The tidal wave of new pizzerias has yet to subside in our fair city, Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman wrote last May, when she visited Pizzeria No. 900 on Bernard Ave. and Brigade Pizzeria Napolitaine downtown on Stanley St. From the archives, we bring you her double-decker restaurant review:

Pizzeria No 900, 1248 Bernard Ave. W. (at Champagneur St.)
Three stars out of four
Price range: pizzas $8-$19
Phone: 438-386-0900
Open: Sun. to Wed. 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Thurs. to Sat. 11:30 to 11 p.m.
Wheelchair access: No
Licensed: Yes
Parking: On the street with meters
Vegetarian-friendly: Yes
Reservations: None taken

…. and ……..

Brigade Pizzeria Napolitaine, 1428 Stanley St. (near de Maisonneuve Blvd.)
Two stars out of four
Price range: pizzas $7.45-$15.95
Phone: 438-384-0948
Open: Mon. to Thurs. and Sun., 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Fri. and Sat. till midnight.
Wheelchair access: Yes
Licensed: No
Parking: On the street with meters
Vegetarian-friendly: Yes
Reservations: Not necessary

Montreal always had a strong base of old school pizzerias, but since Bottega introduced us to the glories of Neapolitan pizza (as in, puffy crust, minimal toppings, and flash baked at frightening temperatures), it appears there’s no turning back.

Another great aspect of this new pizza “vague” is that it suddenly has become a lot more chic. No offence to the old-school places, but the decor in some classic Montreal pizzerias is like a barber shop, but with flour on the floor instead of hair. Without getting too specific, there are pizzerias in this city that depress me more than Lars von Trier movies. Sad looking pizzaiolos stand in front of ancient bread ovens below neon menus, where at least one of the p’s in the word pepperoni landed in a pie years ago and nobody noticed. Yeah, that bad.

Now, pizzerias have become so swish that I tell my kids to change their shirts and wash their faces before we go out: Pizza is now a casual-chic restaurant option. And it’s about time.

I was telling a Montreal restaurateur recently that I had been out and about in the city tasting all sorts of great pizza. Looking at me with deep envy, his eyes glazed over and he said slowly: “I looove pizza. It’s my absolute favourite thing.” Coming from a man in a three-piece suit who owns one of the city’s fanciest restaurants, this is nothing to sneeze at.

Deep down inside we all “looove pizza,” but our choice had been limited to places where students who sleep in their clothes feel right at home. Of course, delivery took the setting and ambience factor out of the pizzeria equation. Finding someone to deliver anything besides barbecued chicken in certain parts of this city is no mean feat. I could tell you to make it at home (you’ll need a pizza stone), but instead, allow me to recommend one — or both! — of these new pizzerias.

***

The terrasse at Pizzeria No. 900 is wonderful, Lesley Chesterman says, but the interior is more stylish.

Set in the east side of the Théâtre Outremont building, Pizzeria No 900 is a welcome addition to this fashionable street crowded with terrasses and branché bistros. The space last housed Ian Perreault’s takeout operation, Prêts-à-manger. The pizzeria’s main partners include Dominic Bujold who opened Prêts with Perrault, as well as Alexandre Brunet, whose pizza experience includes the former Stromboli restaurant as well as the frozen line of pizzas under that name. Brunet is also a partner at Mangiafoco, the mozzarella bar/pizza resto in Old Montreal co-owned by restaurateur/musician, Jeff Stinco. As for Bujold, his claim to fame was the Sushi Shop restaurant franchise created in 2001. Bujold and Brunet’s goal was to make good pizza at a reasonable price. These boys think big, including a pizza food truck, and franchising the business in the same manner as Sushi Shop. Plans are underway to develop a mozzarella di Bufala made in Quebec. And their mission is to go far beyond the city limits. Hello, world pizza lovers!

But before we get into pizza world domination, first up, a look at the Bernard maison mère. Bujold and Brunet are not present, but manager/partner Melanie Mailhot and head pizzaiolo Guy Leblanc are. On a clear Friday evening, the street is packed, and so is the restaurant, with a lineup right out the door. Happily for us, it moves quickly and we have a spot inside in less than 10 minutes. The terrasse is wonderful, but the interior is more stylish and fun as you can watch the crazy buzz in this tiny kitchen.

