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Brasserie Central, Montreal – The Rouyé’s touch but I miss the sweets of ..Valentin

Before going ahead, here are some of the latest updated material related to current web site:
(I)A recap of all my reviews of Montreal’s finest bistrots & fine dining ventures
(II)My 3 and 2 Star Michelin web site
(III)Latest updated restaurant reviews:
ABROAD:
-Meal at 3 star Michelin Dal Pescatore (June 14th 2012)
-Meal at 3 Star Michelin Le Calandre (June 16th 2012)
IN MONTREAL:
-Meal at Maison Boulud (May 31st 2012)
-Meal at Café Sardine, Montreal (June 26th 2012)
–Montreal’s top 3 Isakayas (Japanese Bistrots) – August 2012
–Restaurant Helena, August 2012
(IV) SEE ALSO: the reports on Venice + Cinque Terre, Milan & Parma. .

Food rating: Benchmark in its league (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7)

Brasserie Central, Montreal
Type of cuisine: Updated classic French Bistrot / North American
Addr: 4858 Rue Sherbrooke West (Montreal)
Phone: 514 439-0937
Click here for the URL

This is the second eatery of Chef Thierry Rouyé (La Porte), opened since July, a venture that he co-owns with Paolo Oliveira of Café Méliès. The place, situated in the very wealthy neighboorhood of Westmount (how come there are so few great tables in such wealthy place??? I don’t get that one), is simply but elegantly decorated (a mirror-lined wall on one side, omnipresence of white and black tones with the contrast of brass fixtures, dark wooden chairs, a ‘glimpse’ of what could have been some partial checkered floors — the room was full, so by respect to the diners privacy, I refrained from taking pics of the dining room but browse the web and you’ll find some pics of the place) , with emphasis clearly on the food rather than on the distraction of bling bling decor.

This is a very classy place: when I called for a solo dinner, instead of telling me right on the spot that I’d have to sit at the bar — an annoying trend nowadays (hey..I am paying like anyone else, so why are the other places instantly proposing the bar to solo diners even when the place is emply ) — they offered me a nice table as it should at any restaurant! I chose to sit on the terrace….With the beautiful Westmount by a nice sunny day… Oh my..Oh my…

The Chef is Chef’s Thierry Rouyé’s son, Maxime, and I was looking forward to get a taste of his own creations, now that he is not at the side of his dad (he was working with his dad at La Porte).

As it’s the case of most tables nowadays, they put plenty of emphasis on locally sourced produce and seems to invest lots of efforts in even the little details sometimes overlooked by the most serious bistrots: for ie, they bake their own bread, have hired a star bartender, make their pastries on the premises . The place has enjoyed instant success since its opening, and you certainly need to reserve especially on weekends.

Menu & food –
On this reported evening, starters ($8 – $18) comprise of items like beef carpaccio ($13), salade noicoise ($16), foie gras terrine ($18), main courses ($19 – $45) have items like Black angus short ribs $45, lobster club sandwich $19, a daily risotto $19. Desserts were all priced at $10.

When you’ll read comments about this place over the web , play particular attention at what the commentator has opted for, because there are various type of dining offerings here: for ie, the bar menu comprises of cocktails, ham, oysters, but they also have a multiple course tasting menu which is closer to fine dining than bistrot fares, and they also have bistrot fares as well such as burgers, etc. Naturally, the person who went there sampling couple of oysters and munched on some hams at the bar might not have the same overview of this kitchen as the one who went for the tasting menu for ie. I picked the multiple course tasting menu because I went there to see how far Maxime could go now that he is on his own , therefore I can talk only for this particular menu.

$60 for 5 courses of this dining level is definitely reasonable.

Terrine de foie gras, abricot, pate de sésame – As accustomed to, when the Rouyés are at the helm, quality of ingredient is at the forefront. The duck liver terrine was not going to be an exception to that rule: the finest duck liver terrine. Instead of offering a straightforward terrine, Maxime Rouyé worked it a bit by encasing sparse pistachios ( not too much, just subtle enough to make it an interesting touch when you get to sample it) and the delicate sesame flavor was thoughtful. A perfect apricot ‘quenelle’ and scrumptious toasted bread complemented this excellentduck terrine. 9/10

Crème de chou-fleur, tabbouleh de chou-fleur, fromage mamirolle, chorizo, mousse de sardines – The cream of chou-fleur (cauliflower cream ), that’s as perfect as you want your cream of cauliflower to stand like. Creamy, enticingly reach, beautiful texture. The mousse of sardines, on its own: again, perfect texture, big great fresh sardine flavor (the remainder that fresh sardines is a world away from the fishy sardines at the super market and many top restaurants would benefit from incorporating such stunning mousse of sardines in some of their dishes). BUT Rouyé’s standards are no average standards so let me afford some ‘nitpicking’ observations here: the cauliflower cream mixed with the sardines mousse seemed an uninteresting pairing to me, adding nothing particular as far as I am concerned and I could do without the mamirolle cheese (again, not an item that elevates a cauliflower cream in my view) a 6/10 (Overall, the bottom line effect is that this was just Ok but not great) seems fair, although the sardines mousse and cauliflower cream would score higher than that, as individual elements.

Pétoncle poélé, boudin noir, meunière de noix, rémoulade de chou, émulsion jus de pommes/cidre de pommes – Technically, there’s nothing to reproach to the Rouyés. They master their cooking, work the textures as most expect, generally balance the flavors as it is expected on any great table, and so on. Unless you set your imagination to find technical flaws where there ain’t, there is virtually nothing to say about that aspect. So, the scallop was beautifully seared, the flesh as impeccably rendered, although I must admit that I had sampled more exciting scallops in town. Then you have the blood pudding, one of the Rouyé’s fortes: simply sublime. The emulsified apple iced/apple concoction is fine but has made its time. I’ll score it with a 7/10 for that superior blood pudding, essentially. And I’ll append a question to this paragraph: why…pourquoi…bon dieu de bon sang…for god sake…using repeating elements (we’ll get to that later on …. the tip: the green apple!!!!) on the same meal?

Pintade rotie au four, morilles, pommes de terre grelots, petits légumes – Cooked like a charm (a beautiful moist consistency, exact amount of heat required, beautiful sear of its skin), this was as great as a top guinea fowl dish could be. Being not a huge fan of this bird, it just does not excite me as much as, say, a stunning piece of fish or an incredible marbled piece of beef, but it’s definitely gone as far as a guinea fowl can express itself at its best. Morels, potatoes, radish of exemplary quality and tasty sauce were the complementary elements of this course. An excellent updated classic. 9/10 .

Pop corn à l’érable, crème de mais, sablé breton, pomme verte en sorbet – Once upon a time, the Rouyés had a world class pastry Chef. His name was Valentin. Valentin Rouyé. His is one of the two sons of Grand Chef Thierry Rouyé. When I say ‘world class pastry Chef”, it’s not because I am under the influence of something, Lol. It’s because he proved it, on the field. Valentin Rouyé, when I got to sample his creations in 2010 (see the macaron, sweets, dessert of this meal), was..to put it boldly….at the same level of any 3 star Michelin pastry Chef out there. Nothing less, nothing more! Two months after that meal, a highly experienced world gourmand who visited me in Montreal and went dining at La Porte upon my recommendation, had to say this of Valentin Rouyé ”’are you serious? This guy’s macarons beats Hermé’s, his inventivity crushes many high profile 3 star Michelin pastry Chefs around the world””. I am French, and do visit my homeland twice a year (Perhaps the Pierre Hermé’s reference is a bit exxagerated, although I have always considered Valentin’s macarons, for ie, to stand among the very best I had) but I can confirm what that gentleman was saying: indeed, Valentin..at his very best…he is something! Even more amusing: Valentin never had any training in pastries at that time! Imagine. Valentin moved on, completed his studies at Ithq , and now he works at Maison Boulud, downtown Mtl. I have no clue whether Valentin is at its top shape as he used to be, but what he was doing in 2010 was world class. Nowadays, the Rouyés have a new Pastry Chef and I was curious to sample his creations. Alas, the dessert I had (Sablés bretons, corn cream, maple-leaf flavored pop corn, green apple sorbet) was ‘challenging’ to me: I am a huge fan of sablés bretons since it’s the kind of pastry creations that virtually every kitchen claims to do well, but only a few make the standout types. This sablé is probably a standout sablé, but I will never know because it was covered with the corn cream! Please, never cover superb sablés with anything else! Then again…slices of apples, a featuring element of the previous scallops dish. Why using repeating ingredients in the course of the same tasting menu??… It just takes the appeal of your menu away. For me, there were way too many things going on in there, but not cohesively: for ie, I’d rather have the apple sorbet and the popcorn as the main elements of one single dessert. Leave the sablés as partners to your coffees (which they do really well, btw). And the cream of corn should be the base to a totally different dessert. I can’t judge this Pastry Chef on one dessert only, but while I was sampling this dessert, I was missing Valentin’s sweets. 5/10

WINE list – The wine list is short (approx 14 bottles featuring on the list available at my table on this dinner, presumably more gems available on the premises) with choices mainly from France, but also some few from California, Australia, Italy, New Zeland and Chile. Examples of great red wines found on that list: St Emilion Grand cru 2007, Chateau L’Armont ($87 the bottle/$17 the glass), Margaux 2007, Ch Paveil de Luze ($88), Sangiovese Scabi 2009, Azienda agricola San Valentino ($52), a Californian Merlot 2010 Grayson Cellars ($54 the bottle, $11 the glass).
Among the white wines available on this evening’s wine list: AChablis Laurent Tribut 2010 ($98), Les petits QV Mas St Laurent 2011 ($52 the bottle, $10 the glass), Sonoma Rodney strong, chardonnay ($60). Two rosés : a majolica cerasuolo d’Abruzzo 2011 ($41), Château la lieue 2010 provence ($48). Bubbles comprised of a prosecco di valdobbiadene brut, crede, 2011 ($46 for the bottle, $9 for the glass); Cava cordoniu classico ($57), Champagne Barnaut, grand cru de Bouzy ($97 the bottle, $19 the glass).

Service was impeccable.

Conclusion: All in all, Maxime Rouyé, on his own, has indeed managed to showcase serious skills. He certainly masters the technique, has proven that he can cook classically-inspired dishes that has nothing to envy a michelin star restaurant with equivalent offering (exempli gratia, his guinea fowl dish was as great as a practically similar poultry dish my mum had during our meal at 3 star Michelin Ledoyen —that dish was not reviewed in that article, but it was the best dish of that meal) and his creativity can appeal as on that foie gras dish where the subtle addition of sesame paste was genuinely thoughtful. I did not try his more bistro-alike material, for ie his burgers/club sandwich/salade noicoise, but I heard they are great too. We are in skilled hands, and this is is easily a top bistrot indeed (I personally would situate it right after my favourite bistrots in Yul: Au 5e Péché, Bistro Cocagne, Bouillon Bilk, Kitchen Galerie on Jean talon) although some details of this meal need to be fine-tuned: exempli gratia, avoid repeating ingredients like those apple slices on the same tasting menu (I can understand that it is another story when the customer himself/herself orders the dishes, but that was not the case here), work on better exciting cohesion between multiple ingredients on dishes like that dessert of sablé/green apple sorbet/pop corn or the cauliflower course I’ve just sampled. A suggestion: perhaps creating a perfected “show-stopper” course around that blood pudding or the sardines mousse. They do it so well.

PROS: The blood pudding, the sardine mousse, duck liver terrine, the guinea fowl dish, the good service
CONS: some ingredient association needs to be rethought, others fine-tuned. That dessert also needs to be rethought.

Overall food rating (on this visit): 7.5/10 seems the most accurate rating for this meal I just had, although I am a bit torn about this overall rating. I’ll explain: some items of this meal would be big hits at even a 1 star Michelin level : stunning sardines mousse, the ‘as perfect as it gets’ guinea fowl dish, the sublime terrine of foie gras. Thus, anything below an 8 over 10 may sound mean. But I was not excited by the association of ingredients on the cauliflower cream course as well as a dessert that is clearly not right up my alley, which makes me ‘wandering’ back and forth between a 7.5 and an 8/10. I’ll keep it at 7.5 since the better aspects of this meal deserve better reward although I will observe that Maxime has not managed yet to make me forget about say, Bistrot Cocagne, Au 5 e Péché, Bouillon Bilk and even Kitchen Galerie on Jean-Talon I am comparing apples to apples here (top level bistrot in Yul Vs other top level bistrots in Yul). and that this is more of a strong score for the technique showcased on this evening rather than for full excitement .
Overall service rating: 9/10 Professional, well trained. Connor, my main waiter on this evening, is a great example of the perfect gentleman: fun, accomodating, great listener, passionate about what he does and he does it well.
Décor: Simple black and white theme, and yet elegant.
IMPORTANT: ‘Overall food rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmectic calculation of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall foodperformance on the specific meal I am sampling only.

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Restaurant Helena, Montreal

(IV) SEE ALSO: the reports on Venice + Cinque Terre, Milan & Parma. .

Food rating: Benchmark in its league (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7)

Restaurant Helena
Type of cuisine: Contemporary Mediterranean/Portuguese-inspired bistrot
Addr: 438, rue McGill – Montreal,
Phone: (514) 878-1555
URL: http://restauranthelena.com

Helena is an upscale Contemporary Mediterranean-inspired bistrot whose owner is the Executive Chef and also owner at Restaurant Portus Calle, a Portuguese fine dining destination on Saint Laurent Street. The bistrot, situated in the vieux Montreal, has a very elegant/chic modern decor (with respect to other diners right to enjoy their meal in privacy and comfort, I try to never point my camera at a dining room full of people, or in the very rare cases I did so, it was done very discretely and faces were blurred. The room was not empty, therefore I refrained from taking pics, but if you go on their web site, you’ll find plenty of pics showing how elegantly the dining room is decorated). As it’s always the case nowadays when you dine solo, you are offered to sit at the bar. A trend you end up getting used to.

I am fond of Mediterranean fares (for ie: Italian, Portuguese, Greek, etc) but do usually have hard time with their upscale versions since I tend to expect the latter to be more than just the act of laying down elegantly what I would have sampled at lesser fancy restaurants. Furthermore, when you have been cooking since your tender age, you tend to be impatient when you are served with restaurant food you could have done yourself. All normal reactions especially given you can have great Italian or Portuguese food in their more humble restaurants, one fresh example was my recent trip to Northern Italy where the laidback trattoria A cantina de Mananan‘s savoury dishes in Corniglia outshone, in my view, those of my 3 star Michelin meal at Le Calandre (Rubano). And I’ll let you guess the difference in $$$ between both.

The other thing about Portuguese cuisine is that it is a very ‘accessible’ cuisine in the sense that you do not need to be Portuguese to ‘understand’ Portuguese food, nor to appreciate it. And although it is always a good thing to know what authentic Portuguese food tastes like (Montreal is blessed with a strongly present Portuguese community and great authentic Portuguese food can be sampled at some of their close-to-traditional eateries in town), you won’t really need to be stuck with those notions while eating at some of the contemporary Portuguese dining ventures, a feature that I do appreciate since I was born in a country where some of the most delicious food pertain to the topic of acquired taste. Portuguese food is accessible, indeed, since even the most traditional fares (make friends with Portuguese and ask their grand parents to cook for you. It’s the way to go!) are not challenging at all (not drastically at the opposite of what our Western palates have been used to).

In Montreal, Portuguese restaurants represent just a fraction of the restaurants that are opened in town. After 15 years in YUL, you end up knowing them pretty well. My appreciation of Portuguese restaurants went through various phases: once, Ferreira Café (think of a contemporary and refined take on Portuguese food as opposed to Traditional Portuguese) on Peel Street was a favourite but I gradually lost interest in that place. Then I was once charmed by Douro (Think of an updated take on traditional Portuguese) on St Laurent Street before, again, giving up on it. In both cases, the ‘value for food’ aspect was the main issue I was personally having and I also, at times, had some minor qualms about the service at Ferreira Café (as usual, your experience might be completely different). Between the two, if I had to go back to one of them, I’d probably return to Douro (the food at Douro is closer to my ideal of what Portuguese traditional fares should taste like) way before thinking about Ferreira. Again, a matter of personal prefs as usual.

A restaurant that I did appreciate and still do, without particularly ‘knocking my socks off’, is Portus Calle (the big brother of Restaurant Helena). I kinda liked Chez Doval for its traditional fares (wished I would be as equally impressed by the service, though), but my personal long time favourite (unfortunately, a bit pricey in my opinion) has always been the very traditional Casa Minhota on St Laurent (I am not saying that you should all flock there and that it is particularly special; all I am saying is that it is the Portuguese that, in Montreal, has pleased me the most up to now) . The rest are mostly rotisseries with some other eateries that you certainly do not want me to elaborate about, since they just do not worth one single second of my time.

The thing that I have always found laughable is when people sample Mediterranean fares with the fear to stumble upon predictable food. You know, the kind of simplistic suggestions like ”nothing here you probably haven’t tasted before”. Rfaol! A bit as if I go to the beach and suggest that I saw nothing here you probably haven’t seen before! I am afraid that this is the kind on non sense that is driving lots of cooks away from mastering the basics of real good cuisine. I am not against modernist food, but it has to be mastered properly, and for such you need to get the basics done right in the first place. And basics done superbly well translates in the type of food that catches my attention, it is also the only expectation that I have for Mediterranean cuisine.

