Singapore, April 30, 2012

Le Petit Cancale
37 Duxton Hill

There are many ways to enjoy fresh pristine seafood, but cooked and chilled isn't one of them.

It can be done under the right conditions - say if the restaurant is right smack on a beachfront or if you can run home quickly enough from Sheng Siong supermarket before the live prawns you bought keel over - but other than that, a perfect seafood platter is really hard to do.

That's why Le Petit Cancale has set a really high bar for itself by not just making the seafood platter the focus of its menu, but for insisting that all its produce comes from its namesake Cancale - a seafood haven along the coast of Brittany.

For sure, a seafood platter in Cancale would be to die for, but can the same result be duplicated by having seafood flown out to Singapore twice a week to Le Petit Cancale's pretty premises in the charming tree-lined cul-de-sac that is Duxton Hill?

 The seafood platter is practically a must-order simply because there are hardly any other options, and the $90 platter (that's enough for two) is more cost-effective than the oysters.

The seafood platter was sadly unimpressive. Even the much vaunted oysters were lacklustre with little texture or flavour apart from just being salty.

The prawns, langoustines, baby shrimp all had a kind of waterlogged taste and texture, although the whelks that were still in the shells managed to retain some flavour and pleasant chewy texture.

The impressive looking French crab belied a severely jetlagged critter with claws that cracked open to reveal shrunken watery flesh, although the body had a decent amount of roe and meat.

Click -> HERE to read more disappointments, such as a bad oyster that the critic encountered

Click below to see pictures of the seafood at Le Petit Cancale