I’ve talked about my favorite restaurants a few times on this blog over the years. Usually Claire and myself had similar opinions of the places we ate, and I recently came across a memento that reminded me of a particular night, long ago, at one of our favorite restaurants.
It was one night at Oscar’s. Oscar’s was an old-fashioned restaurant in an old house. It was almost hidden by palm trees near the edge of the water, in Monrovia, Liberia. We both thought the food was good, especially compared to the other African eateries in Monrovia. Claire’s only complaint was the giant cockroaches that often went trotting across the tabletops.
One particular night we were dining with a good friend, and his wife, that was assigned to Monrovia. We had a huge meal of very spicy curry and quite a lot of Heineken beer. Then our friends insisted that we have Oscar’s famous dessert. Turns out that their famous dessert was Crepes Suzette. Against my better judgement, we agreed, and all the wait staff seemed delighted — we were about to find out why….
Oscar’s “crepe master” arrived at our table wheeling a cart filled with crepe making paraphernalia and lots of liquor bottles. The “master” was an old Liberian — must have been at least 80 or 85 years old, but he was enthusiastic and very dressed up, wearing a coat with tails. He proceeded to heat the crepe pan over an open flame, poured the batter in and flipped the crepes like the chefs you see on TV. He went through the whole routine and put on quite a show…. but boy did he use a lot of booze. He poured in cognac, and more cognac, and then Grand Marnier, and then some more and then Cointreau. The sauce looked like a big bowl of soup, and most of it was some kind of alcohol. I think he probably added a couple more shots for good measure. But anyhow, he folded the crepes like blankets and poured the sauce (soup) over them and of course added some extra cognac on top. Then he ignited them like flaming volcanoes (that were swimming in moats of liquor.)
Claire mentioned that if we ever went back to Oscars, she’d just order the crepes — she thought the alcohol fumes must have done the roaches in because we didn’t see any during dessert.
Claire used to make really good crepes, but she had to admit she couldn’t top Oscar’s…. and she could never have crepes without thinking of Oscar’s.
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