Last but not least, I have always maintained a certain ‘reserve’ in my appreciation of most contemporary interpretations of Mediterranean cuisine: I find that many Chefs tend to believe that they can convert to Mediterranean cuisines on a split second decision, just because it looks so easy to cook. Wrong move! This is food that only shines in the hands of Chefs who have gathered long years of practice and cooking memory alongside those who have traditionally cooked this very well with no need of written recipes

The FOOD –
There is no menu currently on their web site, so I’ll explain: it is divided between several sections, for ie a section of soups and salads (between $7 to $10, the popular Portuguese soup caldo verde being available), cold starters (in betweeen $15 to $35; octopus carpaccio $15, Asparagus salad $13, plate of charcuteries $10 per person, Alaskan crab salad $35 for 2), warm starters (between $6 to $15, examples are cod croquettes, blood pudding, fried items like sardines) a section of meats (Between $25 to $30; for ie, Gaspor farm suckling pig, clams, fresh coriander at $30, a Francezinha sandwich Porto style with beef, ham, San Jorge Cheese at $25, Osso Bucco, etc), a section for seafood (between $30-$60 for ie, cod confit brandade at $30 — I’ll observe that we are in serious fine dining league’s price tags in this seafood section, probably due to the top quality produce being imported). The menu features French/English/Portuguese brief description of the courses.

Tabua de grelhados lulas plovo e chourico $15 – Grilled squid, octopus, chorizo. All grilled to the point, the quality of the ingredients fautless, the octopus superbly tenderized, seasoning well judged. We are not on the on the shores of the Mediterranean sea, and yet this young team of cooks did quite a nice job in these circumstances in pulling off appealing flavors, well timed cooking. Better than this, it’s cooking brought to you by an experienced Portuguese cook who has spent decades at home piling up the entire culinary tradition s/he has inherited from previous generations, Rfaol! This is exactly what I wished I had experienced on my meal at F Bar in December. Good 7/10

Then another classic of the Portuguese, The grilled sardines $7 – Clearly, they do not joke with the quality of the produce here. Generous plump fresh sardines of remarkable quality, atop a superb ‘tapenade’ of black olives. Again, for better, you take the plane and land on the Mediterranean coast! 7.5/10

Ameijoas gratinadas, milho, chourico e sao jorge $10 – Gratineed clams (gratineed with Sao Jorge cheese), a fabulous cream of corn underneath (on its own, this cream was so well executed both in textures and work of flavors – a benchmark cream of corn if there’s any), red onions. It might not be rocket science (we are, after all, miles away from Ferran Adria’s or Achatz works of shapes and tastes), but this is a great refreshing example of beautiful creativity when it comes to a contemporary interpretation of Mediterranean fares: mingling lightness of flavors with thoughtful plating that adds to the former intent. Perhaps the tiny clams will hit on some nerves, and it’s important that the wait staff ensures that the diner is sampling this dish before any other items (I didn’t play attention at the fact that it was at the table, so I sampled it after the two other courses it was served along… you have guessed it: gratineed clams, not eaten on the spot, it’s a recipe for defeat, Lol) , but nothing should distract from the observation that its conception is thoughtful. I found this one impossible to score since the clams were so tiny and the remarkable corn cream not quantitatively significant.Rating this would be more accurately an assessment of glimpses of what this dish is really is. Perhaps 3 big clams (instead of multiple tiny ones) and more of the fabulous corn cream would pave the way to a better appreciation of this course.

Feijoada de Mariscos $30 – A seafood ragout with lima beans, squid, shrimps, clams. There’s usually pork in similar Portuguese ragouts. This being closer to what a Brazilian version would tend to be like (using seafood). They kinda cook this too in the Acores. I need something a bit more Mediterranean here, for eg: add some mint like what they do in Portugal. At this point, I concluded that this team of young Chefs, although offering something clearly different from what an experienced Portuguese Chef fond of his homeland traditional cuisine would perhaps cook, had managed to showcase beautiful skills with respect to the contemporary genre they have adopted: dish after dish, the food was delicious, remarkably well balanced and the cooking always carefully mastered. This Feijoada de Mariscos was no exception to that rule. Delicious, and in its contemporary style, really well done, but this, I have to underline, did not feed my mind with some flashbacks of Mediterranea . 8.5/10

Wine choices on this evening were flawless, for my taste: A glass of Soalheiro Alvarinho 2011 had the necessary appealing depth of mineral aromas to balance perfectly with the starters I had. The Feijoada de Mariscos was served along another beautiful wine: a subsidio 2008 of fantastic taste. You have right there, with both previous wines, great examples of affordable (on the market) wines, both of private import, packed with chararacter. All wines were properly introduced, their bottles presented as it should, except for the very first glass of wine, and without wanting to sound too picky, it’s worth couple of words because I found it amusing, funny (although I’ll recommend it is avoided ) : to boot, I asked if they had some Portuguese Sparkling wines. The gentle young woman at the bar responded with an enthusiastic YES! I started to build expectations in my mind: would that be one of the little sparkling gems of Murganheira or Quintadalixa? Both being excellent Portuguese wine producers (of sparkling wines as well). The glass is filled, but no bottle shown. I insisted to see the bottle: bingo, it’s a Freixenet cordon rosada from Spain. Ha! That’s why I didn’t see the bottle, Rfaol! A bit embarassed, the young woman at the bar was sorry and explained that it was an exception and assured me of all following wines being Portuguese as I requested. Not a big deal, and I really find this more amusing than anything else, especially with such a delicious Spanish Cava, but please, do not hesitate to be upfront: if there is no Portuguese Sparkling wine, then there’s none. There’s no problem with that, Lol. PS: Not really a complaint since we all know that it is mainly on wines that restaurants make their profit, but it would be also fair to observe that prices of a glass of wine are on the steeper side here ($11 for the glass of subsidio 2008, which at least is privately imported; $12 for the glass of Freixenet cordon rosada, a wine I can find at the SAQ for $14.25, but again, this is normal restaurant prices for such; $14 for the glass of imported Soalheiro Alvarinho 2011. The logic I could see here would be that imported Portuguese wines cost more to be imported. Regardless, those were at least fabulous wines).

The little things I really loved...delicious food, well balanced. There’s definitely real talent in this kitchen brigade. For sure I do not expect miracles from a kitchen brigade that’s miles away from the Mediterranean coast, but with what they have in hands, they’ve accomplished the essential: showcasing good skills, delivering tasty food, and offering an interesting North American interpretation of Contemporary Mediterranean fares.

The little things to improve upon …. Nothing is perfect and life goes on, Yep, I know and I also know that I may sound not enoughly cool here, but as usual, to be taken constructively (for sure, nothing dramatic here, just those little details that bring you a long way) :
***When the patron has the wine list opened by its side, ask him if he is done with it before whisking it away. I may sound picky here, but with the elegant layout, the big efforts done by the rest of the wait staff, ….
***Never hesitate to be upfront with the customer: again, not the end of the world here, but that little episode about the cava should be avoided. Just tell the customer that you have no Portuguese bubbles. That this is an exception.
I am going to insist on this since I would like to convey as much accuracy as I can : I am being really picky here since the overall service was fantastic (the ladies at the bar were amazing, really cool and accomodating; the gentlemen serving me were all great professionals ), but on the other end, when I decided to write my side of the story about restaurants, it was mainly because I wanted to portray things the way they appeared to me instead of serving as simple advertising proxies or trying to sound cool / pleasant (as I have always maintained: Not meant to be mean here, not at all, but I do not care about what ppl think on what I write, I do not care about raving wherever I judge necessary, doing the opposite wherever I believe it has to, as long as I reach out to my own principles of bringing things the way I am experiencing them).

As for this one specific dinner at restaurant Helena, all I can say is that their mission of bringing an interesting North American take on Contemporary Mediterranean-inspired bistrot fares is accomplished. All simple stuff, but well done and tasting good. Blown away? Nope. Satisfied? Yep, this team knows how to cook. Did I feel transported on the shores of Mediterranea? Nope, but that is a tough task to accomplish, virtually impossible when you are not in Mediterranea.
PROS: Tasty food, technically without reproach. I prefer this over Fbar, but I prefer more rustic Portuguese.
CONS: Next time, get me a bit closer to Mediterranean shores. Learn from those who have cooked traditional cooking for long and pick couple of tricks from them. Add some of those tricks to current offerings and many will fall for this place.

Overall food rating: 6/10 Above average for what I am accustomed to at comparable restaurants/dining category
Overall service rating: 8/10 Mostly young, professional on this evening.
Décor: 8/10 Elegant, colorful, contemporary. Go on their website, WYSIWYG!
IMPORTANT: ‘Overall food rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmectic calculation
of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall food performance
on the specif meal I am sampling only.

WHAT I THINK MONTHS LATER: That 6 over 10 as an overall food rating for that meal seemed accurate to me, based to what I came to expect from this type and standard of eatery. It was not an average (5/10) meal for sure, not a 7/10 neither (in my view), but a meal delivered with flawless technique and they went as far as a non-portuguese team outside of Portugal can deliver on an above average basis. I read a review of my favourite food critic in Montreal, Marie-Claude Lortie, one she wrote about Helena bistrot where she criticized the lack of spicyness of the food as well as some inconsistencies in the cooking. The spicy-ness, yeah perhaps. Well, it is more of a North American take on Neo Portuguese bistrot, so I knew that it would be hard to be transported on the shores of the Mediterranean (a point I actually clearly made in my review). But the inconsistency in the cooking…well certainly not on the meal I sampled there. She might be right, perhaps there were inconsistencies in cooking when she ate there, but it is important, before talking about cooking inconsistencies, to really put things in their context. The latter being only possible when you first get to know what you are talking about (that is why you won’t see me reviewing food that I am not familiar with). Surreal complaints like the pizza was not enoughly cooked at an authentic Neapolitan pizzeria or the seafood is raw at a sushiya are thankfully less and less of an occurence nowadays, but I still suspect many people to carry cooking standards from their part of the world to food that has nothing to do with those standards. And you might be surprised to find relatively knowledgeable persons indulging in such mistakes: a while back, I was seating not far from a food journalist (no, it was not Madame Lortie if you ask, it is a gentleman and it was in the US) who was complaining about his meat not being at medium rare temp. Wrong call: medium rare is not the way meats are cooked in the cuisine covered by the restaurant where we were eating.

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Restaurant Les zebres, Val-David, Laurentides – Talent right where it needs to shine

(IV) SEE ALSO: the reports on Venice + Cinque Terre, Milan & Parma.
Restaurant Les zebres
Type of cuisine: Bistro (French with eclectic influences)
2347, rue de l’Église
Val-David / Laurentides
Phone: 819-322-3196

Food rating: Exceptional (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7)

Dinner on Sat Aug 11th 2012 –Dinner on Saturday Aug 11th, 20:30 – 3rd meal here. Both my wife and I have considered Les Zèbres (LZ) as our little ‘coup de coeur’ restaurant in the Laurentides for the past 2 yrs now. We tried some other well known and raved-about places in Ste Adèle, Tremblant, St Sauveur & surroundings, but found LZ to cater the most to our personal taste.

Tapas platter for two comprised of a series of top level items, looking simple as most tapas usually do, but carrying exciting mouthfeel and showing superior technique : beef skewers are items that are normally hard to rave about, and yet those had a depth of meaty and exciting grilling taste thateven few of the top beef skewers can claim to deliver. A benchmark beef skewer ifthere’s any (10/10). Another item was their version of the tzatziki, so fresh and so delicious, it would easily give to the best tzatziki out there arun for their money (10/10). Another 10/10 item, in my view, is their dried duck magrets with xérès caramel. I simply can’t tell which quality stood out: the superb duck itself? the remarkable taste? the impossible perfect flavor combination with the xérès caramel? But one thing I know is that this dried duck magret, on this evening, was part of a 100-metre dash with other standard bearing takes on the duck magret, and while the others were still at thestarting blocks, LZ’s dried duck magret was long gone! As impressive asthat. On this evening, they dropped the olives and veggie egg rolls thatfeatured on their web site menu (it’s a market driven restaurant,therefore sometimes little adjustments are made to reflect what came freshlyfrom the market). The beef skewer, tzatziki, dried duck largely deserving their superlatives, the other items of the tapas platter were not to be forgotten neither: trout rillette (9/10) was as close you would get to a perfect excitin grillette, a reminder that skilled hands coupled with a desire to refuse to take a classic for granted can sometimes bring an item so oftently overlooked to newer heights. It takes skills, though. Heart and good will alone do not suffice. This rillette was the result of the combination of all of those. Fresh clams of exemplary quality (8/10) also featured on this absolutely fabulous tapas platter.

The array of impressive tapas on this evening (their tapas platter is known to be an interesting one, but this was the best of the two tapas platters that I have enjoyed at LZ) did put a ‘big pressure’ (Lol) on what ensued: both Janice and I once again opted for the beef (Contre filet de boeuf grillé) 8/10 , for sure beautifully cooked and tasting good given the skilled hands that took care of it.

But I think that I have missed a rendez vous with what seemed to have been the star of this evening, the dish of ‘lamb bavette’: while walking to the Gents room, I saw plenty of other tables sampling the lamb bavette and their enthusiastic reactions was something I’ll remember for long. I should learn to follow the recommendations of the wait staff . Oh well, I too had my ‘star’ of the evening in the tapas platter, Lol.

For dessert, both Jannice and I went for the uncooked cheese cake. The cheese cake (7.5/10) could not hold a candle to the sublime initial tapas or the once mind blowing fruit sorbet I once have sampled here, and yet it ranked right up there with the second-tier successful desserts I came to be accustomed with at the top bistrots of this province. Really, no complaint over the cheese cake (it was a properly made, had refinement and tasted good)and the 7.5/10 score is in this case just a matter of personal preference: I tend to prefer cheese cakes with richer flavors and an additional layer of anything fruity, a coulis of strawberry for ie. You have guessed it: New york style cheese cakes are among my favourite. This one at LZ was closer to the French style cheese cake, light both in texture and flavor, although this did not use gelatin as the binding ingredient. When you live on a land that offers an incredible variety of cheese cakes, the competitive spirit is so high that you virtually never stumble upon a bad cheese cake. On the flip side, it takes a mountain of efforts and luck (yes, luck as in hoping that the cheese cake you are making matches with the style of cheese cakes your diner prefers… a virtually impossible task) for a kitchen to come up with a 9/10 or 10/10 cheese cake.

All in all, after 3 visits here, all I can say is that LZ continuesto shine at heights that makes it among my favourite top 5 to 7 bistrots in ourprovince. They just do things the way I like: using exemplary produce, they do get the MOST (vibrant taste, above average exciting dishes, etc) out of the very LEAST (a simple ingredient, no fussy manipulation). And with a Chef who has such a great palate, I am at least assured to enjoy some nice yummy moments here.

As an aside note: I am really impressed these days with a Neo-Japanese Isakaya (Japanese bistrot) that people have been raving about for years now (Yep, I don’t follow trends. So I wait, then one day I wake up and decide to find out for myself) : Kazu on Sainte Catherine Street, downtown Montreal. (Click here to read a short article of my top 3 Isakayas in Montreal). I think that a place like Kazu embodies one of the most prolific dining models of our era. A bit like the tapas places of Spain: no fuss in the décor, no table cloth but a constant huge line up justifying the fun to indulge in delicious food bathed in a laidback electrifying bistrot ambience. It’s a ‘boui-boui’ (‘hole in a wall’ place) as we say in French…but a boui-boui I would not have raved about if it didn’t stand out. This is something that I rarely say of a restaurant, but I found Kazu to really deserve each cent of my hard earned money: a very talented Chef (the Gentleman has an incredible palate as easily demonstrated by the delicious food he is creating. Which is no surprise: he was working at restaurant Toque for a while and his take on modern Japanese Bistrot fares will easily cater to Westerners too / his style is not entirely traditional Japanese but has also a bit of Western touches in plating and also ingredient combination at time) , present behind his stoves, delivering no BS but what most diners should bother about: consistent exquisite food at low price tag. An example, among many others, of why Kazu’s has blown away most Montrealers -> a $15 braised then bbq’d pork neck dish (10/10). A bbq’d dish … “there’s no big deal to that” you might argue, and yet not one single of the best bbq’d places of this province has delivered half of the deliciousness of Kazu’s version. Perhaps even more revealing is that I have to think back to the very best dishes of top bistrots like Bistro Cocagne or Au Cinquième Péché to find a bistrot food item truely worthy of a 10/10 as stunning as Kazu’s bbq’d pork neck tastebud wonder. Of course, like with any restaurant around the globe, your favourite included, Kazu has great dishes and also fares not as stellar as that bbq’d pork neck but it delivers consistent delicious food that many top level restaurants can only dream about and it is doing it at prices that would cover most restaurants of shame (an example: that $15 pork neck is offered as 3 racks of meat — Most restaurants are offering half that quantity at twice that price with a level of deliciousness not even close to what the leftover of Kazu’s pork neck tastes like).
Overall food rating (meal of August 2012): 8/10 Very Good for what I am accustomed to at comparable restaurants/dining level. The platter of tapas was of particularly brilliant level on this evening.
Overall service rating: 8/10 Down to earth, professional
Décor: 8/10 Elegant , romantic, high celilings, large glass windows
IMPORTANT: ‘Overall food rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmetic calculation
of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall food performance
on the specif meal I am sampling only. Sometimes, if the meal comprises of courses
that went far beyond the cooking level expected in the league in which it is competing

Dinner on Sat March 3rd 2012 – My second meal only at Les Zebres in Val David, stronghold of a Chef (Chef Jason Bowmer) that I consider as one with a solid head on his shoulders. I insist on the latter because my last work (now completed) on the finest bistrots and fine dining eateries of Montreal & surroundings revealed lots of interesting discoveries: Chefs who are reliable no matter what, others who find inspiration only when they see a camera in your hands or a journalist in the room, etc. Chef Bowmer does not suffer from variable factors and focuses on what matters most: expressing his cooking skills no matter the circumstances. And skilled he is: we kicked off with an array of tapas for two with excellent rillette de truite (trout rillette), dried duck magret, merguez pogo, humus. This was certainly fun but most importantly reminded of why I praise Chef Bowmer’s work: he understands flavors better than many of his peers. The food is tasty, the cooking flawless, dishes well executed, the flavors exciting as shown on my wife’s dish of scallop/white wine sauce with pimenton and my braised beef course (both easily of 8.5/10 to 9/10 marks, perhaps of no relative/subjective 10/10 benchmark but who cares??.. when it’s done this well!). Sorbets aux fruits, crumble de biscuit sablé is the kind of dessert that most will not rave about, arguing that they had sorbets done this well elsewhere, but herein lies one of those few reasons ¸that led me to occasionally review restaurants (not something I was excited to do, btw): I appreciate what I do experience as it is experienced but not in comparison to what could have been experienced..Rfaol..this trio of sorbet was a 10/10, as perfect as a sorbet can be. It was served with a piece of lemon, confit and dried in a way that an eye that’s sensitive to details would not miss to notice that this is cooking with a depth of inspiration. I love Chef Bowmer’s cooking because it is so inspired that it goes deep into the details that most eyes and palates can easily miss (not meant to be mean here): it looks classic, it looks simple but it is done better than what most are delivering as far as taste and skills are concerned. I receive a lot of emails asking why I gave 8, 9 or 10/10 on other sites to stunning bistrots like Youpala (St Brieuc), Thoumieux (Paris) but also to bistrots serving food that is appearently less spectacular than those…IF only they knew: that is what brought me here – appearence is not important to me. A simple pan-seared scallop that rises as excitingly to my palate as any complex-looking fare deserves to be rated as the latter if the in-mouth impact is as spectacular. Chef Jason Bowmer proves that food does not need to be a piece of theater. When you are talented, it will be as exciting no matter how classic or straightforward it might stand! This is the type of consistent cooking that makes me comfortable to feel confident about the fact that this is a reliable cuisine with virtually no chances to let me down may it be on a 3rd, 5th or 10th visit there.

