Parc - (Wo)man vs (Sea)food
A and I are both fairly competitive people, and as such, we like making the occasional wager with each other. We've found it's a good way to motivate ourselves into doing things we don't necessarily want to do otherwise. Earlier this year, I had fallen off the exercise bandwagon and I wanted to climb back on. Given that A is a big fitness junkie, he was all in favor of creating a bet to help me get going again.
On a quick side note, when I first got to Philly and obsessively yelped restaurants even more than I do now, I found a photo within the bowels of the Parc yelp page that stopped me in my yelping tracks -- a completely over the top, 3 tiered tower stuffed to the brim with all manner of seafood. The moment I saw it, I knew I had to have it. You can probably see where this is going.
Motivated by the thought of stuffing my face with an entire tower made of seafood and eating all the calories I probably burned to win, I crushed the bet earlier this fall. And last Friday, A and I finally found time in our schedules for me to claim my reward.
We got there right at our reservation time of 7:15 PM and to my surprise, were seated right away. In my previous experiences with Parc, I've always had to wait a good 30 minutes after my original reservation to be seated. Our table was also this super cute two-top tucked in the corner by a window. All good omens for the night.
Our waitress was prompt with our waters and bread basket, and my fondness for her only grew when she was completely unfazed when the two of us put a sole order for the seafood tower and nothing else. Also shoutout to the Parc breadbasket, which is the best breadbasket I've had in the city. It consists of three different types of bread, a sweeter raisin-nut bread, a rye (?) loaf, and a classic french baguette. A and I may or may not have gotten a second breadbasket in the middle of our seafood feast...
After putting in our order, the first thing that arrived was the sauces. There was a classic cocktail sauce, a mignonette with shallot, freshly grated horseradish, and some sort of aioli. The next thing to come was three platters of varying sizes filled to the brim with seafood brought over by two waiters. Clearly not meant for two people sitting at a two-top because there was a lot of maneuvering by all parties involved to get everything situated.
The bottom platter of the tier had 12 oysters, six from each coast, 8 clams, 2 small bowls of scallop ceviche, and 1 small bowl of an octopus, green bean, and potato salad.
The middle platter had 6 mussels, 6 large shrimp, 3 razor clam shells filled with a razor clam salad, and another small bowl of the octopus salad.
And the top and definitely showiest tier, had 4 king crab legs, a lobster head, 6 more cocktail shrimp, two lobster tails, 4 broken open crab claws, and a small bucket with 4 lemon-garlic boiled shrimp.
I really enjoyed the mix of very simple raw preparations of seafood like oysters on the half shell along with some things that have been cooked or prepared a bit in some way. In that category there was a scallop ceviche that was a little plain on it's own, but delicious dipped in one of the many sauces that were provided, an octopus dish with potatoes and green beans that was way better than I thought it would be, a razor clam salad perched on their own shells, and a small tin bucket full of garlic lemon boiled shrimp.
The garlic lemon boiled shrimp were the dark horse surprise of the night. After all the cold seafood, the hot boiled shrimp were a welcome contrast and the flavor of the sauce, while very strong, was delicious. I love cracking open the head and sucking up all the good stuff that gets soaked in sauce in there. Not a move for faint hearted.
The weakest contender of the night were probably the king crab legs. The meat was pretty difficult to get out of the shell in one piece, even when you painstakingly peeled away most of the shell. I generally associate that with shellfish that's been frozen before cooking. The texture also was a tiny bit grainy, another detail that made me suspect it had been frozen previously. After the experience with the king crabs legs, I was a little apprehensive about how good the lobster would be, but I was worried for nothing. Texture of the tail meat was spot on with all the delicious lobster flavors coming through. We were too lazy to ask for melted butter so I ended up dipping the lobster in the shrimp boil sauce.
When we got down to the last push, we were left with half a lobster tail, two oysters, and a few other bites here and there. A had tapped out by this point so it was up to me, and I wasn't going to give up until the seafood tower was completely decimated. I probably picked up and put down the last oyster about 3 times before finally finding the mental fortitude to let it slide down into my stomach to join its way too many seafood friends I ate earlier.
At the end of the day, the experience was everything I had hoped for and more. A totally over the top, super fun night with my best (boy)friend in which I ate way more seafood than anyone would recommend eating in one sitting. Not something I'll repeat any time soon, but give it a few months, and I'm sure the craving will start up again.
TL;DR - Seafood for days. 10/10 would recommend the experience.
