Petit Trois

Sherman Oaks | CA

| February 13, 2019 - just after work|

Google Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte. The wet cobbled streets and fog choked sky. Hurried men in tall hats wearing a certain shade of green. Our story starts here. Among the umbrellas and elongated residential buildings of the Carrefour de Moscou.

Like the gentlemen in Caillebotte’s painting, I didn’t want to spend more time in the rain than necessary. I was still wearing my office-appropriate button down and slacks, which make for an uncomfortable combo when wet. Hunched in the stereotypical manner people conform to in the rain, I made my way from the valet station to the restaurant’s entrance. Guiding my path, the reflection of Petit Trois’ blinking neon sign lit the damp sidewalk ahead.

Inside is café society. Mirroring an exotic forest canopy, the ceiling is lined with a leaf-patterned wallpaper. It makes you feel sophisticated and well-traveled, as if you know something about the world others have yet to discover. Around starched white tablecloths sit elegantly dressed intellectuals roaring with conversation. It’s loud enough that your thoughts possibly passed through your ears before your mouth. The floors are checkered black and white, the walls are vainly covered with mirrors, and hanging from the ceiling are those characteristically Art Deco globe lights you would find suspended from a lamp post in Paris. It’s unequivocally French. We sat at the bar and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Although not traditionally my style, I ordered the fleur du mal – a cocktail composed of rose infused vodka, lemon and grapefruit. It tasted like a rose smells; refreshing yet short-lived in potency. It’s a beverage made for conversing, reminding you to transition from speaker to auditor each time the flavor dissipates from your senses. Not to say it wasn’t delicious, but it made me feel more like Salvador Dalí than Sam Elliott with regards to mustached men. Delicate is the best way to put it.

Snails. What’s more French than eating snails? We had to get them. Along with the escargot, we ordered a boursin cheese omelettete and the steak tartare to share. Lucky for us, the baguette was complementary. As to be expected, the butter had that perfect yellow hue that says: “I’m imported.” You can tell a lot about a French restaurant by its butter…like if it’s American-French or chain-smoking cigarettes while wearing a beret French. Petit Trois is certainly the latter.

How to eat a snail 101

Step 1: Ask about the snails’ pedigree

Did they come from an alley behind the restaurant or are they purebreds? Are they new money or old money? The snails that found their way onto my plate this particular evening came all the way from Burgundy, France making them more traveled than most of middle America. Girthy from all the ratatouille they ate in the Burgundian countryside, these snails were thicc.

Step 2: Perform surgery

Grab your medical grade snail-shucking equipment which should consist of pliers and a petit fork. Delicately clamp the shell making sure your point of entry is facing upward. Insert your petit fork into the void and dig around as if you’re a character on the hit tv show Mudcats, shoving your petit fork blindly into the snail’s orifice like a man noodling for catfish. After making contact with the snail’s flesh, pull the rubbery bugger out of hiding with a scraping motion towards the access point.

Step 3: Become a snail realtor

Take a small piece of bread and form a baguette shell for your homeless snail friend. You’ve removed him or her from his or her home, so it’s only right to prepare another. In order for the snail to best bond with its new environment, it’s recommended that you swab your bread in the buttery substance covering the snail tray. Although not mandatory, it creates a surface that is more conducive for the snail to stick to – similar to the scratching and scoring process in pottery.

Step 4: “Just do it” - Shia LaBeouf

Insert the snail carcass and bread vehicle into your mouth hole. The consistency should feel like you’ve put a snail in you mouth. Use the bread to distract yourself from the gristly texture and discomforting sensation that comes with eating a gastropod. Reflect on the strong notes of garlic and butter. Not much flavor is gained from the snail flesh itself, however it adds a hint of terroir – an earthy taste to the overall profile. If nothing else, it’s playful and different.

This process is best known as the “Austin System” – ask about ancestry, understand the basics of noodling, scratch and score, toss into mouth hole, ignore the texture, now repeat.

Midway through the route (as a group of snails is called), the other dishes made their way from the kitchen to our seats. I’d like to take a minute to emphasize that this restaurant is so goddamn French, it has an omelette on its dinner menu. I mean come on! Like the flesh of a newborn child, the omelette’s surface was free of any blemishes or imperfections. Its taste reminded me of a staple from my childhood: cottage cheese and noodles. It was a heavy dish from all the cream, but the familiar flavor kept me coming back for more until I finally uncovered the source of that recognizable taste. Accompanied by a butter lettuce salad, the omelette allowed my digested snail friends to feast in their afterlife.

In an unexpected twist, the steak tartare came out looking more like nduja (spreadable pork salami) than the mound of ground beef with a raw egg I was anticipating. Tasty as it was, the richness of the dish made it difficult to eat in mass quantity. For that reason, I preferred scooping the meat paste with the leftover pieces of baguette from earlier rather than the butter-saturated toast served with the tartare. Counteracting the thousand-island-like sauce coating the beef was a potent mustard taste that lingered on the palette. If I had to describe my tolerance for mustard, I would compare it to Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign. That being said, the conglomeration of bold flavors was overwhelming. By this point in the meal, my butter intake was reaching Chernobyl-dangerous levels. Although we didn’t order a large amount of food for two people, our choices were satiating.

But we still had to get dessert. Based purely on the name, we ordered the canelés. They sounded authentically French, and to my delight, they were. Shaped like gumdrops and chewy like them too, each canelé put my masticating muscles to work. Not too sweet and lightly hinted with citrus, they are the perfect pastry to end a meal. Add an espresso and you're golden Ponyboy.