Overall food rating (meal of March 2011): 8/10 Very Good for what I am accustomed to at comparable restaurants/dining level
Overall service rating: 8/10 Down to earth, professional
Décor: 8/10 Elegant , romantic, high celilings, large glass windows
IMPORTANT: ‘Overall food rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmetic calculation
of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall food performance
on the specif meal I am sampling only. Sometimes, if the meal comprises of courses
that went far beyond the cooking level expected in the league in which it is competing

The following is the report of the 1st dinner there on Thurs April 21st, 2011 20:30

A quick detour in the Laurentians with my sweet half, this time in Val David (slightly over 1hr drive north of Montreal).

A quick word about bistros (and to some extent, restaurants in general): It is quite a challenge for me to review bistros. There is always that fear of reviewing ‘just another standard bistro’ with the usual braised meats, tartare and so on. As I was saying recently to my wife: ”there is an easy way to get away with a 10..simply serve some tasty bone marrow on a fresh piece of bread, a tasty risotto, some rib eye steak, anything that roams in the safe lanes“. She reassured me with a simple ‘Yep, but what matters to you, anyway, are those who manage to do it better‘. Indeed, Jannice is right and I find motivation only in that little touch that set some cooks apart. Take what Chef Bernard Pacaud cooked on my recent lunch at 3-star Michelin L’Ambroisie (you can find that review on my newly launched 3-star Michelin dedicated web site), for ie: it was insanely expensive, but how many times in our short life shall we run into such remarkable explosion of talent in a plate? Food is food indeed, but I had either the choice of keep cooking at home (which I prefer over eating at the table of an ordinary Chef. Why should I eat an ordinary cuisine…when most of us cook way better) or giving a try to Chefs which cuisine has some reference to bring (the latest is what matters to me. Make that tartare that has been replicated a thousand times, but make it better!). I will sacrifice my time only for bistros I believe do stand out enough (read: better work of the deliciousness of the food/ I do mind sampling that 1000th duck magret if it can …stand out!! ) to worth my time as it was the case with my current top bistros in our province: Au cinquième péché, Kitchen Galerie, Bistro Cocagne.

Les Zebres: this is a restaurant of the Laurentians which cuisine has long been praised for its superior cooking. This is my first time at Les Zebres. From what I gathered, before going there, it is a Modern French bistro with an International influence (Mediterranean, Oriental touches). I seized the opportunity of a short romantic escapade to drop by.

On top of the usual starters, main courses and desserts, they have a tapas menu and they are flexible in terms of various dining possibilities: take-out, tasting menu from the tapas, tasting menu out of the standard menu as well.

Foie gras confit au torchon, gelé de Sauternes, pain aux pommes et rhubarbe, salade de serres de Jardi pousses de Ste Adèle: the more I make foie gras au torchon at home, the more I enjoy sampling it at restaurants. I guess it’s just for the fun to see how far those chefs can push it in perfecting the texture, the taste, the consistency, the technique. Here, the foie au torchon I ordered went through some great preparation: nicely deveined, well poached and rested in timely delays. It tasted great too and was of stellar quality (10/10). Accompaniments to foie gras do usually not catch my attention since a simple piece of superb fresh bread suffices for me, but they generously added some apple/rhubarb bread (simple but good bread + the apple/rhubarb taste pairs well, indeed, with the foie) and a salad of various greens (you should not miss a salad at such level of dining, indeed, but a salad that sets the bar is quite an achievement that only a tastebud can understand. This one was a stunning salad like I have rarely enjoyed at any kind of restaurants (Michelin-star, Non Michelin-star, etc; a 10/10 mark for the salad would be accurate). My only quibble is about the tiny dices of ‘Sauternes’ wine jelly: they need to be more flavorsome (perhaps something around the sweet/sour theme would make an adequate flavorful jelly to pair with the foie au torchon if you insist on jellies. I don’t). Overall a 9 over 10 (Excellent. There’s nothing as ideal as a foie gras au torchon, where the final product is as great as the skills, the care, the qualitative selection in the ingredients to seize the presence — or absence — or a raw talent behind it.).

Worth trying: Finally found the drink to match with foie gras au torchon: Brut Cava mousseux Parés Baltà. It was not paired to the foie gras, but I still had some left once the foie gras arrived at our table, and the accidental pairing knocked out all well known pairings to foie gras of torchon that I know. Worth trying with a successful foie gras au torchon (fresh, enjoyably creamy lightness in mouth with fruity notes of pear and orange
Brut Cava mousseux Parés Baltà, Spain
Code SAQ : 10896365 (16,60$)

Followed by:

Velouté de champignons – This velouté of Chef Jason Bowmer’s was a demonstration of rich and delicious balanced flavors. An excellent velouté.

Contrefilet de boeuf Black Angus 1855 grillé, dry rub aux champignons sauvages et carvi, réduction de veau au foie gras: Black Angus 1855 sirloin steak, mushrooms, carvi, shallots and veal/foie gras reduction sauce. Moist and tender, the meat retained an enjoyable beefy flavour and was cooked with precision to requested medium rare, which led to perfect warmth through the middle and a nice red center. It may be simplistic to review a steak, but this is the kind of dish that reveals everything I need about the cooking skill of its Chef: how the meat was aged and marinated, how swiftly it is charred, how the cooking is mastered, the flavors retained..etc. Furthermore, in this case, the Chef receives no help from the meat: sirloin is a versatile cut, but it does not have the natural advantage of cuts like the rib or the hanger when grilled, thus some extra effort to fill that gap and make the sirloin as successful. Here, as mentioned above, I have no reproach at all (I personally prefer rich beefy/red wine fully flavored reductions, but the veal/foie gras that was served is a welcoming alternative) and the mark that I am assigning to this dish (8 over 10) is my usual rating for most great steaks that I have enjoyed. The rare times that you saw a 9 or 10 over 10 for such dish occured when it went beyond belief (for ie, the ”Onglet de boeuf, paleron“” at Au 5e Péché), and those occurences admitedly involved cuts of meats that have an obvious flavorful natural advantage (hanger, rib eye). The overall was served with a tasty polenta cake.

Dessert (which I did not photograph because I was busy chatting ;p) was composed of a morsel of chocolate cake (a chocolate nemesis cake that was well done), vanilla ice cream (great depth of fresh vanilla flavors) /Chantilly complemented by a pineapple/mango salad (again, well done and the top quality of the pineapple and mango are appreciated here / they tasted fresh like it should always be at any great table), roasted pecans. Simple as I expect desserts to be at a bistro, but delivered with good flavors, care, quality ingredients, and certainly not ‘ordinary’ in execution and enjoyment. 8/10

The cooking was well mastered, the food tasty. Indeed, this was some cosmopolitan bistro food that stood out and a Chef who has tremendous skills as far as I am concerned. It also takes quite an amount of courage to take risks and explore all kind of flavors from most parts of the world. Chef Jason Bowmer is perhaps a discrete Chef (which I prefer over the annoying Celeb Chefs spending more time on TV shows rather than excelling where we do expect them to), but his food, on this reviewed meal, was packed with character.

Decor:
cozy contemporary decor marked by warm colored white/beige (from what my eyes could see on this late evening, lol) walls, brown-leathered chairs, large glass windows.

Wine list: Varied and well balanced. A smart list of wines.

Service: Fine, genuine, down to earth. Went well with the laidback and friendly character of the restaurant.

Overall food rating (meal of April 21st 2011): 8/10 Very Good for what I am accustomed to at comparable restaurants/dining level
Overall service rating: 8/10 Down to earth, professional
Décor: 8/10 Elegant , romantic, high celilings, large glass windows
IMPORTANT: ‘Overall food rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmetic calculation
of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall food performance
on the specif meal I am sampling only. Sometimes, if the meal comprises of courses
that went far beyond the cooking level expected in the league in which it is competing

WHAT I THINK MONTHS LATER : My kind of place: classic food or revised classic food (French/Cosmopolitan) achieved with character. Produce of this quality is never cheap, but I personally find the price tag justified, especially in light of the skills involved. Because here, the Chef does not just shop for beautiful produce. He also knows how to cook them beautifully. If for you, paying a bit more than usual needs to involve fine dining concept and stylish platings, then it is not the place for you. On the other hand, and that is my case, if cooking delicious food based on well mastered classical skills is your thing, then go. It goes without saying that it is not with a piece of steak that you’ll get what I mean. But try their tapas platter, try other special du jour they may have on offer and taste the difference. It’s a place about substance rather than pretentious superfluous lure of grandeur. One of my favourite French/cosmop bistrots around the globe.

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Café Sardine, Montreal – The day this kitchen will unleash its full potential….

UPDATE- MAY 2013 CHEF AARON LANGILLE IS NOT WORKING THERE ANYMORE. THIS POST IS THEREFORE KEPT ONLINE SOLELY FOR HISTORICAL PURPOSE.

. Dinner @ Café Sardine
Addr: 9 fairmount, Montreal, Quebec
When: Tuesday, 26 June 2012 18:30
Type of Bistrot: Neo North American Bistrot
Ambience: packed, tiny, popular, laidback
Decor: rustic, plenty of dark wood, wall bricks, close-up tables
Phone: 514-802-8899
Website: http://cafesardine.com

(English version, to follow) – Ca faisait belle lurette qu’on avait pas d’innovation relativement ‘tranchante’ du coté de la restaurantion Montréalaise. Il y’a eu Bouillon Bilk l’an passé, peut etre le filet dans une certaine mesure, puis plein de belles initiatives mais rien de vraiment différent. Café Sardine apporte donc quelques petites touches innovantes, par ci et par là. Pas étonnant, vu que le Chef Aaron Langille a déjà fait ses classes au restaurant Noma, temple d’une cuisine moderniste ultra innovante. Donc, meme si il y va molo (à Montréal, pas question de brusquer les us et coutumes –on est pas ultra conservateurs, Rfaol, mais certainement pas des plus aventureux non plus), sa cuisine est plein de petites découvertes peu ou pas du tout offerts à Montréal: travail poussé des herbes marines (par exemple, sa salade de pois de mer, laitue de mer), la transformation de ces dernières en meringue par exemple, ainsi que bien d’autres éléments tel que le travail de tous les éléments de la plante de concombre (le plat ‘maquereau, purée de concombre) en textures peu courantes dans les restaurants de Montréal (par exemple: assécher certaines partie de la plante de concombre, un résultat qui est vraiment pas mal). Bref, un peu de Noma dans certaines créations. Mais encore? Une cuisine interessante, des touches innovantes (en regard de nos standards Montréalais) et certainement la plus interessante que j’ai eu l’occasion de savourer sur une table Montréalaise depuis l’ouverture du Bouillon Bilk. Des prix doux, des ingrédients de qualité, un rapport qualité prix qui est dur à battre. Bémols? Les défauts (bruyant, petit, tables hyper rapprochés) de ses qualités (ambiance électrisante dû justement à la superficie toute menue des lieux, des plats bien exécutés qui feraient palir de jalousie plein d’autres tables offrant du moins bon à plus cher..ceci expliquant pourquoi plein de Montréalais investissent les lieux) , mais au final ca vaut un petit détour entre amis amateurs de bonne cuisine et de bon vins (les flacons, au verre surtout, valent leur petit pesant d’or) , histoire de découvrir ces petits plats plein d’intérêt, gouteux, bien faits, aux petites touches bien pensées et parfois quasiment suprenantes. Oublions les nappes blanches, oublions le coté guindé, oublions les décors sophistiqués. Après tout, n’est-ce pas ca un resto: avoir du fun, manger des bons petits plats et se laisser aller au petit coté ‘party” de la chose. Peut etre pas un coup de coeur, dans mon cas, mais j’ai bien apprécié.

Café Sardine is the new hit of the Montreal restaurant scene. Its Chef, Aaron Langille has spent some time at Noma in Copenhagen (this is the only reason that led me there: I have been waiting, for a while now, after some kind of fresh new culinaric creations on the Montreal restaurant scene. Especially if Noma’s ideas could inspire those..I am dreaming, I know..since I’d doubt that Mtlers will widely adopt Noma’s foliage standard bearing creations. But some inspirations, coming from Noma, adapted to Montreal scene…why not? ) before working for several restaurants in YUL. Opened around the end of March, it is a popular tiny eatery that fulfills its role of a café in the morning, of a luncheon destination at noon, as well as a bistro in the evening. They told me that they do not take any reservation when I called them and given how popular this place is, they certainly do not have to bother with potential last minute cancellations. I think Café Sardine is the most prolific restaurant concept I ever saw in YUL since a long time being basically a ‘’compilation’’ of everything that works nowadays: low prices, shareable sized portions of food , short menu, flexible eatery (café/luncheon place/dinner) and avoiding loss of time with un-popular bistrot items (for ie, their dessert section is short…why losing time with creations that are not in big demand? ).

YUL is known for its myriad of eateries, it counts among North American cities with the most restaurants per capita. Each year, hundreds of restaurants keep opening …alas, it would be more appropriate to call most of them ‘replicas of restaurants’. The 100th cote de boeuf, the 101th veal chop dish, another marinated beet, and so on. Not even the 100th cote de boeuf but one that would be a …stand out Cote de Boeuf. Not even. Or when they sounded original, it was basically about unexciting dishes just presented differently. Aside from what I consider among my favourite in YUL, and since the likes of Bouillon Bilk and Le Filet, now over 1 year, I have seen many serious dining destinations opening in town, with the will of doing really well, but virtually none that brought standout surprises. It is, as if, everytime someone is opening a new restaurant, that person’s existential question is the same: How to survive? Although it is of course absolutely normal to think about profit, I seriously question the passion of some of those restaurateurs. How come, in a tiny city like San Sebastian, they are all doing pintxos and yet finding thousands of exciting ways to surprise your palate? How come, at a time when thousands of restaurants kept doing the same thing, Au Pied de Cochon found original ways to give a new exciting dimension to rustic QC’s cuisine, Kitchen Galerie (on Jean Talon) managed to pull out a neo-rustic bistrot cuisine that’s more exciting than what others can deliver, Bistro Cocagne and Au 5e Péché managed to stand ahead of YUL’s very best bistrots . None of those are re-inventing the wheel but they are, in many ways (skilled cooking, food with an edge on the palatable aspect, etc) at the forefront of current Montreal’s restaurant dynamic . My intent is not to bash for the pleasure of bashing. It is a city that I dearly love, therefore wished it could shine among world’s most exciting dining destinations. The intent is just to bring some food for thoughts that will hopefully end up somehow, somewhere, in new ears willing to push Montreal to a potential World’s exciting gastro city. As you’ll see below, Café Sardine is far from being just another restaurant. It is an inspired eatery concept that brings fresh new air to Montreal restaurant scene.

Décor: Prior to visiting this place, I have read that it had a Parisian bistrot décor. Well, not really. First off, the majority of Parisian bistrots have mostly chairs and traditional tables, whereas here you have bar stools and tall tables. Most Parisian bistrots (A la Biche au Bois , Au pied de fouet, Josephine “Chez Dumonet”, Bistro de Paris) have tablecloth (more and more are putting the traditional tablecloth aside, for ie Bistrot Au Passage, Cartouche Café, Le Miroir..etc but that’s not typical of classic Parisian bistrot style), which is not the case here. Also: even if things are changing a bit on that aspect, it was no custom to sit and eat at the bar or a counter at most Parisian bistrots (which you can do at CS). Café Sardine décor has more accurately a mix of some elements from some English pub (the dark wooden floors, plenty of dark wood décor elements) and their own take on some neo-rustic bistrot style with ideas inspired from 1950s-era pop-art style (the Café Sardine solo wall painting), very interesting retro touches as that fun old-school phone in the gents room (wow..really really loved that all wooden retro décor in the gents room. Pick that phone in the gents room and listen to what they say..Rfaol!), 1930s hollywood glamour painted brickwork. You can seat at the bar counter, the few tall tables (mostly for 4 pers), or at another counter close to the window.

Service: In such a tiny packed place, you can’t expect flawless synchronized service, but they did the best they could in being relax, cool, professional and friendly. A charm.