I have eaten at No 900 several times and got pizza to go often. I liked the pizza before, but as of this last visit, No 900 is my favourite pizza in the city right now. Unlike much Neapolitan-style pizza that’s puffy and chewy on the parameter, yet a soggy mess in the centre, or worse yet, too thin and cracker-like, or too floury, No 900 wins out because the crust is just gorgeous. It’s puffy enough on the sides, has a nice chew and enough structure that when you lift up a slice it droops instead of collapsing into a pile of mush.

Salads are finally sprouting on more Montreal menus, including this Pizzeria No. 900

I’ve enjoyed most of the pizzas here, but standouts include the sausage and spicy pepper pizza made with a perfectly balanced tomato sauce and the right amount of fior di latte cheese, the whole dotted with a rapini and almond pesto. Yum! I also adored the pizza with mortadella, cherry tomatoes, fior di latte, green onions and a hit of pecorino Romano. But my absolute favourite is the pizza bianca made with spicy pancetta, diced fresh figs and goat’s cheese, which is topped with arugula drizzled with aged balsamic vinegar. Wow. Just quite possibly my favourite pizza. Ever.

Besides a lovely cannoli and a perfect little Caesar salad, sans anchovies, I also admire No 900’s great little wine list. Short, but made up of private imports smartly chosen by Mailhot, the wine list is also well priced with choices between $35 and $125, with the majority of the bottles under $60.

The only slight setback at No 900 is the service, which can be a bit slow to get going. But the staff is incredibly friendly, and rest assured that when your pizza is in the oven, you are a mere 90 seconds away from Montreal pizza nirvana.

***

Brigade is another pizza restaurant with serious plans for expansion throughout the province. Even more casual than No 900, the concept is quite different. The Stanley St. restaurant features a long counter where customers line up to order either one of the à la carte pizzas or custom design their own.

Kelly Raposo, right, and owner Jean-Daniel Nadeau prepare pizza at Pizzeria Neapolitan Brigade on Stanley St.

The first cook you see is the dexterous dough shaper, and as the pie continues down the counter, you can pick and choose from dozens of different toppings before it is scooped up and slid into one of two wood burning, Marra Forni ovens shipped in from Italy. The decor is the definition of minimalist and there’s no liquor licence, but the design-your-own concept is certainly original for Montreal.

Though the format reminded me a lot of the open-floored, Five Guys burger restaurants, Eater Montreal announced at the opening last August that the team behind this venture actually comes from Grace Yeh and Jean-Daniel Nadeau, the couple who originated the Yeh! frozen yogurt operation in 2008 before it was sold in 2012. So devoted are the couple to making authentic Neapolitan pizza that they completed a certification course from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. Impressive.

Brigade Pizzeria Napolitaine is among the restaurants giving gourmet cred to a casual staple.

But how is the pizza? Very good. Still, there’s a problem at this concept: when people are choosing their own toppings, they’re basically wrecking the pizza. There is an à la carte menu of perfectly fine, well thought out pies. But faced with that cornucopia of toppings, who can resist? I watched a teenager destroy a basic margarita pizza by adding four kinds of cheese, pepperoni, shrimp, and enough vegetables to make a salad.

Capricciosa pizza a at Pizzeria Neapolitan Brigade.

My 10-year-old requested about 10 toppings, a friend asked for anchovies on his sausage and sweet pepper pizza, which overwhelmed the other ingredients. Frankly, I couldn’t resist an extra dribble of pesto on the delicious artichoke, ham and olive pizza, which did little to improve its already terrific taste. With pizza, less is more; at Brigade, it’s next to impossible not to gild the lily. The crust is also a bit harder than I like, but otherwise the pizza is puffy, blister-crusted and perfectly baked. Nice.

The Caesar salad could use a little TLC (it’s all tough romaine leaves and Parmesan shards), but is the staff ever pleasant. And this is a great place for kids. Just avoid going bonkers with the extras, and you’ll be fine.

Nozy

★★1/2 out of ★★★★

$$-$$$

3568 Notre-Dame St. W. (near Rose de Lima St.)

Phone: 438-386-9797

Website: n/a

Open: Wed. to Sun. 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; Tues. to Sat. 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.; Sunday brunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Licensed: Yes

Credit cards: Major cards

Wheelchair access:

Reservations: Essential

Vegetarian-friendly: Yes

Parking: On the street with meters

Price range: appetizers: $6-$16; main courses $18-$28; dessert $7. Omakase menu $50.

