Visbistro Mojo is an unprepossessing cafe on the thoroughfare Kasteelpleinstraat. I'd hoped to walk, but there was so much
construction on the way (we'd seen this during our wanders)
that Bonnie nixed that for safety reasons, and anyway we'd
have been walking into the sun on the way out and after dark
on the way back, so we took the tram from Konigin Astridplein,
a straight shot or so it seemed. Problem. To get from the main
entrance to our platform, it was five minutes of stairs down,
up, down, and up, with corridors in between. Eventurally we
found our tram and actually got to the restaurant five minutes
before our opening-time reservation.

We had our choice of tables, and I got one at the wayback,
farthest from the traffic noise and more importantly the
canned music. I've not mentioned this before, but every
restaurant and bar we visited in Belgium, so that's well
into the double digits, had piped-in American music, the
hipper places having hipper music, the more square ones
piping in tunes that would have been considered unsquare
when they were first performed thirty or fifty or seventy
years ago. What I didn't know: the trash was right nearby.
This started out a little annoying, but as my own detritus
built up, became less noticeable.

Our waitresses were an attractive Dutch-looking woman of
50s-to-early-60s, with ironic eyebrows, English-speaking;
and a quite pretty girl half her age of indeterminate but
Aryan origin, no English.

As usual, we went with an unorthodox plan, involving lots
of passing of food around.

Bonnie had cod with white wine sauce, endive salad, and
croquettes. The cod was a generous half pound, done just a
hair more than I'd do it, but perfectly for connoisseurs;
accompanying was a cream sauce with wine, not quite what one
expected, but even Bonnie admitted it was good. The salad
was slivered witloof mixed about 50/50 with mayo. The
croquettes might have been made in house but aside from a
somewhat firmer texture were identical to the commercial
stuff - oh, but these were perfectly crusted, while the
last batch someplace else had tong marks where someone had
stirred the fat around while cooking. Mayo and that tomato
mayo stuff came with. I was given a few bites of the fish
and most of the croquettes.

I got the basic shellfish platter for one at E36. Bonnie
had suggested getting a plateau for two at E54, but I
pointed out that 1. there would be less flavor variety, and
2. the plateau for two was E54 per person (it had lobster).

The basic was plenty luxurious with 8 oysters: 2 Gillardeaus,
3 fines claires, 3 Zeeland creuses. Gillardeaus are a fancy
brand, now one of the dominant suppliers in France, very
large cupped oysters that are otherwise not too much different
from the fines claires. Zeelands are especially salty and
savory, and but for the fact that they make my sodium level
soar, would be my favorite. I gave Bonnie one of each.

"Crab" is in the menu description, and I wondered what I'd
get. It was a king crab leg, fresh, medium size, a bit over
a quarter pound. Delicious. She got half of this.

3 giant wild prawns ("Gamba's") were head on deliciousness,
tender, lobstery, lots of head fat. I peeled one for her but
didn't give her the head.

There were about half a dozen each large and small pink shrimp,
of which I peeled a couple each for her. The big ones were of
course much meatier and had more head meat and fat, but the
little ones were sweeter and tenderer.

A quarter pound or more pile of tiny gray shrimp, most female
and egg-bearing. I felt a little guilty depopulating the
species, but they were good. These were a pain to eat but
worthwhile. The older waitress opined they were the best
flavored of the lot, and I can't gainsay that.

A dozen whelks and a several ounce pile of periwinkles, of
similar flavor but different texture - whelks are biggish
snails with teaspoon-plus-size meats, periwinkles probably
15-20% the size -; and the smaller ones more influenced by
the celery-rich court-bouillion they had been cooked in.
Bonnie deigned to taste one of each, to which she reacted
in much the same way as she had at the bite of kidney I'd
given her at Invincible, i.e., not totally favorably.

After I'd destroyed a hundred of God's creatures I went
off to the bathroom to wash my hands. While I was gone,
Bonnie told the younger waitress to take away my mess, as
I was done. The waitress said "Finally!" Maybe she had more
English than she pretended.

I don't know - this might have been one of the most ideal
meals I've had in years. Luckily. this time, Bonnie's dinner
also had been wholly satisfactory.

A bottle of La Chapelle Entre-Deux-Mers cost way more than
it should have, but it was dry and acidic, citrusy, and
quenching. It mellowed out when meeting with the creamy
wine sauce, but it kept cutting nicely through the shellfish.

Being massively thirsty even after we'd done with the bottle
of wine, I got an iced tea; it came as a bottle of Fuze black
tea with lemon, naturally and artificially sweetened, and a
glass with three little cubes.

We split a ball of ice cream (decent) with blueberries (mediocre),
redcurrants (okay), strawberries and raspberries (quite good).
and the biggest, sweetest blackberries I've ever encountered.

Courvoisier went nicely.
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