Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

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When Brittany Was Our Oyster


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The rain was coming down, not hard, not gently — just with enough of a tap-tap-tap firmness to make us think more than twice of not stopping at all when we spotted the little oyster shacks by the Cancale bay. 

This being June, we knew we were technically in the wrong month for oysters — if you still believe the “you should only eat oysters in months with ‘R’ in their names” theory. But we were in Brittany, which reportedly produces a quarter of France’s oysters every year.

These oysters, they had to be tried.

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Paris: A Roman Behind The Bar


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We’re sitting at the Hemingway Bar at the Hôtel Ritz Paris, my friend Greg and I.

He leans over and says, soft and deep, “That face, it’s beyond the dreams of pornography.”

The face would be that of Roman the bartender, the friendliest man behind a bar that we’d met in our Paris jaunts thus far.

Greg and I, we’re bar people — we adore eating at bars, perhaps even more than eating at actual tables.

At bars, you tend to get to know your neighbors well — even if conversation only starts up because a fork is in your elbow. You have a front-row seat to behind-the-counter action, all the little dramas that aren’t meant to permeate through the welcoming smiles of waitresses.

You also get to know some pretty gifted entertainers pouring drinks — and Roman happened to be one of them.

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Paris: The Tried And True


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The upside to visiting Paris with a first-timer: The excuse to retread paths well worn.

There is the Angelina chocolat chaud yet undrunk, the freshly baked Poilane pains undiscovered. 

The sister, she has come to Paris with guidebooks well-marked and images of Amelie’s Montmartre flitting through her head. But first, the basics must be covered; important stops must be made.

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La Derniere Goutte (And A Lovely Discovery)


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When in Paris, we wanted to do as the Parisians do.

Or rather, given our limited French, what some expats in Paris do.

And so we found ourselves wandering the streets of St. Germain in search of La Derniere Goutte, a little wine shop my friend Barbra, a former and soon-to-be-again Parisian, had recommended.

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Le Perigord, Je T'Adore


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It turns out, my mother was right — church is good for you.

On day 1.5 in Paris, we feel drawn to Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. It’s Sunday and the childhood Catholics in us just won’t be silenced. I’m not saying we went to mass — but we did have a holy experience of another sort.

While leaving the church, there it was — tent after tent filled with duck rillettes, honeys, chestnut jams and sweet, sweet strawberries from the Perigord region.

We gawped at the decadent spread and then one another. This street fair — clearly, it had to be a sign. And so we stopped to smell the strawberries.

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