Ours is a city where trends flourish. In Montreal – perhaps less so than in New York, Paris and London – diners are game to try out the latest food fashion, be it aged beef, fish tartare or newfangled poutine. You can even attach an era to restaurant genres – like the steak house, the fancy French, the Szechuan, the nouveau Québécois, and even the crêperie. And today’s most popular style of restaurant? I’d choose the wine bar, followed closely by the pizzeria and the sometimes-winning, chef-driven resto.

In 1990s Montreal, the most happening restaurants were Japanese. And once we had our fill of teriyaki and tempura, we turned all our attention to sushi. Starting with those two legendary Japanese establishments, the side-by-side Katsura and Sakura, the Japanese food scene took off, with restaurants like Mikado, Soto, Shô-Dan and Kaizen drawing in the foodies and fashionistas. And let’s not forget the plethora of sushi shops to accommodate the takeout crowd.

Sushi hit peak popularity at about 2001, so much so that its influence was felt throughout the city’s restaurants as French chefs were busy incorporating Japanese techniques, flavours and ingredients into their cuisine. Seemingly captivated by everything Japanese, amateur gourmets discussed everything from nori to dashi, ponzu to yuzu, and whether sushi was best eaten with chopsticks or fingers. The mind boggles at the thought of the sheer amount of spicy tuna that passed the lips of maki-mad Montrealers at the time. A decade later, sushi-loving millennials continued the love affair with raw fish and rice, though with an increasing emphasis on sustainable seafood. Was the sushi we were wolfing back any kind of serious reflection on Japanese cuisine? Let’s just say it’s hard to claim authenticity when you start making makis with cream cheese, smoked salmon and blueberries.

Hamburger steak topped with seared foie gras, enhanced by the sweet red-wine barbecue sauce: utterly luxurious.

At about that time, 2007 to be exact, a young Japanese chef by the name of Nozomu Takeuchi moved from his native Japan to Calgary. Though his training at cooking school in Tokyo had focused on French and Italian cuisine, in Calgary he was not asked to make European fare but the oh-so-popular sushi. Interesting. He next headed to Switzerland to work in an Italian restaurant, and then he came back to Canada, this time, Montreal. Takeuchi found a post at Giovanni Apollo’s restaurant followed by stints at Kaizen, The W and eventually Zenya, where he took over the position of head chef. But frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t recommend a Japanese restaurant to friends outside the typical sushi, izakaya, and ramen spots, he decided to open his own place. Named after his nickname, “Nozy,” Takeuchi decided the cuisine he wanted to focus on would be “Teishoku-style,” which he describes as a main meal with soup and rice, prepared in a casual, home-cooked style. “It’s the food I like to serve at home with some accommodations made for the local palate,” says the chef, who cooks solo for the diners who fill his restaurant’s 28 seats. Sushi, a special occasion dish in Japan, would not be part of his menu.

Located in St-Henri on Notre-Dame St. just east of Atwater Ave., Nozy is a no-nonsense restaurant with a bare-bones decor and a wine list than includes less than 10 wines and a half-dozen sakes. I selected sake for my meal (Ozeki Yamada, the big ticket booze item here at $48) but would probably recommend something more aromatic like the bottle of Alsatian riesling listed on the top of the blackboard to play off all of the diverse flavours with more pizzazz than the Yamada sake. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

The beef tataki was lightly seared, paired with shredded greens, daikon and a lively ponzu sauce.

The menu is short so we basically ordered everything, starting with one of my favourite dishes of the night, a beef tataki. Served fanned out on a long dish, the beef was lightly seared on the outside, raw on the inside and paired with shredded greens, daikon and a lively ponzu sauce. A plate of assorted sashimi included pieces of tuna, salmon and sea bass as well as a few shrimp, everything super fresh and sliced with skill. Triangles of vegetable crêpes were prepared okonomiyaki-style, as in a thick pancake enhanced with carrot, onion and ginger, fried to a crisp, topped with bonito flakes and placed atop a spicy mayonnaise for dipping. I liked the contrast of textures at play, but boy were these babies rich. In search of something less filling, I turned my attention to the red tuna salad. Filled with red tuna chunks, daikon ribbons, sesame and pita chips, the whole was lightly seasoned with a miso-based dressing. Great.

