Le Petit Café

Description:

• When they say the plate's hot, they mean it. Le Petit Café offers seafood and beef served on stone platters as hot as molten lava. With the "stove" at your table, you determine how much your meal's cooked, and the "on the stone" method makes for healthy dishes. A boon on breezy evenings, a hot plate is a mistake during the heat of the day, unless you'd just as soon be lunching in a sweat lodge. Thankfully, the kitchen prepares several menu items. The restaurant's second-floor outdoor terrace features faux-archaic inlaid-tile tables and blue-and-white striped awnings. The pink and turquoise stucco walls fit right in with the confectionery architecture of the surrounding buildings. Start with a Crazy Monkey. Boasting vodka, Bailey's Irish cream, Kahlúa, crème de banana, and amaretto, it covers three of the major food groups. The crispy conch fritters and shrimp in a blanket are good appetizers. For the main course, jumbo shrimp "on the stone," marinated in olive oil and enough garlic to keep vampires at bay, tastes like it just came off the barbie. The lobster, shrimp, and beef tenderloin combo is just as flavorful.

• © Frommer's 2013