Salade de Fruits Café: The Night I Got 'Musseled'

My birthday falls two days after one of my good friends' birthday, and it's the first time in 5 years that we're in the same city! Hence, a celebration awaited. We decided to go to Salade de Fruits Café for fancy-ish dinner with another one of our good friends from high school. Salade de Fruits Café is a very small French bistro located inside the French Cultural Centre building on 7th Ave.

Salade de Fruits Café

It was packed with people on a Saturday night so reservations are highly recommended. The waiter asked us whether we wanted the table outside of the restaurant (still inside the building) or the smaller one inside. Great minds think alike, we decided to take the cozier one to enjoy the atmosphere as well. 

French bread

We were served with hot-out-of-the-oven French bread. Extremely fresh, extremely soft. Have I mentioned I love restaurant bread? Already couldn't stop eating.

For appetizer, we got l'escargot à l'ail (snails with garlic) to share. This was my first time eating snails. It came with 8 snails, which were already out of their shells and soaked in strong garlic and oil, so I couldn't really tell what snails taste like. The texture was like mushrooms though. 

Escargot à l'ail $8

With a full house, our main dishes took a while to arrive, so the waiter served us more French bread. That didn't help with saving space for my main course.

We sat at the Place de la Tour Eiffel table! A little small for three of us though. 

Hearing from many other foodie blogs that their mussels are good, I wanted to try their mussels. Since my friends wanted to as well, we got the large size and with fries instead of salad. 

Moules et frites (Mussels and fries) Large $22

Each one of the mussels in the pot were extremely juicy and plump. The picture above does not justify so here is a picture of one of them close up (and personal).

A juicy, plump mussel

As you start digging in, you'll see that the mussels are actually in creamy soup, which added a nice taste too them (a bit too salty imo though). This is definitely not great as a dish for one person, but perhaps great for sharing. As this was my main dish, I ate it the most.  Man, I have no idea how many mussels I ate, but it was A LOT. I'm really bad with estimations but I'm going to throw a number out here anyways, I think well over 20. I say there were well over 40 mussels in there? No idea. Just a lot. Because I felt so sick of mussels by the end of this. 

The New York steak was juicy, nicely seasoned, and huge. 

New York Steak

I'm not a fan of lamb as I don't like that unique taste. Though it wasn't very strong in this dish. The meat was very tender and I liked the sauce.

Carré d'agneau (lamb rack) $29

It's horrible that I'm basically uncontrollable when it comes to eating. I simply can't stop until there's no food in front of me. Even my friend tried to move the fries away from me, but that didn't stop me - I just had to reach a bit farther. Stuffed my face. Note to self: get salad as a side next time. 

Ok, so the food was really good. The service was great - the waiter was nice and he also told us about the specials of the day (which we did not order). There seem to be some nice decorations in there, but it was too dark to see. It was loud in the small place, so it may be difficult to chat. One thing I don't like about this place is that they only accept cash. No cards.