spaces available in the municipal lot for cars and vans.
 
Unless you are in that kitchen you never know. If they do a lot of pasta dishes I would be surprised if they used fresh tomatoes. Just a matter of the time involved. There are some nice crushed Italian tomatoes out there- Pomi and Cirio boxed are very good.
 
Unless you are in that kitchen you never know. If they do a lot of pasta dishes I would be surprised if they used fresh tomatoes. Just a matter of the time involved. There are some nice crushed Italian tomatoes for sale- Pomo and Cirio boxed are very good.

canned tomatoes are perfectly fine for various sauces but will not make concassée de tomates. there was an english lady who did sunday brunch at one of the restaurants where i was chef. she served what she called consommé. with the accent on the middle syllable. it was nothing but stock. not reduced. not clarified. pff
 
I get the point completely. Making consume from stock is different than using boxed peeled, seeded and crushed tomatoes in a concasee.
 
I'm not sure I get the point either, but sometimes you don't have fresh tomatoes, right? Aren't the canned ones better than the anemic "tomatoes" you find in the grocery store out of season?

Didn't know you were a chef............very cool. I'll start to take your cooking advice more seriously now. :devilish:
 
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