The best bet for two: the “take kago,” a tray that includes five entries: soba noodles, beef stew, sashimi, aubergine dip and potato salad.

The main courses arrived with delicious homemade pickles and bowls of perfect miso soup. There was steamed rice as well, but it was a bit too heavy and claggy, and the dishes were so generous in portion that we barely made a dent. First we tasted a hamburger steak topped with a slice of seared foie gras. I liked the way the sweet red-wine barbecue sauce enhanced the meat, and the foie provided a hit of luxury to take this dish from homey to restaurant fare. Smart.

Even more luxurious was a bowl of salmon chirashi that included salmon sashimi, tartare and tataki. Served over rice, the dish would have been ideal had I not started with the sashimi plate, and the tataki had not been seasoned with what tasted like dried oregano, which completely overwhelmed the flavour of the fish.

Red tuna salad: tuna, daikon ribbons, sesame and pita chips, dressed with miso-based dressing.

The best bet for twosomes would be the “take kago,” a beautiful tray that included five entries: soba noodles, beef stew, sashimi, aubergine dip and potato salad. Takeuchi does not make his own soba noodles, but these were still lovely and cooked to the ideal soft but firm texture. The stew was nice, certainly homey but not especially earth-shattering, and the eggplant dip was greedily sopped up with the accompanying sweet and spicy triangles of dried pita. As for the potato salad, a bit bland, and honestly after all the rice, I was ready to raise a white flag.

Takeuchi is an experienced pastry chef and makes everything from scratch. And he’s good; the crème caramel with sliced strawberries we devoured was textbook. Service provided by our lovely waitress was well-informed and well-paced, impressive considering the restaurant was full on a Tuesday night. It was just so carefully prepared that I did feel like I was at Takeuchi’s table, especially as I could see him 15 feet away in the open kitchen calmly cooking all night. As much as I enjoy the occasional extravagant sushi feast, how great to enjoy a simple feast, not perfect but completely devoid of any excess fanfare. I have eaten slick Japanese food countless times in our city, but rarely have I enjoyed an experience this heartfelt. Domo arigato, chef Takeuchi. 

criticsnotebook@gmail.com

Twitter.com/LesleyChestrman

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première (95.1 FM), Médium Large, Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.

When Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman visited the Westmount newcomer last May, it was already hopping. From the archives, we bring you her review.    

Brasserie Lucilles, 4124 Ste-Catherine St. W. (near Greene Ave.)
Two stars out of four
Price range: Raw bar $16 to $32 (with market price items as well); appetizers: $14 to $24; mains: $21 to $46; desserts: $9 to $10.
Phone: 514-933-9433
Open: Lunch, Thurs., Fri., 11:30 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. Dinner, daily 5 p.m. to close 
Licensed: Yes
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: One step at the door
Parking: On the street with meters
Vegetarian-friendly: Not especially
Reservations: Essential 

Of all the restaurant neighbourhoods I’ve frequented, Westmount has been the hardest to grasp. Considering the size of the city and the affluence of its residents, it always surprises me how few restaurants there are in Westmount. And many of them are short-lived. But what surprises me most is that when I do find a Westmount restaurant to review, most of them are straight out of a Fellini film.

Westmount restaurant-goers enjoy a scene, favour straightforward food, like their cocktails and partake in an ambience best described as rambunctious. And it’s not even an especially young crowd. It seems like all ages of Westmounters like to have more than a little fun with their steak and plate of oysters. If there were a fountain in the middle of a Westmount restaurant, I’m convinced that by the end of the night, half the customers would be dancing in it. No wonder the new Brasserie Lucilles is already such a success.

The name might sound familiar: Lucille’s Oyster Dive is a longstanding Monkland Ave. favourite in N.D.G. There is a Lucille’s food truck, and a seafood importing company, Lucille’s Seafood Co., sells some of the city’s best oysters to about 40 restaurants in the city. The new location is right across the street from the wildly popular Tavern on the Square and a few blocks away from Bistro on the Avenue, the restaurant that was arguably the first to create that neighbourhood party atmosphere. At both “the Tavern” and “the Bistro,” I’ve watched customers cross the room to greet friends, family and neighbours. It’s a very anglo scene, and the cuisine is more comfort than haute. Brasserie Lucilles falls right into that genre. The menu is almost the same as the N.D.G. establishment, though this time the emphasis is more on meat than fish and seafood.