Wine list: At the table, they have a small list of wines divided in 5 sections: reds from France (14 bottles, with wines as low as a $34 for a 2009 Chateau Jouclary Cabardes Cuvee Tradition, then some few bottles in the $40+ range, then some in the $60+, some in the $70+, up to a $102 Vosne-Romanée Village Domaine Daniel Rion 2009. Worth noticing: a $78 2009 Domaine Amiot Guy et Fils Les Chaumes, Chassagne-Montrachet), reds from other parts of the world (11 bottles from $40 up to $88, for ie a $44 Igt Toscana 2007 Calviolo, Le Querce or a 2006 G.D. Vajra Barolo Albe at $82), white wines from France (13 bottles, from $37 to $78 with some nice picks like a $45 Dom. Les Éminades Montmajou 2010, Saint-Chinian or a 2009, Pouilly-Fuissé Maison JanotsBos at $75), as well as white wines from other parts of the world ranging from $44 to $62. Constant changes to that list are of course applied, so next time you go there, other wines might feature on that wine list. They do also have far more gems than those on that list, and I went with wine pairings by the glass (in between $8 to $10) which exposed far more treasures (plenty of amazing biodynamic wines). A little coup de coeur, in my case, for a lovely 2009 Toscana i.g.t., Cabernet Sauvignon, Calviolo.

Food rating: Exceptional (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7)

The food: The menu at Café Sardine is inspired by a trend: the menu just features quick lists of the ingredients, for ie –tomato, basil, thyme- (think Eleven Park Madison, L’Astrance). Of its time, obviously, but come to think about it, not a bad idea at all: you list the ingredients and that gives you the freedom of composing whatever you want with them.

We started with a starter of baguette bread topped with tomatoes ($2). This is an item widely present in the the mediterranea, but this version I was having on this evening lacked many elements to truely shine on par with its med counterparts: it needed more acidity, perhaps capers, a touch of olive oil and such starter needs stunnier tomatoes. But at $2, I guess I am asking way too much, Lol. 4/10

Then Boeuf, épinette, pimbina, consoude, rose, tournesol ($14) – Beef tartare served atop a leaf of ‘consoude’. here, a first influence from Noma’s foliage trend with the use of consoude leaf. The tartare on its own was just ok (seasoned as it should, but certainly not a benchmark one – it lacked prime beefy flavor impact), but eating it with the consoude leaf did definitely turn this into an interesting experience. Talking about interesting, the dimension brought by the presence of the rose really kept this tartare in worth-to-pay-for category. Lots of efforts and thoughts went in this tartare, enough efforts to forgive the otherwise just Ok beef tartare 7/10

Then Truite, caviar de poule de mer, sur pomme de terre confite et crème fraîche – Top quality trout, cooked to ideal consistency. Logical matching ingredients such as potatoes and crème fraiche completed this dish. Hard to fault such dish, and certainly not a dish that will make me leave the comfort of home for, but at $13 and with what lies ahead, this is certainly acceptable. 7.5/10

Next was maquereau, purée de concombre $13 – Mackerel and purée of cucumber had references to Noma with all parts of a cucumber being exploited: the cucumber itself came in purée as well as in its pickled version. There was also a noma-esque exercise of drying some parts of the cucumber plant, the latter being a total success of functional modern interpretation of foliage. This could have been a 7/10 dish in other circumstances, but in this case, there were many glimpses of outstanding efforts as shown in the work of the cucumber. The mackerel itself, although packed with enticing grilling flavor, did largely benefit from the amazing work of its outstanding pairing companions. 8/10

Then Gigot d’agneau, purée de noix de grenoble, moutarde mariné, onions vert – Excellent lamb that did, again, benefit from the enticing flavor coming from the grill on which it was cooked. At $15, with such low $$$, you can easily see why this place is so popular. But it’s really in the glimpses of brilliance seen on some other dishes where my interest lies. Still, nothing to complain about. 7.5/10

Joue de boeuf, radis – $14 A delicious and tender piece of top quality braised beef cheeks. At $14, I have really nothing to pique at. I know places serving such dish at twice this price and the palatable impact is not as high. Had the sauce being as stunning as the meat itself, this would have been a benchmark of its genre. But on this occurence, I’ll rate it with a 9/10

Pois de mer, laitue de mer, sabline, cendre, huitre$10 – A salad of sea foliage was the reason I have full faith in the depth of skills that’s in that kitchen. For a palate that’s focused, what I was having would be a treasure of interesting discoveries. If you do not like sea foliage, this will not be your thing. I love sea foliage and this was certainly a 10/10 salad as far as I am concerned. Noma foliage inspiration was strong here, too. Top marks for a little meringue made of sea foliage and oyster. That was world class meringue (I really hope that Mtlers will adopt such unusually -seen elements on the Montreal restaurant scene like for ie, sea foliage meringue, ashes mades from elements of the sea. They add so much to the enjoyment of a dish, and that’s coming from an old-school gourmand like me). Adding oyster emulsion to that salad was one of those little touches that showcased the great depth of inspiration invested on this dish, and as with anything inspired, it brought emotions right up to the very last inch of the palate.

Gateau au citron, sirop de poire, violette$5- Usually, at most Montreal’s bistrots, desserts are an afterthought. And seen just 2,3 items on their dessert menu, I was ready to give up on the dessert part of this meal. But they proved me wrong: this was largely one of the very best lemon cakes ever sampled on a Montreal table, with a depth of enticing lemon and pear flavor that lingers on the palate for long. Excellent 9/10

Chocolat blanc, fromage bleu, thé du labrador, rhubarbe $7 – The staff explained that the desserts are made by a pastry chef during the day. This gentleman needs more visibility as dessert after dessert, his creations are certainly not your usual ordinary Montreal restaurant dessert creations. His style is definitely not boldly modern but its shows a great sense of taste and unusal inspired work. 9/10

Bottom line: the best dishes of this repast were refreshingly novel to Montreal restaurant standards and revealed a great potential in this kitchen. I can’t say that I was blown away (always a subjective thang, right?) , but I’ll have to concede that it is the most interesting restaurant meal I ever had in Montreal since a long time, with ingredient quality that’s high, cooking techniques on point, a Chef who’s obviously talented, and the dessert creations sampled during this meal might appear ‘normal’ at first glance but they unveiled a sense of taste that is certainly superior. To an attentive eye / palate, plenty of little details will not fail to catch attention. Don’t expect perfection all the way though: the charm of this tiny eatery really lies in balancing its strengths (busy popular ambience, surprising culinaric highs here and there such as the 9/10 and 10/10 dishes of this meal) with its weaknesses (such a popular place has inevitable downsides such as being too noisy, having the tables too close to each other, etc). In the end, it is a refreshingly interesting place that has a lot to offer. And the day this kitchen will unleash its full potential, oh my …my…

PROS: A braised beef cheeks course of world class execution, even if its sauce was not as spectacular. Very creative by Montreal standards. Desserts were also of solid level.
CONS: That tartare and tomatoes on baguette bread ..were surprising not at the level of the rest. Way below a general level of cooking that’s quite good, and more importantly interesting.

Overallfood rating: 7/10 Really good for what I am accustomed to /thus do expect at comparablerestaurants/dining category. Closer to an 8 over 10 btw, because the hits here (although sparse on this meal) are bold, veryexciting! And when such an unassuming hole in a wall makes you doubt aboutsome top gunners, you know that when the lion will roar, only the sky will bethe limit! I still can’tbelieve that only a handful of the numerous 2 and 3 star Michelin I madein the past decade have been able to offer dishes with the stunningimpact that their joue de boeuf (it’s a market cuisine, so no signature dish) was oozing of! Of course, it’s not a grand luxe place, but there’s alion in the house ;p If it roars ….
Overallservice rating: 7/10 Professional. They do their best, but what can you do: its is so busy, packed,electric, so ….they do their best in the circumstance.
Décor: 5/10 laidback,shoulder to shoulder. But hey, it’s FUN! Trust me (even with the bunch of stoopid susceptible characters we had next to us on this evening–Lol, they wereshocked because I was caressing the hair of my wife. Sad characters of thepaleolithic age, Lol)
IMPORTANT: ‘Overall food rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmectic calculation of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall foodperformance on the specif meal I am sampling only.

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Venezzia (Venice, Venise) – Is it overrated?

(IV) SEE ALSO: the report on Cinque Terre, Milan & Parma.

Your humble Montreal gourmand dropped by Venice on June 16th since my meal at Le Calandre was relatively close. It’s not my first time in Italy, but my first in Venice. Instead of indulging in the common public relationship’s write-up style that we all can profusely peruse over the web, I went with a more ‘down to earth’ straight-to-the point approach’. To each, their own

Usually, when you see a dispatch with such title as “is xxx overrated”, you would naturally anticipate frustration from the dispatcher and I would anticipate the usual reactions like ‘why don’t you just enjoy Venice..instead of nitpicking, Rfaol! Not to worry: wherever I go, I think about my enjoyment first and do fully appreciate my time however things go. You certainly do not invest your hard earned money in nitpicking. But for the constructive sake of guiding people in the more accurate way, I’d rather write about all sides of the theme. Do not judge hastily, my conclusion of this dispatch might not be what you thought in the first place, and with those carefully selected infos that I am sharing with you, your trip there might be optimized.

I have always maintained that if I had to write something, I may as well do it differently. And more importantly, my own way, regardless of what people might think. Therefore, I’ll spare you the same refrain about Venice’s landmarks: the world already knows that you need to lose yourself in its canals, that it’s supposed to be one of the most romantic places on earth, that there are two train stations you need to be informed about (Santa Lucia Train Station which is the one you need to take in order to get to the most interesting parts of Venezzia –its name in Italian–, the car-free historic center with its endless canals and popular sites like Piazza San Marco, and then you have a second train station, that is Venezzia Mestre which is the hub to the automobile-friendly part of Venezzia) and that Venice…well, it is also the Venice that can make you dream, as well….

I am more interested to cover an aspect of Venezzia that over-optimism and unecessary need to make travel reports beautiful at all cost….do usually and sadly lure us away from: what if Venezzia was a big tourist trap? Is Venezzia overrated? Some people thing so, and yet millions of people flock to Venezzia. The following might help us a bit into unveiling the latter dilemma.

Tourist trap? All places that are popular with tourists do naturally suffer from this. It’s, to me, utterly normal and if you ignore that reality, then you’ll be hurt in Venezzia, because for all the buzz created around its image of one of world’s most romantic places, you might perhaps –SEE next section to understand why I am writing ‘you might perhaps’ as opposed to ‘you will’ —, once there, find the ideal of romance be replaced by a very busy ambience of hordes of tourists flocking in all directions, and lots of people approaching you with the expected need to offer you services (come on my gondola, eat at my restaurant, but your souvenirs at my shop).

So Venezzia, not romantic at all? Of course, we all have our ideal of what a romantic place might look like. But I think that it is absolutely wrong to let the busy nature of Venice and its hordes of tourists make Venice appear as less romantic. What about doing this: (1) if you land at Venice’s Marco Polo Airport, take a mean of water transport up to Venice’s historic areas. Although it might appear overpriced at first glance (slightly more than 100 euros), you might get an initial enjoyable perception of Venice this way (2)wander in Venice historic area’s canals and streets early in the morning, way before 9am. (3)I found Venice to be visually more enjoyable from its waters, so perhaps this is how to get the best out of your journey in Venice. (4)I’d doubt that a gondola ride though the interior canals — as opposed to just the grand canal — late at sunset (not at night..since you just can’t see much anyways and it would make the ride as equally exciting to a night ride on any waters anywhere else) with your sweet half would not fit with the classic ideal of a romantic moment

What would I avoid in Venice? Eating at their restaurants, terraces in the historic area. It’s ..as you might expect…way too $$$ for what’s delivered. I would also avoid visiting Venice without having initially read a lot about its history and valuable architectures. Failing to do so make it worthless to visit Venice since you won’t appreciate the great depth of historical material behind what shall be displayed before your eyes. And if you can’t stand people…lots..lots…lots of people, well do not go!

Hope this helps in making your stay in Venice more enjoyable,
Aromes

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Postal card from Italy – The Italian Riviera (Cinque Terre) , Milan & Parma

Click here for a recap of my picks of all Montreal’s top fine dining & best Montreal’s bistrots.
Also: My 3 and 2 Star Michelin restaurant review web site

A little tour of Northern Italy (regions of Liguria, Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy) by your humble Montreal gourmand. Enjoy!

CINQUE TERRE – Most people who read this blog have no clue of what Cinque Terre is about (since they are mostly gourmands). But if you happen to feel the urge of visiting Italy, I recommend you include CT in your plans. It’s a coastal area of five eye-candy fishing villages of the Italian Riviera (Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza,Corniglia,Manarola, and Riomaggiore). This is my first time here, and despite a major mudslide that affected some parts of this area, I have to say, upon my visit here ( Friday June 15th, 2012) that the place is as charming as ever: picturesque typical seaside Italian villages with colorful Mediterranean landscapes and lively ambience.

Touring CT was a breeze and one of the most fascinating experience as a traveller. I opted for a tour guide of the region: Douglas Heise’s tour of Cinque Terre. Doug is a charming gentleman, and more importantly one of the most reliable tour guides I can think of. He offers both a seaside as well as a walking tour of what is nowadays widely known as one of Italy’s best well kept secrets (it is not a secret anymore, Rfaol, but definitely on the top 5 of Italy’s must-see places). Doug stayed till the very last minute with me, ensuring that the most was delivered. His knowledge of his region is un-parralled and what a cool person. This was top-class tour guide (I picked the sea tour of CT) and if you happen to visit CT, give a shout to Doug.

Cinque Terre is beautiful, pure and simple natural beauty. But Doug surprised me with a finding on the gastro side as well. This gentleman is not the typical tourist guide with predictable recs. He went above and beyond and came out with — despite a week of top quality discoveries in Northern Italy — one of the major coup de coeur of my gourmand’s journey in Northern Italy:

It’s called A cantina de Mananan and is located in Corniglia (Cinque Terre) – Their Piatto misto acciughe / Mixed dish of anchovies(see above picture) was a reminder that the best of Italian cooking is the one that is free to express itself without rules, guides nor food critic recommendations. The best of Italian cooking is taste that explodes in your mouth and lingers on your mind for a long time as epitomized by this Ligurian tastebud marvel . This was a top dish, and in the room I could spot demanding local gourmands with their nonnas raving over this cuisine.

A Cantina de Mananan was a real gem and surprised me because in an area that is as touristic as Corniglia, they could have lowered their standards and no one would have complained. Instead, they kept delivering stunning food after stunning food:

For ie, their gnocchi salsa di noci (gnocchi and walnut sauce) had to be tasted in order to fully understand why, I found their meal on this Friday June 15th 2012, to outstand many top tables of Italian cuisine in both the work of taste and texture of their food. This was Italian food in pure glory. A Cantina de Mananan, a fabulous hit on this lunch!

Osteria con cucina ‘A Cantina de Mananan’
Via Fieschi, 117 – Tel 0187 821166
Corniglia – Cinque Terre
Email: mananan@libero.it

A mention also to another place where they pay justice to the legendary palate of the Italian people: Ristorante Pizzeria Vulnetia in Venezzia (Cinque Terre). They do Pizzas as well as various Italian amuses. Their sense of taste here is also fabulous.

MILAN – the city of fashion, business and the NEW Italy.This interesting article gives a fun introduction to Milan.For the gourmand that I am, it was also the opportunity to try their finest iconic risotto à la Milanese. Outside of Milan, I spent some time doing the same with the tortelli di zucca, a Mantuan signature dish. My modus operandi never varying: I always diligently knock at the doors of experienced and picky local gourmands, twisting arms (I am kidding with the twisting arms;p) in order to get as close as possible to their hidden secrets. This brought some unusual …but much appreciated..moments such as enjoying the authentic food of some of their nonnas (thanks to the Italian friends who made this possible: you know who you are!) in the Mantovan countryside on at least 4 occasions.

Back to Milan, I understood that the locals were raving about Trattoria Milanese (the one on San Marta) as #1 best classic Milanese trattoria in town. I tried it, and here’s what I thought:

It is a place that understands really well the needs of today’s diners: big portions, tasty food. As an ie, the saffron risotto you see on your left had that kind of deep rich flavor that makes a risotto standing out, and it was sauteed to proper consistency with enough bite to it. But the osso bucco itself was just ok to me. Certainly impressive for its size, not the less appetizing but I have definitely seen better in town. It lacked the kind of meaty prime dimension that makes an osso bucco successful.

And I have to say: I was disappointed by my starter of Parma ham at Trattoria Milanese: in a region where ham is a king, I was set aback by that lacklustre ham I was served. Odd. Only the wine really stood out: a Nino Negri Vigneto Fracia 2008, a lovely Nebbiolo.All in all, I can understand why many local gourmands recommended this place: you will feel good here (they treat you like a king, food is generally certainly tasty, the atmosphere really cool and I’ll certainly go back because I believe that a place where you feel well is a place that deserves a return visit) . But as the #1 trattoria in Milan? I easily found 2 other spots that fared better and I am not even a local.

PARMA – It is the temple of Parma ham and Parmigiano cheese, so naturally your Montreal gourmand had to stop by, Lol. Although manageable, I didn’t have time nor any interest neither to try all their places for Parmy ham and cheese and tell you which ones stood as my favourite, but as you would have guessed, any Parmy Cheese or Ham you try here is of course among the very finest .With that said, there are naturally some who take the experience further in aging their ham longer, mastering its storage better than others, and using all kind of tricks and techniques to offer ultimate freshness and texture. One place that the locals kept suggesting for the perfected ham was Salumeria Garibaldi. This is a salumeria well known and respected in the world of its top authentic Parma charcuterie. They have a little table on the premises where you can seat and sample some of their finest hams and cheese. I asked for a tasting platter of their star prosciutti: culatello di Zibello (culatello is a refined and aged prosciutto, the di Zibello kind being the top of the notch DOP kind), culaccia (another top prosciutto using production methods exclusive to the legendary nearby Salumifico Rossi). I also tried slices of their coppa, along with …what a surprise..lol..their 30,48, and 60 months aged Parmigiano Reggiano. Top among the top stuff, indeed. You do not need to go all the way to Parma to taste those (I came to Parma for a combination of interest in both gastronomy and architecture ), since you can also find those hams and cheese around Italy.

