French fine dining in Davao

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The story of Claude’s Le Cafe de Ville begins in France where Claude started training in his hometown and globetrotting to a lifetime career in the food and beverage industry, experiencing the world of 5-star chains – Hilton, InterContinental, Sofitel, and Novotel, managing a 16th century hotel in Normandy, and after more than 50 years, settling down in the Philippines with wife Tess in Davao City. Lovely, isn’t it?

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What makes Claude’s cafe special, other than the authentic French cooking married to Filipino tastes, is that it’s in a refurbished antique house. So you have blue marlin or salmon from the local market, poached or pan-fried in the Frenchman’s kitchen, brought to your dim corner of a table, while you converse in Tagalog and feel the history of the place. Ang ganda, n’est-ce pas?

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You know you’re in a nice restaurant in the Philippines when you have  a really heavy fork-and-knife pair on your table and the waitress would sit you and unfold the napkin for you and place it on your lap and fill your glass all the time and open the door for you when you leave. And you can’t read what’s on the menu.

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That’s exactly why some of us take French classes. To know how to pronounce salad niçoise, a la mode, foie gras de canard – and know what exactly these are.

But some of us like to take them classes and dream of someone, maybe Johnny Depp, whisper “I should cook you beef bourguignon, and make love with you till dawn.” Some of us need to know the pronunciation of these words when dreaming this dream, oui.

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Reservations can be done online. But if you just  want to see the place, check out the menu, that’s fine. You can also try coming in an hour before check-in at the airport (not advisable, really) and order desserts because you just had your last supper kind of lunch at Penong’s barbeque seafoods. Recommendations: crepe de samurai and durian shake.

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And:

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Their Crème Brulee could be the best thing that could happen in your life.

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Probably next to eating creme brulee with Johnny Depp in a small, sleepy town at the south of France.

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Happy weekend, everyone. We deserve this weekend.

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People’s Park, Davao
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