As for the space, the room is long and narrow with a bar on the right, high banquettes on the left (great for people watching) and an open kitchen at the back where chefs shuck oysters and pull chickens offthe rotisserie. I’m here on a Wednesday, and the place is hopping, with a group of seniors on my left, a “guy” filled table behind me and several women in front of me (I’m guessing a bachelorette party) wearing the first slip dresses of the season.

It’s hot outside and is it ever loud inside. Noise levels aren’t always worth mentioning in restaurant reviews because I can’t guarantee the peaceful room I dined in on a Tuesday night will be as quiet on a Friday, and you never know who will end up beside those loud-talkers.

When it comes to noise, you never know. But at Brasserie Lucilles, you know. This place is noisy, possibly even the noisiest restaurant I’ve ever experienced. I basically yelled my way through dinner, gave up exhausted by the end, and woke up with a splitting headache the next day. AC/DC and Metallica fans will feel right at home. The racket is a definite drawback, but if that won’t deter you, keep reading.

We begin with a few cocktails, all excellent, my favourite being a pink margarita made with pink grapefruit juice. Yum! We then opt for some oysters, which arrive with mignonette sauce, horseradish and homemade hot sauces, the standout being an especially delicious one made with jalapenos. But the oysters (six Malpeques and six from Massachusetts) are so pristine and perfectly shucked that the sauces are superfluous. Can’t think of a better way to start a meal here.

After slurping those back, we carry on with three appetizers: crab cakes, chicken tacos and a wedge salad. Alas, the crab cakes are a bust. They’re too thin and dry, robbing the seafood of its delicate flavour and unctuous texture. The chicken tacos, though, make up for a lot. Served on lightly charred tortillas, the two large tacos are filled with shredded chicken, red cabbage and salsa. I love these for their great flavour and not-too-drippy texture.

Chicken tacos are stuffed with red cabbage and salsa.

The wedge salad is another hit. Though more of a thick slice than the classic wedge, the salad is flavoured with a blue cheese vinaigrette, bread and butter pickles, peppers and baby beet leaves. Every bite is a treat, though I gotta say $16 is the most I’ve ever paid for a wedge salad.

The wedge salad is more of a thick slice than the classic wedge.

Prices at Brasserie Lucille’s are generally pretty high. Steaks go for around $40. Seafood doesn’t come cheap, either, and you won’t find a pasta plate under $20. This is a brasserie, but a pricey one. I walked out with a pretty steep bill. But was it worth it? Sometimes.

At $42, the rib steak is a wallet cruncher. It’s also amazing. Ideally cooked to the perfect medium-rare, the steak is not only full-flavoured but brilliantly spiced. What a great hunk of meat, and the fries and chimichurri sauce served alongside are also beyond reproach. If it’s a killer steak you’re after, no doubt, you’ll find it here.

The rib steak is killer.

As for our other two mains, Portuguese chicken and lobster ravioli, I’m not quite so convinced. For $28, the chicken includes the breast, cut in half, and served with a side of OK coleslaw and more chimichurri sauce. The chicken itself is pretty great, moist and just spicy enough. But the portion consists solely of white meat, so dark meat lovers like yours truly get short shrift.

The Portuguese chicken is pretty great, moist and just spicy enough.

The lobster ravioli is a complete bust. First, the portion includes one large ravioli, which should have been described as a “raviolo” on the menu. And, second, the filling consists primarily of lobster chunks that tumble out of the pasta pocket into an overly rich sauce. For $32, I expect brilliance. No such luck.

When I reviewed Lucille’s Oyster Dive last fall, one of my only letdowns was the verrine desserts, which I’m disappointed to also see at the Brasserie. One is a carrot cake, the second is a strawberry semifreddo and the third is a chocolate cream flavoured with peanuts. The carrot cake is good, but I see no reason why it is served in a glass. The semifreddo is crusty and the chocolate cream is just too sweet. After such copious mains, you really need to want dessert, but these three went back half eaten.