More to come….sorry, I am so exhausted, lately

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Maison Boulud, Ritz carlton Montreal – Monsieur Boulud’s top standards of hospitality

Before going ahead, here are the two major links of current web site:
(1)A recap of all my reviews of Montreal’s finest bistrots & fine dining ventures
(2)My 3 and 2 Star Michelin web site

Event: Dinner at Maison Boulud (Ritz-Carlton Montreal)
When: Thursday May 31st, 2012 18:00
Type of cuisine: Contemporary French/ Italian /Mediterranean fares
Addr: 1228 Sherbrooke St. West, Montréal, PQ, H3G 1H6
Phone: (514) 842-4224
URL : http://www.ritzmontreal.com/en/dining/maison-boulud/
http://www.danielnyc.com/maison_montreal.swf

Food rating: Exceptional (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7)

(The review in English will follow) Il est avec Gordon Ramsay (dont l’aventure Montréalaise a coupé court, récemment, au vu de la fin de son association avec ses partenaires d’affaires Montréalais) , l’autre Chef 3 Étoiles Michelin qui mise sur Montréal. Son restaurant, à la cuisine aux inspirations Franco Méditerranéennes, situé dans le Ritz Carlton Montréal, est désormais ouvert depuis la fin Mai 2012. Point de vue décor, ca vaut le détour : le luxe à la fois contemporain et classique du Ritz, en contraste avec le charme chic-épuré et légèrement japonisant de la Maison Boulud m’a beaucoup plu. Dans l’air du temps, comme dirait mon voisin Léo. Aspect cuisine, il est trop tot pour juger, mais je prends toujours la précaution, afin d’etre aussi précis que possible, de rappeler que je ne juge (jugement toujours subjectif, bien évidemment) que les repas que j’ai pu déguster et jamais le restaurant. Car la magie d’un repas réussi, ca demeurera toujours un souvenir impérissable qui ne décevra jamais. Alors qu’un restaurant peut éventuellement décevoir, naturellement. Sur ce, l’éxécution technique, lors de ce repas du 31 mai, fut au rendez vous : donc, cuissons réussies, assaisonnements maitrisés en général (avec un léger petit reproche pour le coté sur-salé de certains plats; à prendre constructivement), harmonie des saveurs. Et du gout, beaucoup de gout du coté viandes. Somme toute, un repas plaisant dans l’ensemble, sans éclats particuliers (excepté pour l’exceptionnel filet de veau), sans ratés non plus. Donnons sa chance à ce tout nouveau restaurant, ou la qualité du service et l’humilité du Chef Riccardo Bertolino (des années au service des plus grandes tables de Mr Boulud, et pourtant pas une seule once de tete enflée…ah, l’humilité des grands! Fallait le voir écouter attentivement les petites remarques constructives du petit Joe anonymous que je suis. Lui qui a pourtant vu tant d’autres. Voilà un Chef, un Vrai, un Grand! ) servent de véritable lecon de vie: un resto, ce n’est pas que des plats réussis et des égos sur-dimensionnés. C’est effectivement bien plus que ca! On est dans la cour des très Grands, ceux qui prennent rien pour acquis, ceux pour qui le moindre avis compte, ceux qui établiront toujours les standards à suivre.

I wrote, on my review of Bouillon Bilk, that I was not going to dine at a celeb Chef’s restaurant (Ramsay, Boulud were planning to open restaurants in Montreal when I wrote that article). Here I am at Boulud Montreal. I have contradicted myself and feel no remorse: isn’t life, in itself, a big contradiction: we live … in order to die.

Daniel Boulud is, as most already know, the famous French 3 star Michelin Chef which eponymous 3 star Michelin dining venture (Daniel) is located in NYC. He has recently opened a restaurant in the Montreal’s Ritz Carlton, Maison Boulud. Most will tell you that you do not visit a restaurant on its first days,
but I have only my own rules to live by so I went paying a visit to what will most likely be considered among Montreal top finest dining ventures (Toque!, L’Européa, La Porte, Xo Le Restaurant, Club Chasse & Peche, La Chronique, Nuances, etc). This web site is dedicated to Montreal finest fine dining and bistrot tables, thus a visit to Maison Boulud’s in YUL.

For us, Montrealers, the Ritz turned into the ‘grande dame’ of classic luxury that generations of Mtlers saw growing, then aging to the point that it needed some kind of serious revamp. For the past 4 years, they proceeded with major renovations and the new décor of the Ritz (now re-opened since the end of May 2012) pertains to grand contemporary luxury (with nice classic touches in the mix). Of its time, indeed. I am usually not a huge fan of grand luxury and will never be, anyways , but I know how to appreciate it whenever the situation arises and the reno at the Ritz worths a detour I’ll recommend to anyone visiting downtown YUL. This (Maison Boulud’s opening in YUL) will certainly make the news in YUL’s actuality for the upcoming next months since it’s the major YUL’s restaurant event since the opening of Toque’s Brasserie T and Gordon Ramsay’s former and short lived Montreal’s restaurant experience (the restaurant is still opened, but Gordon Ramsay is not their Business partner anymore). Maison Boulud opened right on time for the upcoming June’s F1 racing event in Montreal. Perfect timing as well as ideal location (at walking distance to downtown’s main attractions).

Menu: Their menu is updated online with the prices. But just as a quick overview, starters range from $13 to $25, main courses from $16 to $37 and there’s a section of the menu dedicated to side dishes (for ie: $9 potatoes, $13 artichokes). The menu is mostly composed of French-based classics (for ie, patés, salade tropézienne, supreme de poulet), as well as Italian fares (porchetta, various pasta dishes, etc), all updated to contemporary plating arrangements as well as flavor/ingredient combination. And as it is customary nowadays at most restaurants, plenty of local produce (Asperges du Québec, superb local veal) feature on their menu.

Decor: The interior design of the restaurant was overseen by reknown Tokyo based interior designers Super Potato (Park Hyatt Saigon, Sensi Restaurant in Las Vegas, etc), known for their ingenious contemporary use of contrasting natural elements such as the chic wooden floors and tables of Maison Boulud Montreal, its separator wall of glass and granite, etc. It’s the warmth of casual functionality meeting with new world chic. The Japanese influence is present: it is strongly influenced by the concept of sabi (elegant simplicity) found in modern Japanese design, adapted here to a decor that is familiar to our North American eye. The kitchen is visible from the dining room (a large glass window allowing diners to have a look at what’s going on in the kitchen), a modern bar facing it (a patron said to the Maitre D that she found everything perfect, expect that the bar seemed too small to her. I think it’s a bar of the right size, approx 5 to 6 seats on each of the 4 sides of the squared-shaped bar. A bigger bar would be out of context, in my opinion). The dining room itself is divided in several sections, with one in between the bar and the kitchen, others in the far end of the room (the latter offering a more intimate atmosphere ). On their web site, the restaurant seems to feature orange tones. Unless I missed that part (I did not visit the entire restaurant), I observed only comfy beige chairs and a mix of light beige with dark wood alongside earthy tones of granite.

Service: I’m going to do something unusual. I shall write about service before writing about food, because tonight I was touched. Touched by how the service was exemplary on this dinner. For decades, I was tough on restaurants, expecting only their food to be the centerpiece of the overall dining experience. Then something happened about 2 years ago, when I dined at a star Michelin dining venture in NYC (No, it was not Daniel and not Per Se neither). The food was stellar but the service was so crappy that I could not appreciate the food performance at all. Slightly after that sad event, I had my meal at 3 star Michelin Ledoyen. This time, the food experience was not impressive but the Maitre D was one of the best I ever met and I suddenly realized how food was not enough. I felt so great at Ledoyen, perhaps one of the rare restaurants where I felt really at home and years later, when people look at my food ratings of that lunch at Ledoyen and tell me ‘ needless to ask you if it’s a recommendable place’, I urge them to understand that it is not the case at all. That it’s really a special place, and that despite what I perceived as some less enthusiastic food, I still had a great time. Hospitality can really bring you a long way. The service, on this evening at Maison Boulud, was one of the very best I ever had. It was a perfect balance between casual and formal, and yet very professional. Mr José, my waiter, was not only attentive but at the summum of the art of hospitality. I won’t get into details because I come from very humble backgrounds and I am not too crazy about royal treatment, but top standards of restaurant hospitality were applied all along this meal. The rest of the staff offered the same kind of perfected service as Mr José. Mr Boulud is obviously not joking when he insisted on his hospitality standards.

Food:

Porchetta de lapin à la provencale ($16) –Obviously, one of those occasions where the meat of a rabbit can brag about being flavorful and not dry. It came in the shape of a paté (as opposed to the classic Italian porchetta presentation), was well seasoned with, as expected, plenty of meaty flavor coming from the tasty roast pork element. It is a starter, so the portion is naturally not big and yet I’d recommend a touch more of the veggies (marinated onions, radish, carrot) elements that accompanied the dish. In the work of the veggies, an aspect so oftently ignored by many Chefs, I could see the great potential of this Chef. I personally found this terrine’s version of the rabbit porchetta a bit hard to tantalize me, but it might certainly reach out to others (a matter of personal prefs: having grown up in France, anything that comes in the shape of a terrine or paté suffers from harsh expectations) 6/10

Ragoût d’Agneau, Rapini et Pecorino ($18 in its starter version) – the Chef is Italian (Riccardo Bertolino. Hopefully people close to the restaurant world in YUL will do their homework and will shed more light on him, since there’s a scarcity of infos on this Chef, at the moment of writing) and obviously at ease with his homeland fares, given how the lamb ragu came through without virtually nothing to quibble about: the meat cooked as it should, with proper timing and a thoughtful balance of ingredients. It is certainly not your typical Nonna’s ragu (which I am a huge fan of), but one that is nicely updated to nowadays fine dining standards. Solid points too for the proper doneness of the egg-based Garganelli pasta, and this was packed with lovely flavors. A bit too salty, unfortunately, . 6.5/10

Filet et ris de veau Saltimbocca ($36) – As expected from a Daniel Boulud’s dining venture, the ingredient is taken seriously and the top quality of the veal I was sampling testifies of the latter assertion. Mind you, Quebec is blessed with some of the most amazing veal in the world. But I caught another glimpse of the big talent of Chef Bertolino: this Gentleman cooks meats beautifully. I had roman saltimbocca dish (veal, sage, prosciutto), a simple dish that I tasted on numerous occasions few years ago in Italy. I can’t compare this version against those sampled in Italy (not the same veal, not the same land, therefore pointless comparison), but there’s little to argue about the favorable rich and tasty nature of this one I had just enjoyed. The filet element reaching excellent levels (9/10 for that Veal filet, so succulent). What piqued my curiosity, though, is the sweetbreads that was part of the saltimbocca dish. In Montreal, despite the popularity of the ris, I was surprised to have found only a handful of amazing sweetbread dishes at most of the leading restaurants (bistrots, fine dining ventures) in town. To that regard, two tables stood out , in my view: Chef Daniel Lenglet’s Au 5e Péché, which sweetbread preparations (I think Chef Lenglet is one of the few – that I know of – who can truly master all aspects that lead to the cooking of this flesh: preparation, proper cooking technique, better understanding of that meat, etc) have always appeared outstanding to me, followed by my second best ever in town, the Sweetbreads/Gremolata/Artichoke dish I had at Le Club Chasse et Peche. LCCP’s was tastier, but Au 5e Péché’s was better accomplished. Chef Bertolino’s seemed, in my view, not as remarkable as the one that I sampled at Lenglet’s Au 5e Péché but it was certainly nicely prepared, its consistency as plump and firm as it should, and the flavor as delicate as only veal sweetbreads are known to deliver. 8/10 for his sweetbread.

Wines: A 16 pages thoroughly constructed classy booklet of predominantly French and Italian wines, with, as well, its share of wines coming from various corners of the rest of the world. There are also Canadian wines on that list. Prices will reach out to all sort of budgets with price tags as low as a $45 for a Telmo Rodriguez, Rueda Basa 2010 (there are plenty of wines in the $40-$60 category: for ie, the $59 Tselepos Moschofilero Mantinia 2010, the $58 Beaujolais Domaine du Vissoux 2010, etc ). On the splurge side (the side that I can only dream about, Rfaol) , you can have a $920 Tenuta San Guido Bolgheri Sassiciaia 1999, a $670 Chateau d’Yquem Sauternes 1993 (375 ml), and some major names of sparkling wines do feature on that list, too: Champagne Delamotte, Moët & Chandon, Louis Roederer, Laherte frères. There are also several wines available by the glass. The woman who was my sommelière of the evening is highly knowledgeable (She is not new at this, and she used to work alongside one of Quebec’s most famous sommelières, Elyse Lambert ) and her wine pairings on this evening were absolutely thoughtful.

PROS: The amazing veal filet, the hospitality standards of a Daniel Boulud’s dining venture and the lovely contemporary setting of the restaurant. A good dining experience is indeed sometimes more than just food.
CONS: Time will tell. I have nothing to say for now since it’s only in its first week (actually second day, only)

PS: An aside note –> I saw that Chef Marc Veyrat dispenses cooking lessons since couple of days, in Annecy (France). This gentleman, known to many as the non-official best Chef of all times (many consider him as even better than Joel Robuchon), will certainly not dispense courses oftenly. It’s actually a rare occurrence to see Chefs of this “high velocity” caliber dispensing courses. For those who may be interested, this is a unique occasion. Cours de cuisine, 7, avenue de Chavoires. 74940 Annecy-le-Vieux. marcoveyrat@gmail.com http://www.marcveyrat.fr/en/marc-veyrat.htm

MAISON BOULUD
Overall food rating: 5/10 Average for what Iam accustomed to /thus do expect at comparable restaurants/dining category. It was their 2^nd night only, if I am not mistaken. So they may have improved a lot by now. I have no doubt that this house will do way better, but I have got to give my personal appreciation of what I have experienced: not bad at all, to the contrary, tasty food was generally served all along my meal there (be careful with the salt on that ragout, pls), but nothing outstood neither (yes, the veal filet was something, indeed, and I rated it with the 10/10 it fully deserved…but still, it is a veal fillet and many of us can cook 10/10 veal fillet at home, too). In your first week, in a new city which patrons you are not familiar with, it’s virtually impossible to please right away. So, the assessment of such a young restaurant will naturally evolve quickly.
Overall service rating: 10/10 Think ‘GRAND’!Very GRAND! On that evening I was there.
Décor: 8/10 Class, with very cleancontemporary lines in the décor.
IMPORTANT: ‘Overall food rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmecticcalculation of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall foodperformance on the specif meal I am sampling only.

WHAT I THINK MONTHS LATER: I am glad to see that they have vastly improved from their humble beginnings. I do not care about reviews all the time and had not reviewed my last visit there, but it is true that they are now one of Montreal finest gourmet destinations. Way better than what I experienced on my 1st meal here. What I like with them is that they are not doing great food just for the foodie food bloggers, Lol. No, they also cook great food for every diner, no matter who you are. But again, I am not surprised: even on my 1st visit there, I could feel that they were genuinely interested to get better. Une grand table, indeed. Long live to Maison Boulud! I think they have now found their way.

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Bouillon BILK, Montreal – Novelty in gifted hands

2ND MEAL AT BOUILLON BILK ON AUGUST 2013 – CLICK HERE FOR THAT REVIEW

THE FOLLOWING IS THE REVIEW OF MY MEAL AT BOUILLON BILK ON JULY 2011:

This Month’s featuring review is the one I wrote about Bouillon Bilk, a restaurant that unsurprisingly (Chef Nadon was trained by the Mercuri brothers, Joe and Michelle, who count among my favourite Chefs around the globe) found itself in my top 3 bistrots in Montreal (along with Bistro Cocagne and Au 5e Péché). Chef Nadon was cooking on this meal, and when this gentleman is in his prime, he is as equally remarkable as Chef Alexandre Loiseau (Bistro Cocagne) and Chef Lenglet (Au 5e Péché), although what he is doing is more eclectic than the former two grand Chefs. When I wrote this review, I received many emails reminding that my title ‘Novelty in gifted hands’ was exaggerated since some found this not to be that ‘novel’. Interestingly, one of those emails came from a long time experienced foodie that I admire a lot and who I won’t name, but my answer to him was a reminder that novelty, as with anything else, is a relative assessment: ‘Dear xxxx, you once raved over the novelty of a dish of yucca you had at Mugaritz and bragged that it was unique..guess what my friend: all along my childhood, I used to have that same dish and that was over 3 decades ago…”. Bottom line, Novelty, when I use that term, is relative to a given location/circumstance. As a Bistro, and even at the time of writing this (almost 1 yr after my reviewed meal there at Bouillon Bilk), BB remains the breath of fresh air Montreal badly needed in its restaurant scene. I have written this only about a few Chefs and I’ll re-iterate it, here: Chef Nadon is a gifted Chef.

