Europe by Food by Marlee: Ma Mère est un Garçon

On Friday night, mon amies et moi dined at a restaurant in Vieux Nice called Chez Mamère. It was super funky and cute. It was very bright inside and all of the menus were in old record covers.

ABBA 4 lyfe

After a few minutes we noticed that there were pictures of drag queens everywhere, kinda hidden, and there was a huge picture of a naked guy in the bathroom. One of my friends asked the waitress the story of the restaurant and she said "Ma mère est un garçon," which means mother is a boy. I didn't really understand the rest of the story, but she referred us to the mural conveniently located right beside our table.

Apparently Ma Mère's talents were many.

We got to the restaurant around 7:30-45, and it was practically empty. French (and European) people eat dinner LATE. The restaurant was completely full by the time we left and the poor two waitresses were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. We ordered a three course meal for only 12.50 euros, which is a totally badass price for Nice, especially Vieux Nice because it draws a lot of tourists. But we soon learned that a three course meal at Chez MaMère meant a three hour meal. Three. Hours. A full three hours. That's like three times too long for me.

L'entrée: Calamari (calamars en français). It came with mayo-esque sauce on top of une salade & it was pretty good. I'm not the biggest calamari fan, but it seems to be pretty popular in Nice. I only remembered to take the picture after I had eaten most of it.

It definitely beat Olive Garden calamari, which is the only place I had eaten it before.
Squid is weird though.

My main dish featured petit scallops and crawfish in a heavy butter-cream sauce. It wasn't what I was expecting; my mind was so clouded with excitement for scallops. But it came with rice, and I could eat it almost like a stew. Or soup with rice. But it was good. Very rich, but tasty. There could have been a bit more seafood in it, but I was so hungry at that point I would have gone to catch my own scallops in the freezing ocean.