Despite the highs and lows of the food, service was both warm and faultless. And big ups to our waitress who was patient and sweet and at the ready with sharp wine suggestions. Brasserie Lucilles’s wine list is a bit on the pricey side, but the selection is very good, and equally meat-and fish-friendly.

In the end, I exited this new Lucilles with my ears ringing thanks to the noise and poorer thanks to the bill. But weakened as I was by the experience, everyone around me seemed to be having a heck of a time. I left wondering how they did it. Those Westmounters … a different breed.

criticsnotebook@gmail.com

twitter.com/LesleyChestrman

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s (95.1 FM) Médium Large Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.

As tinkering with a proposed law to restructure school-board governance continues at the National Assembly following committee hearings and seemingly widespread outrage, English Quebec should take the opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of these bureaucracies. While giving the boards a grade of F would be severe, it’s difficult to argue they’ve passed with flying colours and noticeably strengthened anglophone communities in this province.

Bill 86 would abolish school-board elections, replacing a plethora of commissions with parent-run committees. School-board officials have been widely heard from, and reactions to the proposed law range from outrage to incense. But what of their constituents, the silent majority?

The participation rate for school-board elections is abysmal. In 2014, only 5.5 per cent of Quebecers voted. Anglophone school boards will laud their superior participation rate, which is only marginally less abysmal, at about 17 per cent province-wide. The English Montreal School Board leads the pack with a 2014 participation rate of about 21 per cent, which is considered to be impressive.

The notion of abolishing the votes and drastically reducing the number of school boards shouldn’t be so controversial. The assumption is that these organizations are essential to English Quebec because they present themselves as such, but raw data suggest otherwise. If at least 80 per cent of anglophones are consistently disinterested, the government’s plan is completely worthy of discussion and could still respect constitutional protections in place for the anglophone community.

While merging municipal and school-board elections would increase turnout, as board officials have proposed, it wouldn’t address the over-democratization and bureaucratization of the education system. Even with local star candidates, the 2014 turnout was again so low that, objectively, one can only conclude that the community’s interests are not being heard.

With jobs and influence at stake, school-board officials are hardly impartial sources of information. A new group, Parents for a Democratic EMSB, is offering an alternative narrative: Though Bill 86 is imperfect, the status quo is even worse. Parents could see their influence increase under the government’s plan, since elected commissioners don’t all necessarily have a personal stake in board matters.

Aside from unproven claims of widespread support, the boards also discourage cultural rapprochement. Prior to 1998, school boards in Quebec were divided along religious lines, and that was seen as antiquated and discriminatory. Splitting them along linguistic lines is less offensive but nonetheless divisive. While parents should have the right to choose what type of education their children will receive, dividing Quebec’s 72 school boards by language, effectively segregating anglophone and francophone students, is hardly progressive or productive.

As a result, students in the English system are deprived of formative experiences in francophone environments and have trouble embracing mainstream Québécois culture, including building the social skills necessary to find gainful employment in their home province.

Job agency Youth Employment Services recently launched a campaign highlighting the higher unemployment rate faced by young anglophones compared with their francophone counterparts. Though census information is now being collected, it is expected to show a hemorrhaging of young anglophone professionals to the benefit of cities like Toronto.

Since anglophones are already underrepresented in the public service, talent from school boards could be useful in other departments; furthering anglophone unemployment should be avoided.

Most anglophones have undoubtedly experienced frustration navigating Quebec bureaucracies in their second language. On some level, even school board-boosting anglos can appreciate the Liberal government’s attempts, though haphazard at times, to reduce inefficiencies.

A new model that ends division between anglophone and francophone students while preserving English-language education and representation in some form could prove more fruitful. But preserving school boards as they are is to feed inefficient bureaucracies, and that is no more productive or virtuous in English than it is in French.

Dan Delmar is a public-relations consultant at Provocateur Communications and host of The Exchange, Mondays and Wednesdays 8-10 p.m. on CJAD 800 Montreal.

twitter.com/DanDelmar

La Petite Maison

Two and a half out of 4 stars

$$-$$$

Address: 5589 Av du Parc (neat St-Viateur st.)