Event: Dinner @ Bouillon Bilk
When: Wednesday July 20th, 2011 17:30
Type of cuisine: Mdern Cosmopolitan/French
Addr: 1595 Boul Saint Laurent (close to Metro Saint Laurent)
Phone: 514-845-1595

Food rating: Exceptional (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7), just Ok (6)

(English review will follow) Plein de Chefs ouvrent des restos pour finalement offrir du déjà vu dans le contexte de leur propre délimitation géographique. A tel point que je renommerai leurs restaurants ‘copie 1’, ‘copie 2 ‘, etc.. Le Chef Nadon du Bouillon Bilk coupe court à ce désolant scénario: il apporte la formule de fraicheur tant espérée depuis des lunes sur la scène des restos Montréalais, la créativité, l’audace de sortir du lot en insufflant une touche unique (dans les standards locaux) et tout cela agrémenté d’excellence technique, d’un travail des gouts qui est remarquable . Bouillon Bilk, c’est tout simplement brillant (dans mon top 3 de mes meilleurs bistrots à Mtl). Le Chef Nadon, bien au delà des standards locaux, c’est un grand talent dont les actuelles créations culinaires au Bouillon Bilk n’ont souvent rien à envier à ce que l’on peut trouver dans un excellent 1 Étoile Michelin en France. Allez, hop dans la liste de mes coups de coeur!

Montreal is getting all excited with the future opening of Gordon Ramsay’s (I don’t get that one!) and Daniel Boulud’s ventures, but I would not. GR and DB will put Mtl on world’s gastronomy map, perhaps, but Montreal has some serious homework to do before feasting: this city has thousands of restaurants ..thousands…and yet, I can count on the fingers of my hand the number of restaurants that I would care for. A handful! That’s yet. There are many that are decent, indeed. But just a handful that worth the hype of international consideration we seem to seek through big names like GR and DB. Talking about GR and DB…you won’t see one review of their restaurants on this site. I know this will change nothing in their life, but it won’t neither in mine. GR and DB are welcomed in Montreal though. They will ensure more mileage to the remunarated fooc critics, but I beg to stay away from mutton’s folly land! For the record, I am not the type to encourage celebrity chefs in their quest for perpetual expansion through name bearers: Pacaud, for ie, is a 3 star Michelin Chef who is way more talented than the likes of GR and DB. Pacaud is of the level of spectacular legendary Chefs like Robuchon, Fredy Girardet, and although on the verge of retirement (that ‘real genius‘ is 65+ if I recall properly) ..he was there, behind his stoves, kicking a spectacular 3 star Michelin meal on a Friday lunch: this one. Now, imagine what I may think of name bearers promoted by some…

Which brings me to what I like to do most: discovering the food of the artisan Chefs who stand as true gems. I remember Chef Mercuri at XO Le Restaurant. I remember Chef Rouyé at La Porte. I remember Chef Navarrette Jr at Raza. I remember Chef Lenglet at Au 5e Péché. I remember Chef Loiseau at Bistro Cocagne. I remember Chef Belair at Le Marly. I remember those ones, because I truly think they stood out in their own ways. I know there are few more (Toque, Club Chasse et Peche, etc), but not so much more. Still, my doors are open: just bring some true talent…make sure it’s true talent though…and I’m the first who will be enthused by the idea of discovering their Chef d’oeuvre. You won’t fool me: I know what is pure empty buzz, and I know what is worthy of the buzz! When I heard that Chef François Nadon has opened his restaurant, that caught my attention: this gentleman is more busy expressing his cooking talent where it needs to rather than parading on TV cooking shows! He is more substance than fla fla. If I could say of a Chef that he went to the right school, then it would be of Chef François Nadon. Given his past experiences at ex-Bronte, XO Le Restaurant and Globe (those three restaurants have always welcomed raw talents..just think of the Mercuris, Eric Gonzalez, Frédéric Morin), I had to pay a visit to his new venture ( Personally, I would tend to play more attention at any Chef who has evolved at those 3 restaurants than most cooks who would pretend having spent times in 1,2,3 star-Michelin kitchens).

Off to the food report:

Linguini, bacon, roasted almonds, blue cheese, mushrooms – Write this down: roasted almonds and blue cheese …done this way, cooked this way, tasting this way….mixed with pastas..is a hit! It might not be a benchmark (my 10/10) dish but this is simply excellent (a rich and memorable mouthfeel that deserves that I leave the comfort of home for. This could be easily a 10/10 (the taste, the flavor combinations were amazing) , but with respect to my strict rating standards, I’ll give it a fair 9/10 (which means EXCELLENT, by the way!)

Next offering:

Grilled shrimps, bone marrow, orange, miso, céléri and thyme – An 8 over 10 (which means ‘very good’ in my standards), but here again … be careful: this could be easily a 10/10 since I don’t see how you can improve on this dish: the taste is irreprochable, textures are perfect, cooking technique right on point, the addition of subtle orange, miso, thyme and celeri flavors so inspiring. So why 8/10 and not 10/10: simply because I know the potential of this Chef. He is not an average chef and in his own standards, this is great but not stellar. This Gentleman can be stellar….trust me! The other reason is this: for someone like me who was born in front of an ocean of stunning seafood, the standards are very high when it comes to seafood. Not bragging here, just a reminder about how strict you become in such circumstances.So, take that 8 over 10 as a perfect score.

Braised pork (as a ragout), green peas ravioli, olive oil emulsion, pistachios – This is of pure benchmark material: the level of deliciousness being so high, the raviolis well done, the braised pork faultless. Each ingredient shining on its own is something we oftently see. But this went beyond: the rich and memorable individual tastes paired so well together. This is what I am willing to pay for when I dine out! 10/10

Duck Magret is my secret ‘testing-weapon’ when I visit a restaurant. It’s those ‘hey..this is easy thing to do‘ that most Chefs will tell you. Love this…because the easier things tend to route Chefs in Easy-Land…and I … in Strict-Judging Land…Here again, this would be easily a 10/10 at most tables in Montreal…the most important task being fullfilled: the duck magret was superbly well cooked and tasted so great. The lentils, delicious with great mouthsome. But since Chef Nadon is not our average chef, we’ll roam within his standards: Chef, elevate those two portions of duck terrine to stunning levels (they were great, don’t get me wrong…but I know you can make this as stellar as let’s say the terrine of foie I had at Biron, for ie) and this is an easy 10. It is an 8.5 over 10 for this occurence, but that’s being insanely picky….which I can afford to be, knowing well the talent of Chef Nadon. Notice that there’s no technical fault and no serious reproach, here!

Chocolate ganache, tia maria, black raspberry, hazelnut ice cream – A 9/10 of my standards (which is no benchmark, but excellent) for the delicious top-tier ingredients (the chocolate was of impeccable quality, same could be said of the raspberry). There’s really nothing not to enjoy here, each component being perfectly well executed with taste to match!

Cheese cake, strawberry, basil, balsamic – I thought I had my share of cheese cakes with most of them being of top marks. Chef Nadon had a surprise for my palate: what about pushing the boundaries a bit higher? Which he successfully did…but the amazement of this one cheese cake can’t be summed up in just those few words…Grandma used to tell me ‘succulent dishes can’t be described….they only can be tasted!”. .10/10

Menu: The dinner menu on this given evening is small but varied. Six starters priced from $12 to $14 (well balanced between veal carpaccio, crab, fish, shrimps, etc). Five main courses (Pork, trout, scallops, lobster, duck) from $23 to $28 and 6 desserts (from $7 to $12). A rare occurence: they do excel on savouries as well as on desserts. An enticing menu, lots of combinations you seldomly find at other Montreal restaurants and a sense of detail/creativity that’s among those few that stand out in town.

Wine: On this given evening, a small list of wines (1 sparkling wine which was a Prosecco Bisol $40 the bottle, $8 the glass/ 2 champagne which were Champagne Barbichon and Bollinger ) + 6 white wines, 9 red) that was smartly conceived and balanced with reasonable prices ranging from $35 (Beaujolais 2010, Raisins Gaulois, M. Lapierre / Coteaux d’Aix en Provence 2008, Chateau Revelette) to $120 (the bottle of champagne Bollinger). In between, lots of nicely priced bottles: for ie, an Anjou 2008, Chateau de la Guimonière was priced at $40 (8$ the glass), a Monferrato Freisa 2005, Canone Inverso, Cantine Valpane at $48 (9.5$ the glass), a Coteaux du Languedoc 2010, Mas Jullien at $42 (8.8 the glass), etc The wine was skillfully paired all along our meal (we basically paired each dish with a glass of wine, with some glasses of the Prosecco Bisol at the very beginning).

Service: Wherever and whenever you put someone open minded, who has travelled a lot and who is well mannered on my way, I am in heaven! The young woman who served us works for Air Canada, has travelled a lot and is as refreshingly interesting as a fun classy globetrotter! A 10!

Conclusion: Of this restaurant, food critic Marie-Claude Lortie writes that it is refreshing to see, finally, a table that refrains from re-editing what we see everywhere in town. Chef Nadon’s unusual but mostly exciting combinations seem to appeal to her taste. Food critic Thierry Daraize underlines Chef Nadon’s tremendous talent in his article, but wished the portions were more generous (Although not a big concern…I shared his feeling only with the the duck magret dish where I’d have requested a tad more lentils and a slightly bigger portion of those foie gras, but the portion of duck magret was fine. They were generous with all the rest, though! Even the wine was generously poured!). Both food columnists seemed not to feast on the ‘crabe de gaspésie, fraises, fenouille‘ appetizer….and I presume Chef Nadon has good ears since this dish is now off the menu! Some little corrections here and there for those this might interest: Chef Nadon has never worked at Lemeac. Her business partner has! Chef Nadon’s cooking, for now, is closer to Ex-Bronté’s (the fans of the old Bronté, now closed, will be happy to learn this) cuisine. Bronté was easily among Montreal’s top 5, btw! Both my wife and I had 3 courses each, wine pairings to each item for me, 2 glasses of wine for her and this came around $170. I honestly think that this was largely fair for such inspired cooking. I have experienced, in Montreal, dinners that did cost at least $80 more than this with some food items deserving nothing less than 0/10 …………….

In Montreal standards, Chef Nadon stands among those who brings novelty (it might not be novelty abroad, but what he is doing remains new on current Montreal restaurant scene). I am a big fan of great classics superbly executed with taste to match (Les Mas des Oliviers, Le Bonaparte, Le Margaux, Chez la mère Michel), but would never run away from novelty that stands out. Here’s a Chef who has not yet embraced the nonsense quest for fame. He is where it makes sense to find him: in his kitchen. He is where, as a patron, I do expect his talent to shine: in his kitchen, not on TV ..because he, at least, understood that a diner should bother with what a Chef is serving to his guests and not to what a cook is selling on TV!

Admittedly, although I value true artisan Chefs (as opposed to TV-boosted cooks), it has to be a talented Chef as well, or else I won’t be enthusiastic. Chef Nadon does have such a superb talent that I can state, in total confidence, that he stands among Montreal’s very best Cooks at this moment. As long as he does not follow the nonsense practices of some talented Chefs who lost the respect of some of their patrons because they were more interested by fame rather than efficient and effective great work, I can see Nadon marking memories of Montreal’s gourmands for a long time. Nadon was cooking on this dinner (I am realistic: I have no clue how this amazing Chef will work his schedu;e, but I am not expecting him to work days and nights. If he does so, good for him..but it would be stupid to expect this. Personally, with such talented Chef, I’d rather opt for dinners, especially on Fridays and Saturdays: after all, lunches — although affordable — is always casual at most tables).

Chef Nadon, you have got a new fan as long as you shine where I expect you to excel, because YES.. TREMENDOUS TALENT (amazing techniques, a sense of taste that’s impressive, and one of the few Chefs who reconciles me with sous-vidé cooking technique — he masters this technique so well — a cooking technique that is usually not my cup of tea in other instances) … YOU HAVE!!

PROS: This was INSPIRED work all the way! Easily in my top tier tables in Montreal, and it vindicates Chef Nadon in my top 10 Chefs in town. I shall go back !

CONS: As far as I am concerned, Nothing to complain about

PS: A reminder before I go -> a review with at least a 9/10 and one 10/10 worths your upmost attention. There are, on this reviewed dinner, two 10/10, a 9/10 and other marks that would easily be 10s in other circumstances.

BOUILLON BILK
Overall food rating: 8.5/10 In between VERY GOOD to EXCELLENT for what I am accustomed to /thus do expect at comparable restaurants/dining category.For Montreal standards, as of lately, this is refreshing top stuff. I personally was not surprised: their Chef was trained alongside the Mega talented Chefs Joe and Michele Mercuri.
Overall service rating: 8/10 nice, Really nothing to say here. And on that day, I even met a waitress who share my passion ofTravel, so whatmore can I ask, lol.
Décor: 7/10 The décor is very simple. Twotones of color from what I remember: white and grey. Basta, but this is perfect: it sends you back to the very food itself. No distraction needed.Hey..who is complaining about the décor at the Fat Duck in Bray, btw???

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Au 5e Péché: could this be the best Montreal Bistro?

Click here for a recap of my picks of all Montreal’s top fine dining & best Montreal’s bistrots.
Also: My 3 and 2 Star Michelin restaurant review web site

Au 5e Péché
Type of cuisine: Modern French Bistro
Addr: 4475 Rue St Denis (this is their new addr)
Phone: (514) 286-0123

Food rating: Exceptional (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7), just Ok (6)

Mon bistrot #1 en ce moment en ville (avec le Bistro Cocagne). Quel talent, ce Chef Lenglet! Quoi dire de plus? Sinon que j’y retournerai en courant et que…ah oui…que c’est rafraichissant de voir 1 chef de qualibre 1-2 étoiles Michelin..je parle d’un VRAI, ici….s’activer aux fourneaux meme en pleine tempete de neige (lisez mon ‘update’ du 13/01/2012)…à une époque ou des pseudos ‘cooks’ de circonstance, avec meme pas le 1/10e de son talent…se ridiculisent à parader à la télé sous pretexte qu’ils se sont imaginés en nouveaux ‘roi des fourneaux’. Seul BÉMOL de ce restaurant: c’est un péché dont il est difficile de s’en passer!!!!Ha..Ha..Ha

UPDATE Sat September 29th 2012, 19:30 – Dined here with my wife on this Sat September 29th 2012 evening. We picked a multiple-course tasting menu. “Pressé de courge” was a good creative idea, the butternut squash having interesting complexity with mustard and maple leaf syrup matching so well on this dish. The overall was topped with prosciutto. All of top quality as it’s always the case here, the overall really pleasant (7/10), a nice fresh piece of salmon paired with mushrooms was enjoyable but not in the league of the better dishes of this tasting menu (6/10), a piece of foie gras au torchon showcased great work of the texture, great depth of taste, appealing presentation (9/10), guinea fowl legs were comforting in taste, its accompanied beet purée of excellent texture (7/10), mackerel in vin jaune sauce was a good idea with the successful and delicious vin jaune sauce moderating the natural strong taste of the mackerel , a good joyous and tasty dish (7.5/10) and as dessert, we had iced nougat/granité of basil/tomato confit, which both Jannice and I found exciting in mouth, with the contrasting ingredients blending surprisingly well together (9/10). A pleasant meal, with the staff as fun as usual and wine pairing still among the most interesting in town. Overall food rating for this Sat Sept 29th 2012 meal: 7/10

