Bistro la Bonne expanding

Photo by Angela N. on flickr

The other night I went to my favorite mussel place, Bistro la Bonne. They have a new expanded mussel menu, all of which are very tasty, and it's only $15 for moules frites and a beer during happy hour. I'm not sure they're quite as good as Bistrot du Coin or Granville Moore's, but they're in the same ballpark, and they're a lot closer to where I live. It looked like they were doing some construction, so I asked the bartender what was going on. Apparently, they're going to open up the second floor and turn it into a dedicated mussel bar! Very exciting, and I'll let you know how it is once it opens.

Mussels are hard

The hard part of mussels is the cooking. My wife and I both love mussels, and are fortunate to live in a town that features many excellent places to eat them. But until last year, we had never tried to make them ourselves. Then I happened on a recipe for grilled mussels, which sounded really interesting, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

The results were not good. The recipe was fine, but at least half of the mussels were undercooked, most of them severely. The problem is, mussels are pretty finicky. It takes about 5 minutes to grill them (8 to steam), but that's an average. You mostly have to watch them, and wait for them to open. And by open, I mean open wide. So the second time I grilled mussels, I was a lot more patient, and they turned out a lot better.

Recently, we've been craving seafood again, and scallops are just a bit more expensive than we really want. So my wife picked up some mussels, I sent her a recipe from Serious Eats, and she cooked them up for me (I have a really great wife!) She mostly followed the recipe, just adding rosemary, shallots, and leeks. The broth was really flavorful, and went great with the baguette she picked up, but the mussels, as a rule, were very underdone. I don't think we ate more than half of them. So, as a gentle reminder, when you cook mussels, cook them well! They should be open wide. Recipe after the jump.