I love eating at the bar at restaurants. You tend to have more flexibility in what you order and how you order. Oceanique is a great spot to do this. While they offer very robust elaborate tasting menus they also offer a la carte options. Most importantly, their wines by the glass program is terrific and they offer reasonable half glass options. You do almost need to plan ahead a bit so you can enjoy both white and red wines. In this case a lightly smoked salmon course paired with the white burgundy no-brainer, 2009 Domaine Leflaive Macon-Verze followed by scallops in a lobster broth with kimchi which really was nice with a very unusual 2011 Trefethen Oak Knoll Riesling.

A tiny taste of chicken liver with cornichon, dill on a mini-cube of toast made me wish I had a macro lens (and a real camera) with me. While the iPhone takes some great pictures, I still miss having more options.

Splitting the Boulliabase provided a melange of the fish options and at a restaurant where beautiful fish and seafood is a priority, it could not be a bad choice. Splitting portions at the bar for some reason seems more normal. You’ve already broken the 4th wall of dining by not eating at the prescribed location, so feel free to split, order out of sequence and drink too much… you are at the bar. And so the switch from white burgundy to red was made with a 2004 Serafin Gevery-Chambertin. As I said, Oceanique has quite the by-the-glass program.

A crumbly Napolean and a rum banana cake chocolate thing appeared. Coffee was, again, the obvious pairing and the sugar/caffeine combo kept me alert the rest of the evening.

It was the end of a busy week found me contented. The Man With The Iron Fists would have to wait until next week.