UPDATE Thurs Febr 23rd, 2012 17:30 – 3rd dinner at Au Cinquième Péché on this Thurs Febr 23rd evening and as you will see from this quick report, the cooking here keeps shining with consistency. A very reliable restaurant, indeed and even with courses that I rated lower than 8/10, you’ll see that it was not because of technical fault nor any sort of letdown. Far from that: I started this dinner with ‘carpaccio de veau, gremolata‘. A bargain at $9, especially for the stunningly fresh and remarkably sourced veal. Less would be more here, though: way too many ingredients in there made this dish unecessarily too ‘busy’ to put it boldly. A 7.5/10 for me, but again, there’s nothing technically wrong with the dish and this goes down to a matter of personal preference: I tend to be more excited by dishes that manage to bring so much out of very little, for ie the carpaccio on this dinner at Le Marly is a great example of what I do expect. Followed by “Carré aux dattes, canard confit, foie gras” $18 featured a square of duck confit and date fruit (work so well together) and the usual top quality duck liver (au torchon in this case) that I’ve always found at 5e Péché. 8/10 for that dish. Then one of my favourite dishes at Au 5e Péché: their ‘onglet de boeuf‘ (hanger steak) $28 that I have tried for the 1st time in Febr 2011 (you’ll see its review at the bottom of current article). This time, the steak is complemented by gougères. Here, a lot of dazzling features showing the superb talent of Chef Lenglet: on its own, the mastered work of the gougère’s texture stole the show on this dinner. The meat, successfully cooked and worth of praise. Even my quibble over the piece of pork that was underneath the beef (that piece of pork seemed out of place on this hanger steak dish; I’d personally replace it with something like a bold rework of a ‘tartiflette’ for example) could not stop it from deserving a 10/10 mark. Crème caramel, apple and dulce de lecce brought this dish to its end: an 8.5/10 dessert with nothing really wrong (the mousse of dulce de leche had superb flavor, the crème caramel so appetizing), although I suspect that a different choice of fruit would have bring more excitement than the apples. Bottom line, a very enjoyable meal as au 5e Péché continues to deliver with reliability. Service was marked by the genuine hospitality and usual professionalism that I have always found here: on this evening, my waitress was the same amazing mulato young woman who was on duty during the last dinner in January. Wine pairing as thoughtful as I have always noticed it at this table. Overall food rating for this Febr 23rd 2012 meal: 7.5/10
UPDATE Fri Jan 13th, 2012 19:30 – For the record. my ‘project” of text & photo reporting on Montreal’s very best bistrots and fine dining ventures is over. The only Montreal restaurant updates you will see on this web site will cover re-visits at tables already reviewed here (no more photo reporting but a text summary of the meal ). This Fri Jan 13th, 2012 meal is my only second visit at au 5e Péché, now located on Saint Denis, right at the corner of Mont Royal on the premises of the previous Le Vintage Tapas Et Porto restaurant: the small stone-wall bistrot has a warmth that I now really enjoy (I say ‘now’, because their old location on Mont Royal was as attractive as a card board box…). I sat at the bar (a comfy bar, btw!) overlooking the kitchen. The meal started with an amuse of white beans purée with lime (10/10): as my readers already know, I do not force my imagination to unecessarily relativize things or partake in theorems such as ‘nothing is perfect’ – for some, a creme caramel or a purée can’t deserve a 10. I don’t agree. If it’s flawless as this amuse was, I don’t see why it won’t deserve a perfect score. The $14 starter of ‘foie gras terrine, jarret de porc fumé, confiture poires/raisin‘ had fabulous foie gras terrine with texture and taste that left no room for reproach, and yet the pear/grapes marmelade brought this dish to benchmarking levels that pertained to what you would expect on a solid 3 star Michelin level. I am not saying that Chef Lenglet is a 3 star Michelin capable Chef (It’s hard to go all the way to such conclusion when bistrot food limits you to a certain level of relative restraint compared to fine dining – I’d need Chef Lenglet to cook couple of food items I value as 3 star Michelin worthy before jumping to such conclusion, but it’s clear that Chef Lenglet’s cooking is anywhere in between 1 to 2 Michelin firm star level). Another 10/10 for the foie gras terrine/pear-grape marmelade. Next, I took ‘Canard, pain perdu aux chataignes, jus de veau, fleur de sel, pleurottes, choux de bruxelles‘ ($27): a 9/10 dish. In Montreal, from what I can talk for, few magrets ever came close to the dazzling taste of this duck, its superb quality and remarkable construction. Only reason it’s not a perfect 10 has to do with my only qualm: the trio of small pain perdu (chestnut-flavored portions of bread pudding that would benefit from a greater depth of flavor, so perhaps replacing chestnut by another ingredient). Cheese cake, confit de prune (10/10) was another 2 star Michelin capable dessert (of course, not your usual cheese cake) with not one single quibble but a reminder that even at the very top bistrot level (Au 5e Péché is clearly Montreal’s top #1 bistrot along with Bistro Cocagne at this very moment), it’s rare to see such top performance from the very 1st nibble up to the dessert. Although Bistro Cocagne is, in my view, the other top Montreal Bistrot, I have got to admit that Au 5e Péché has offered (on those two meals I’ve sampled there) a slightly more ‘complete’ top level bistrot performance (even the less significant items such as desserts, have been impressive at au 5e Péché – always varying in between 9 and 10/10, a rare occurence at top bistrots here and abroad). It’s interesting to see a CHEF like CHEF Lenglet with such amazing talent (clearly a 1 to 2 star Michelin level European standard, I re-iterate), c o o k i n g for real there…right there…behind his stoves on a harsh evening of snowstorm (A major snowstorm blanketing Montreal on this Friday Jan 13th) where other half-accomplished cooks believe that it is a priviledge for you to enjoy their presence on ..TV!..and then pay the big bucks to indulge in lacklustre dinings cooked by their name bearers at their name-bearing restaurants while they are …. Au 5e Péché has excelled far away from that questionable practice and established itself efficiently, in my opinion, as Montreal’s #1 bistrot (along with Bistro Cocagne, ahead of my two other bistrots favourites: Kitchen Galerie on Jean Talon and Bouillon Bilk). They are even careful with the bill: sweet prices for such top level of food and cooking skills. The service was flawless too (I had a superb waitress at the bar, a young mulatto woman , who will quickly become one of Montreal very best waitress and sommeliere — wine pairing was simply superb and inspired all along this meal — no doubt about that!). On this Jan 13th dinner, if I am not mistaken, I also saw a young woman who I think was one of the finalists of les Chefs, Laurence Frenette??, in their kitchen. This young woman is super talented , but for now, she is lucky to work along one of the most talented Chefs in North America! Real talent. This meal, from start to finish, was as strong as any 2 star Michelin level of cooking performance in Europe. Forget the tablecloth, forget the stuffy grandeur of some fine dining ventures, remember that it is a bistrot , its menu displayed on a wallboard and enjoy the cooking of this amazingly talented Chef. There are sins that I’ll always forgive! Overall food rating for this Jan 13th 2012 meal: 10/10

The following covers the 1st dinner there. That occured at their previous location (on Mont Royal street) – Dinner on Saturday Febr 12th 2011 20:30 ; the table you see on those photos are those they had on Mont Royal. On St Denis, at their new location the tables are made of darker wood ->

Kicked off with an irreproachable home made lentil hummus ( with a kalamata olive tapenade): light, tasty and refined. Very good. 8/10

Before I go ahead, I have to pay special mention to the young French sommelier. I chose wine pairing by the glass for each course, and his picks were inspired, well thought. The Gentleman is skilled: at the beginning of the meal I purposely abandoned him to a tricky challenge: a terrine of foie gras and oysters. Find the perfect wine for that. Most would say ”this patron is an imbecile’. He was smarter than most: he found the perfect wine pairing for it.

The oysters were fine. 8/10

The terrine of foie, a master piece. It was a skillful conception where a top quality terrine of duck liver was surrounded by tasty meaty duck meat A 3 star Michelin caliber terrine of foie where execution, taste and outstanding precision in details (texture, moisture of the meat) were met. 10/10

Onglet de boeuf, paleron à la flamande, endive au jambon – I rarely rate a piece of meat (‘Onglet de boeuf’ is ‘hanger steak’) higher than an 8/10, as perfect as it might taste. Sure, any decent Chef should not miss his meat (still, many do!) …but here, Chef Lenglet reached newer heights: this meaty marvel was an outstanding demonstration of balanced texture, flavors and cooking precision. Another 10/10, a rare rating for me when it comes to rating grilled or braised red meat.

Ris de Veau, Soubise de betterave, pleurotte – Many consider Chef Lenglet’s sweetbreads as the best in town. I will surprise you: this dish was perfect in my opinion, but for its accompaniments rather than for the sweetbread. Yes, it is among the best sweetbreads in town. But No, it is not ZE BEST sweetbread in my opinion. Why? Simply because I had better sweetbread at Club Chasse & Peche for ie. Let’s continue with this very odd discussion: on its own, was this sweetbread perfect? Response: YES! Yes, because this is what sweetbread should be all about, in my view: successful golden exterior, nice moist meaty consistency within. But sweetbread is a bit like soya chunk: it is as tasty as what you’ve decided to mix it with. It was mixed with nothing here. But wait…it was perfect: tasty, well cooked. Now the real deal: I am fed up of those fake Chefs who pretend elevating veggies to newer heights. Most of the time, the concept outweighs the promised magic. Chef Langlet delivered that magic so oftently announced: he cooks veggies better than most of the supposedly world reknown magicians of the greens. I told you, this dish was perfect: a 10/10. Yep!

Concluded with a cheesecake (Cheesecake aux marrons, Argousier) that paired creativity and delicious taste. Another perfect 10

With, for me:

Gateau Susie, Chocolat blanc, courge – Here, total surprise..again! Usually, most Great Chefs are kings on the savory department and leave the desserts to a pastry Chef. To my surprise, this — a work of a very talented pastry Chef — was the work of Chef Lenglet himself. This was a mix of tasty chunks of choco and delicious fruity creations. ‘Courge’ means ‘pumpkin’ and on this dessert they are discovered under a totally curious and enjoyable angle. A 9 over 10.

Even the Brazilian coffee @ Au 5e Péché was among the best ones I’ve enjoyed in Montreal………

Service: efficient, accomodating, pleasant.
Decor: It is a small bistro. So do no expect tablecloths and hush tone ambience. The menu is on two boards strategically located.
Price: $29 for the sweetbreads, $27 for the beef, $9 for the gateau susie, $8 for the cheese cake to give you an idea. With the quality of ingredient, skillful cuisine at play and relatively generous portion of the food, I found this to be of good value.
Menu: Short but smartly varied. This evening, they had 5,7 starters (foie gras, oysters, marinated fish, etc), couple of main courses (wapiti meat, gnocchi, guinea fowl, sweetbreads, hanger steak, scallops), 3 desserts.

PROS: In my assessment, this is easily the #1 bistrot in this city at this moment
CONS: As far as I am concerned, Nothing to complain about

I know. It just sounds too good to be true. I myself have hard time believing in the ‘real deals‘ being so oftently ripped off by PR BS or buzz that’s never backed by effective realisations. But Au 5e Péché does not suffer from that and reached out to its well deserved reputation: one of the best bistro in town, indeed. Even more revealing to me, I consider it as my top #1 best Montrealer Bistrot along with Bistro Cocagne and Kitchen Galerie. One of those few restaurants where I’ll go back for sure.

AU 5E PECHE
Overall food rating (febr 12th 2011): 9/10 Excellent from what I am accustomed at this level, at comparable dining level
Overall service rating: 8/10 How are they doing this: despite being buzzy busy busy, they maintain a really good standard of service.
IMPORTANT: ‘Overall food rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmectic calculation
of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall food performance
on the specif meal I am sampling only.

Uncategorized

Restaurant Raza, Montreal

Click here for a recap of my picks of all Montreal’s top fine dining & best Montreal’s bistrots.
Also: My 3 and 2 Star Michelin restaurant review web site

Restaurant Raza
Cuisine: Upscale blend of Modern French/Latino fine dining
Addr: 114 Laurier West, Montreal, Qc
Phone: 514.227.8712
Url: http://www.groupemnjr.com/

All meals sampled at Raza Restaurant are gathered in the current article (please find below, the reports of all my dinners at Raza listed in chronological order)

Food rating: Exceptional (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7), just Ok (6)

The following is my review of my 4th meal at Raza on February 11th, 2012 20:00 – Dinner @ Raza on this Saturday evening Febr 11th, 2012. As the readers of this blog already know, Raza is my #1 favourite restaurant in Montreal and despite this regrettably tepid reported meal (I don’t review Montreal’s top dining ventures anymore, just re-visiting my favourite restaurants in town and dropping some few updates here), Raza remains my #1 because there’s in this house the basics of what make a restaurant better than its competitors: a Chef with great maturity, pride, common sense, exceptional talent and a better understanding of what a Restaurant should achieve. Naturally, the latter statement will pass as out of context given the report about this meal of Febr 11th, but the previous dinners (they are all reported right below) largely back my assertion. Now, the beauty of my work is that I’ve stayed away from making friends with the restaurant industry, and this leads to the advantage of enjoying experiences that most diners, 99% of the patrons at a restaurant, are experiencing for real. Thus the possibility of enjoying things as they come. No one wants his number #1 choice to fail, alas tonight’s dinner had simply nothing to do with the Raza that has impressed me for so long. It was unfortunate to have experienced this, especially me: when I feel confident to go all the way to raving about a place, it’s usually done with rigorous thinking and backed by solid evidence (level of cooking, consistency, mastery in the depth of flavor combinations, amazement of the taste, etc). Tonight, all those superlatives that do usually define what I have found there were remote souvenirs: a simple braised beef with sparse pieces of veggies could have been better executed at home …(6.5/10), chorizo in a bouillon was just that: sausage in a bouillon..hardly something that excites at a restaurant (5/10), salmon covered by a creamy coconut concoction was ok, shrimps in a revised version of a bisque was pleasant but not on par with the standards that I am used to at Raza (7/10)…let us stop here and politely say that we were miles away from Chef Navarrette Jr’s stunning cooking. Even the service was odd: wine pairing to each of the 7 courses does not mean pairing to just some of the courses… We can see this through different angles: the 3 previous meals were stunning (they are all detailed on this current web page — just scroll down — .and this, I hope, will benefit to some of the apprentice cooks out there: when you have the luck to learn alongside one of world’s best Chefs, Chef Navarrette Jr is definitely one of them: seize that damn opportunity to level UP your cooking!! ). This is the only time that I am disappointed, in 4 occurences. Which is far from being bad. On the other hand, it is clear that next time that I am going to Raza, I’ll talk to Chef Navarrette Jr and make it clear that it is his cooking that I am paying for! Chef Navarrette Jr is a Gentleman who wants to give a chance to his cooks to shine. But that aide he had on this evening cooks food that I am not willing to pay for…………. I’ll go back: it would be stupid to stop myself at the only one slip of all these amazing dinings at Raza. Chef Navarrette Jr can easily cook gustatory marvels comparable to what you will find on most top 2 star Michelin tables out there, but of course, he needs to avoid being surrounded by lesser talented apprentices or else the huge gap in talent between him and those will be felt in a frustrating way by his patrons.

The following is the review of my 3rd meal @ Raza on Saturday October 22nd 2011, 8 PM ->
This is my 3rd visit with my wife here. Raza now offers a surprise tasting menu, left at the discretion of the Chef’s creativity, a trend that is now widely spread around the world. The default surprise menu is the 5 courses at $59. If you ask for it, you can also enjoy a 7 course surprise menu at $70. As on both previous two dinners, we opted for the latter (which I find to be a bargain for the high level of dining that’s offered – We also appreciate the surprise nature of the tasting menu, given how creative Chef Navarrette Jr has always been).

At this visit on Sat Oct 22nd 2011, the latino genius continued to impress with creativity and exciting food that remain leaps ahead of anything to be found in town.

The meal started with a ceviche of mahi mahi (9/10) that had an enjoyable depth of rich taste, the marine freshness of the fish shining through nicely. The quality of the fish being remarkable.

Next was a dish of quail egg, dehydrated mushrooms, squid ink aioli. A dish that shows an impressive level of technical mastery with the mushrooms properly dehydrated and served to an ideal powdery consistency, its taste vivid (we are far from the dehydrated mushrooms that taste nothing: here the fresh taste of the mushroom is retained), the cooking of the quail eggs mastered to precision (perfect runny inside). An exciting dish with multi layers of flavors blending impressively well together. In Montreal top level dining standards, you won’t see anything close to this. Certainly not as expertly composed as this. 10/10

The following course of the tasting menu was a delicious soup of chestnut, tomato confit, chives. The palatable impact is maintained high, with again, exciting flavors that tease the palate, a characteristic of Chef Mario Navarrette Jr’s cuisine 10/10
I had a glass of Chilean Errazuriz Chardonnay Wild Ferment, Casablanca Valley (2010), which complex and rich characteristics balanced harmoniously with the earthy profile of the chestnut soup.

Then came a dish of ‘Braised veal flank, butternut squash gnocchis, parmesan, red wine reduction” – Not one single item was short of palatable excitement (the recurring use of the word ‘excitement’ in my review is intentional for sake of accuracy in describing what attracts me towards the work of this genius, but also for paying justice to the type of cuisine served by Chef Navarrette Jr). Each item of this dish had dazzling taste; mixed together, the succulence reached a rare peak in deliciousness. The display of impressive cooking execution and refinement continued on this dish (the cooking of the gnocchis and the veal was exemplary). 10/10
This was matched to a nicely Merlot Rubini colleccion Crianza (Ica, Peru 2006) which appealing density went thoughtfully well with that dazzling braised veal flank.

Next came a ‘sabayon, blue cheese, pears, apple compote‘. The sabayon had all elements whisked expertly to proper temperature, thickened to ideal consistency, with not one single spotted fault. The blue cheese imparting a welcoming counter-kick of flavor, and the top quality fruity components enhancing perfectly the enticing rich flavor profile of this course. Another dish which intent to impress the palate went beyond the targeted goal. 10/10

This dinner ended with a jar of Chef Navarrette Jr’s take on the theme of ‘nutella’ and ‘banana‘. I am not a fan of nutella and chocolate since I was born and was raised in a tropical environment where chocolate and candies were replaced by pineapple, coconut and mangoes (this naturally explains why great desserts based on those tropical ingredients do benefit from better appreciations from my taste buds), therefore chocolate-based desserts suffer from having to stand out at all cost. But to elevate a combination of such classic elements (banana, nutella) that are already known to deliver delicious taste on their own to newer heights of palatable impact like what I found in this dessert is the kind of achievement that, in my view, defines a GRAND CHEF. I know I gave lower marks in the past to more complex desserts, but that is because they failed to be this delicious. 10/10

CONCLUSION: This looked like a distribution of 10/10, Rfaol! Even the ceviche, which I rated with a 9/10, would be a perfect 10 in most talented hands (9/10 is ‘excellent’ in my rating system. A 10/10 is of benchmark material, which btw, as far as my evaluations of ceviches go, is detained by Chef Navarrette Jr’s ceviches that I have previously sampled).
In facts, it’s just the result of when you pair an endless source of exceptional talent with creativity and a unique palate. That inevitably provides stunning dishes like those. Talent, raw and exceptional talent, makes all the difference: I have seen, many top level Chefs offering ceviches that failed to come as close to half of the excitement found in Chef Navarrette Jr’s. A while back, a top level Chef had cooked something similar to the corn velouté that Chef Navarrette Jr once offered at A Table. My conclusion was that there is Chef Mario Navarrette Jr and then you have the rest. Modern creative cosmopolitan marvels like these will always perfume my sweetest gastronomic souvenirs. So, again and again: another exceptional meal by an exceptional Chef.

PS: I was reading a recent article of Quebec’s top food critic Marie-Claude Lortie on Raza. She loved her meal and holds Raza in high esteem, but wished most of the food would be more spicy, more provocative (as she wrote: more chilly, more spices). I enjoy Madame Lortie for her great sense of culinary analysis (I personally believe that she is in the top 5 of world’s best food journalists and I would bet on her palate to be the most accurate of them all), but here I don’t agree with her: if you put more spices and push the exotical aromas to some extent in the cooking of Chef Navarrette Jr, then you end up with a cuisine that is not Modern Cosmopolitan anymore. The reason it is modern (as in Modern French cuisine, for ie) lies in the fact that its intent is to move away from traditional cooking (spices, strong aromas in the case of Classic Latino cuisine). Also: Chef Navarrette Jr Cuisine is more accurately about a big majority of food items pertaining to Modern French cuisine with latino influences and some Modern interpretations of couple of Latino-based dishes like the ceviche, for ie. And I insist: this Genius deserves a city with better visibility!

The following is the review of my 2nd meal at Raza on AUGUST 14th, 2010 20:00 =>

Restaurant Raza

Cuisine: Upscale blend of Modern French/Latino fine dining
Addr: 114 Laurier West, Montreal, Qc
Phone: 514.227.8712
Url: http://www.groupemnjr.com/
Event: Dinner @ Raza on Saturday August 14th 2010, 8 PM

Food rating: Exceptional (10), Excellent (9), Very good (8), Good (7), just Ok (6)

(You will find the English review, below) – Un génie, le Chef Mario Navarrette Jr. Personellement, je le considère comme étant le meilleur Chef Montréalais, et largement dans le top des meilleurs Chefs de cuisine moderne cosmopolitaine à travers le monde. Du calibre d’un deux étoiles Michelin, facilement. Souvent, ca frise le calibre d’un 3 étoiles Michelin coté talent culinaire. Il mérite de briller sous des cieux plus cléments: Shanghai? Dubai? Tokyo?

This dinner was primarily a romantic tete à tete with my sweet half. I still brought my camera, though. For Jannice, it is the opportunity to taste the food of a Chef largely praised by her food enthusiast of a husband, and here, we will get to taste what I’m truly praising: when you go to Raza, Chef Mario Navarrette Jr is there, cooking for real. Even more important to me: he is not slowing down with his creativity.

Jannice and I went for the grand fiesta: the 7 service tasting menu. I love giving carte blanche to highly talented Chefs: you are inventive, go ahead..unleash it!

The night started off with great music (whoever thought about that collection of great latin american and spanish music that was playing last night has great taste in music. It’s rare that I talk about music played at a restaurant, but what was playing last night added to the festive and tasty meal we were enjoying) and their iconic Pisco sour cocktail:

Followed by:

Course #1 Black kingfish (Cobia) ceviche, bouillon of ginger, sweet potato purée – Excellent quality of fresh fish marinated in a delicate and nicely balanced acidic based jus that brought perfect moisture to the flesh. Top marks to the technique of marinating that’s behind this ceviche: expertly precise. The gingery taste was well thought and that scoop of potato purée that you see atop the fish paired surprisingly well with the light gingery broth. 8.5/10

Course #2: Poached shrimps, sauce seco, parmigiano-reggiano, gnocchi – The shrimp, juicy and of generous portion, kept its freshest flavour and texture.
Jannice — of Italian descent and a severe judge of Italian cuisine — said of Chef Navarrete’s light and delicate gnocchi that ‘it was done with the heart and soul of an Italian grandmother‘.
Impeccable delicious lumps, I must admit .. but knowing well the versatile talent of this Chef, I was not surprised at all. The gnocchi was bathed in a delicious beer-coriander based sauce seco. The cheese added an extra gustatory dimension to this nicely composed dish. 10/10

Course #3: Scallop, risotto of quinoa & butternut squash), caviar – Atop, a plump tasty scallop nicely seared and fully flavored, adorned by some fresh cucumber carpaccio. Underneath, a succulent risotto of quinoa cooked with butternut squash. Mixing the fresh quality of mullet’s caviar to that risotto of quinoa was divine and to add an extra layer of complexity that works really well, the overall was enhanced by a zesty touch of orange reduction. Creative, fun and very pleasing to the palate. A dish that Jannice qualified as a pleasurable sin. 9/10

Course #4: Duck magret, Aji panca chili, green apple carpaccio, cipollini, cherry tomato confit – A short description of this duck magret could go like this ‘the secret here lies in the impeccable quality of this duck” but such statement would be utterly incomplete. It would be more accurate to include the exceptional work of delicious tastes and skilled cooking techniques to the equation. The Panca chili adds a pleasant kick (the pungent taste is present, but in an enjoyable subtle way. Not the hot and over spicy kind of taste ), the green apple bringing a nice acidic balance.The cipollini and cherry tomato were first grade ingredients. Next time, I need to know who are the farmers behind such quality products. An exceptional dish. 10/10

They dimmed the lights at that point, so the next picture did benefit from the flash of my camera and will look slightly different from the previous ones:

Course #5: Filet mignon, chanterelles, squid ink and aioli – That was a stunning piece of top quality Angus AAA meat, expertly seasoned, fork tender and drool-worthy. The earthy and nicely cooked chanterelles tasted great. The soft and creamy potato purée was delightful. 8.5/10

A pre-dessert:

Course #6: Flash-frozen avocado purée, mango sorbet – Few of the best desserts I have enjoyed at the top restaurants of Montreal (and even abroad) could qualify as exceptional. This one is the newest addition to that very selective list. The fresh avocado purée was flash-frozen in an anti-griddle, paving the way to a unique frozen type of texture that made the avocado very enjoyable in mouth. The sweetness of the decadent mango sorbet paired so well with the avocado. Also of high mention: that gelée you see on the side + a savourish snowy-white airy mousse lying beneath. I was so distracted by the enjoyment of the overall dessert that I do not remember what they were made of . This dessert was delicate, brilliantly creative. The taste, exquisite. 9/10

Course #7: Chocolate cake (excellent moist and deliciously rich chocolate cake with a pleasant molten inside consistency ), Sugar cane Ice cream (lovely creamy quality ice cream). The nutella powder that was served along this dessert was a nice touch. 9.5/10

Bottom line: an exceptional meal by an exceptional Chef.
As far as I’m concerned, Chef Navarrette has once more proven to be among the few who truly can take it (the culinary experience) to the next level with outstanding creative cooking skills that translate in food that’s exciting to enjoy.

Excellent mention to the service: efficient and professional.
And this nice wine they served to me is added to my personal favourites, too: The 2005 Bodegas Sierra Cantabria Rioja Crianza.

PROS: Chef Navarrette Jr can easily cook gustatory marvels comparable to what I found on most top 2 star Michelin tables I know. I’d not be surprised that he can go beyond that level

CONS: Chef Navarrette Jr coking deserves a city with better visibility. Dubai? Tokyo?

Off I go!
If you find food of a level of what is offered at XO Le Restaurant/Toque!/Raza/La Porte/LCCP/Bistro Cocagne/ let me know and I’ll be more than interested to give it a shout. Till then, thanks for reading!

The following is the review of my DECEMBER 4TH, 2009 20:00 meal at Raza restaurant =>

Event: Dinner at Restaurant Raza
Friday December 4th 2009 17:30
Addr: 114 Avenue Laurier West (Montreal, QC)
Phone: 514-227-8712
Web site: http://www.restaurantraza.com/
Type of cuisine: Upscale French & Latin American Fusion

Arome’s the food blog: Q&A’s, Guidelines, Ethics, Vision
I purposely chose Raza to cut a bit with my latest trend of upscale French/QC’s dinners (Toque!, Nuances, La Chronique, Le Club Chasse et Peche and so on) . I wanted something a bit different but known for its creativity. A table that’s innovative. Here comes Raza.

Decor: Small, narrow but NOT claustrophobic at all: chairs and tables and well spaced, some along the grey walls (turning into brick walls on the second end of the restaurant’s wall) :

others in the small — and yet well exploited — squarrish area that’s in between the entrance and the bar:

Here’s a picture of their little bar:

The overall is surprisingly elegant, romantic

(well thought dim lightning, and cute little
candles sitting in small blue glasses filled with with corn seeds), cozy, far from being intimidating:

It is also sparsely decorated (couple of paintings here and there + few black and white farmed-photos).
One last immersion in Raza’s dinning room before skipping forward to the food:

Food:
Total cost: $165 (7 course tasting menu with wine pairing + 1 cocktail + 1 Cognac’d coffed)

I asked Francis, my waiter of the evening, for a suggestion of cocktail.
Naturally, the star cocktail of the house is the Peruvian (Chef Navarate has Peruvian origins) Pisco sour cocktail:
Based on the Pisco spirit, a south american brandy made of grapes, Raza’s cocktail contains the expected lime juice, a bit of lemonade and espuma mousse (aka foam) + syrup is here replaced by some fruit sugar. The Pisco sour was without reproach: ideally frothy, it had the enjoyable bitter sour flavour I seek in my ideal Pisco Sour. The potent flavor of the pisco was amazingly well balanced here by the enjoyable citrus touch. I still dream every night over that divine martini-litchi I had at XO, but this Pisco sour was equally seducing.

First came the home made bread:
I remember raving over the bread of Chef De Montigny at La Chronique. Well, Chef De Montigny has some serious competition, right in front of his restaurant (La Chronique and Raza face each other). Actually this one beats Chef De Montigny’s bread because not only this bread is as light, airy, fresh and delicious as the one of La Chronique … but it is more exotic: Chef Navarate bakes his bread with yukon-gold potatoes and his bread oozes of an incredibly fresh-baked aroma. Just devour that bread fast while it’s warm, since you wont wanna miss this beauty in all its warmth and splendeur.
The bread to send all bakers to retirement! 10/10

Next, the wild mushroom soup:
It’s presented in 2 steps. First, a plate filled with flavorful fresh chanterelles, yellow oyster mushrooms (pleurotes jaunes), black truffles:

Then, the waiter poured an unctuous all flavorful mushroom creamy soup in the plate:

The overall soup was impressively intense, powerful and delicate, enjoyably unctuous and richly seasoned. The fresh mushroomy flavor was so addictive on this one. And NO…this mushroom soup is just NOT another mushroom soup. It’s a luxurious version of a muhsroom soup with smart fresh ingredients and an impeccable taste you just cannot compare to most usual good mushroom soups. 10/10
Pairing wine: Tabernero Chincha, Peru 2007. This mixed Sauvignon blanc & Chardonnay has an enjoyable light minerality that reached out fine with the earthiness of the soup. Good choice of wine pairing on this course.

Course #2: Magret de Canard (duck)/Onions Jelly/Mango Vinaigrette
Bathed in a nice mango vinaigrette (flavorful, unique, enjoyably moving in terms of taste ), onions gelée (Wowed!), fresh coriander, the duck magret (breast of a moulard duck) had a perfect melt-in-your-mouth quality, was of impeccable texture and was delicious. This tastebud marvel of a dish was sitting on top of a nice unctuous creamy purée. Here’s a dish with flavors/taste that’s daring in an enjoyable way. The zesty mango vinaigrette enhanced the overall with a memorable enjoyable acidy touch that added punch to an already tender delicious magret. Technically flawless + Tastebud-wise yummy!
Pairing wine: Wayne Gretzky in my wine glass!! Rfaol! It was the 2007 Wayne’s Sauvignon Blanc (Estate Series, from Niagara). Dry and fruity, it was fine on its own. As for the pairing, it complimented the dish just ok.

Course #3: Artic char/Blue Potato purée
cooked to perfection, the fish kept its skin on one side, had a perfect light crispy nicely seared coating and impeccably moist inside. Tender and fresh, it had the freshness of a fish that would have been caught right from the sea (enjoyable marine flavor). But this is not just another piece of well cooked fish: it had a tastebud blowing spicy zesty enjoyable taste that my tastebuds will have hard time forgetting about. My pictures might not suggest it, but may it be the artic char or the previous course of duck magret, those are food items that would hit the world’s best tables on a heartbeat for their impeccable rich daring explosive tastes and flavors (infused beer was a hit on this one, blue potato purée was tasty and elegant, the coriander added a subtle punch) and the subtle genius work that is done with each element of those dishes. Michelin needs to taste this! 10/10
Pairing wine: Pairing wine: Nekeas Navarra Spain 2006. This Chardonnay had a light texture, was, mineral and clean in mouth. Not a daring full bodied wine, but its lightness was what I needed to accompany the fish.

Course #4: Quail/Pumpkin cream/guava-barbecue sauce
Look very homie, hein? Lol. Well, forget about the look, we are far from our next door homie fare here. Our little bird was ideally firm, evenly cooked, nicely seasoned. The prosciutto-wrapped quail was very tasty. As with the previous food items, flavors do blend so well here: the flavorful meat was enhanced by a surprisingly decadent mix of barbecue and guava sauce. Also noteworthy: the succulent pumpkin cream that you can’t miss to spot on the photo. 9/10
Pairing wine: Sancius Ribera del duero Spain 2004. A very nice tempranillo with an enjoyable flavor of cherry that reached out so well with the guava/barbecue sauce and the subtle sweetness of the quail. It is also nicely oaky, long and elegant in mouth, with lots of character. Largely a personal favourite of mine and of perfect companionship to the quail (it was not ideal pairing only to the pumpkin cream).

Course #5: Veal cheeks/Oyster mushrooms/Chorizo/Potato purée
Accompanied by chorizo, oyster mushrooms (pleurotes), a nice potato purée, the veal cheeks were ideally cooked, juicy, had a very pleasant mouthsome (tender and yet firm enough) and a remarkable beautiful brown texture. I had my share of great veal cheeks in Montreal, but this one put them all to rest. Cheeks are the toughest cuts to cook and yet, they were superbly well cooked with such an amazing ease on this dish, a rare achievement at the heighest levels of fine dining. Easily a plate that the best 3 star Michelin tables out there would be proud of! 10/10
Pairing wine: Taymente Huarpé, Argentina 2004
Elegant Malbec that’s as fruity (berry,cherry ) as floral. Smooth in mouth, it was an amazing natural companion to the veal cheeks.

And to round this successful meal off (This meal was of solid 2-star Michelin calibre. To give you an idea, normally a meal with only at least one 10/10 and a 9/10 is already of solid material, largely worth leaving the comfort of home for. A dish with two 10/10 usually pertains to a 1 star Michelin level. There are 4 food items of 10/10 rating on this single meal), two desserts:

Course #6: Lucuma Ice cream, papaya gelée – The papaya gelée was absolutely delicious, not only because I am fanatic about papayas but also for the upfront fresh and natural taste of the fruit that came through remarkably well on this dessert. The ice cream exuded fresh lucuma flavor, had rich tasting and the right thickness. 9/10
Pairing wine: Vendanges tardives Concha y Toro (VTCT). This white sauvignon is a perfect companion to desserts, blessed by an elegant body, long in mouth delicious sweet taste. Intense and full bodied, this wine was really nice on its own and should have worked well with the papaya jelly, but my tastebuds thought otherwise: despite several attempts of fully concentrated tastings between the papaya jelly and the VTCT, the harmony I was trying to find in the marriage between both was not convincing.

Course #7: Chocolate custard, Dulce de Leche ice cream, Corn powder – The addictive dulce de leche ice cream boasted superb flavor intensity. Next to it, a smoky-flavored layer of marshmallow was resting on a tranche of chocolate custard. All components combining thoughtfully with an additional spoonful of corn powder. Inspired! 8.5/10

Service: My waiter, Francis, is a courteous young gentleman. Humble, professional, very attentive, patient and helpful, he has the huge advantage to be very knowledgeable for having worked in lots of restaurants and for having worked as a cook too. He used to work at Navarate other restaurant, Madre and told me that I should not miss the brunch at Madre. I am not into brunches, but took note of this.

PROS: Chef Navarrette Jr can easily cook gustatory marvels comparable to what I found on most top 2 star Michelin tables I know. Of course, he needs to avoid being surrounded by lesser talented apprentices or else the huge gap in talent between him and those will be felt in a frustrating way by his patrons.

CONS: A Chef who deserves a city with better visibility. Dubai? Tokyo?

Find better pictures of this dinner on my Google picasa’s gallery:
http://picasaweb.google.com/comorosislands/RAZARESTAURANT#

Conclusion: For a long time, Alexandre Loiseau of Bistro Cocagne was alone — in my books — as my choice for this year’s best chef in Montreal. But on the back of this stunning dinner, I have no choice but to declare a draw — up to now — between Navarrete and Loiseau at the very top. If there’s one aspect where both chefs shine better than most it’s exactly where it should: the rise of stunning tastes! In other words, the word BLAND is not part of their vocab ;p Navarete is unarguably a genius of creativity, an architect of stunning refined and researched tastes, and surprisingly he is beating the boys of the block at their own game: remember those upscale bistros or new QC’s/new North American fine dining … well, Navarette has surpassed them and raised the bar very high, albeit of course with a light touch of Latin American’s influence. To each their own, and to me such dinner pertains to what I expect to see at the best Relais & Chateaux or Michelin stared tables (of course, such creative genius of a cook should not be judged over simple fares such as a steak. It would be pure non sense. Let him fly over a tasting menu where his creativity takes all its sense, and then enjoy!).

RAZA
Overall food rating: 10/10 on thefour initial meals, 3/10 on the 5^th meal. Chef Navarrette Jr is simply in my lifetime world’s ten best Chefs ever, and in case you are wondering, this list includes Chef Constant, Pacaud, Maximin, Besson, Piège. The 5^th meal was underwhelming, but he was trying to give his chance to one of his assistants on that evening. The Gentleman wassimply not on par with the standards of his mentor. Four stunning meals of at least 2 star Michelin culinaric perfection, at times easily 3 vs 1 failure only: I prefer this, anytime, over 5 meals over 5 that would have been just good, or safe enough. The latino Genius remains my #1, all type of dining offerings taken into account. The proof is that I went there more oftently than at the other prestigeous big gunners inYUL.
Overall service rating: There’s a standard here and it shows: always professional, charming.
Décor: 8/10 I have always loved Raza’s décor. It’s not grand luxury, but charming, very charming with, the last time I was there (they have made big changes to the décor since) a beautiful wooden floor lending its warmth to the grey tones of the walls. There was something very Zen in that décor.
IMPORTANT: ‘Overallfood rating’ HAS NOTHING TO DO with the arithmectic calculation of all dishes. It is my personal subjective rating of the overall food performance on the specif meal I am sampling only.

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