Phone: 514-303-1900

Website: petitemaisonmtl.com

Open: Thurs. – Fri. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Sat. – Sun. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Licensed: Yes

Credit cards: All major cards

Wheelchair access: No

Reservations: Essential

Vegetarian-friendly: Yes

Parking: On the street with meters

Price range: Appetizer and main course: $30 (with some extras). Desserts: $6.

I was in France in early April, the wonderful Côtes-du-Rhône region to be exact, which extends from north of Avignon to just south of Lyon. Though the wines are splendid in this part of France and the ingredients are some of the best on the planet, the restaurant food was surprisingly disappointing. The problem is that, on the high end, the dishes are often more fussy than flavourful. Lost somewhere between the molecular cooking of two decades back, the more spartan nordic style of the past decade, and one too many episodes of the Top Chef cooking show, a lot of the food I was served strived to be fashionably modern, yet ended up looking dowdy and dated. Slate plates, excessive garnish, mincey vegetable cuts and twee plate presentations abound. How I longed for a simple roast chicken, leg of lamb rubbed with Provençal herbs, and a dessert that wasn’t assembled in a verrine. And seriously, gold leaf belongs on a picture frame, not on a sea bass carpaccio starter.

Duck rillettes with onion confit: more meaty than fatty – and scrumptious spread on croutons with onion jam and mustard sauce.

Inexperienced chefs and chefs whose clientele expect a bang for their buck (or in this case, the inflated euro), cook this way to impress. Yet weary of the flash, many of us now yearn for substance. There also comes a time when chefs themselves, tired of all the pretence, start to strip away the frills and get down to what really satisfies.

The drawback of simple cooking, however, is that it is hard to pull off. Ingredients must be pristine, cooking must be precise, seasoning must be spot on. It takes an experienced and confident chef to choose to cook this way, someone who has been down the fancy French route and has made a conscious effort to turn back. Danny St-Pierre is one such chef who at his new restaurant, La Petite Maison, offers his simplest menu to date. 

Last written up four years ago for his Sherbrooke restaurant, Auguste, St-Pierre is one of a handful of Quebec chefs who have star status in this province. He has hosted TV shows, won chef competitions, catered prestigious events and written a cookbook. With his ever-present smile, easy laugh and bright eyes framed in stylish spectacles, St-Pierre is a chef whose obvious ambition is tempered with a big dose of charm. On top of that, he’s a great cook, who was first reviewed in these pages as chef at Laval’s gastronomic restaurant Derrière les Fagots, followed by a stint at Laloux, where his focus was on reworked bistro classics. When word came last year that this Eastern Township native was selling his stake in Auguste and heading to Montreal, it seemed like a smart move as he now has a definite following. 

Bar area at La Petite Maison: the decor is more homey than “haute.”

St-Pierre took things slow at first, offering only lunch and brunch service while he waited for his liquor licence to arrive. His restaurant is also lower-key than I expected. Located in a basement space on Parc Ave., La Petite Maison is divided into three rooms where tables are tightly spaced (there is bar seating as well). The decor is more homey than “haute,” with stone walls, small hanging plants, votive candles and flower vases on every table. St-Pierre works in the kitchen with but one assistant and his menu is quite short, with a half-dozen starters and mains, as well as three desserts. Following the evident less-is-more philosophy, the wine list is not extensive but well-chosen, and prices are fair with the option to enjoy several bottles by the glass or in a 500-ml carafe format. Great!

A recent meal began with St-Pierre’s signature dish, “poutine inversée,” a half-dozen potato croquettes filled with gravy and cheese. Crisp and rich, these golden babies are a perfect representation of St-Pierre’s wit and technique. I ate two but could have happily inhaled them all. 

As for appetizers, we began with a beet and feta salad, where the beets were minced, the feta was crumbled and everything was topped with radish slices and dill. The key here was the mix of textures, with the slippery beets playing nice with the slippery cheese, followed by the crisp radish and herbal hit of the dill. It was all so bright and fresh that I found the accompanying pita breads unnecessary. 

Next up came duck rillettes with onion confit. Rillettes are often weepy in texture thanks to an serious dose of fat that loosens up when the dish comes to room temperature. These rillettes were more meaty than fatty – and seriously scrumptious spread thickly on croutons topped with onion jam and grainy mustard sauce. Why mess with a classic when it’s this perfect? 

Hake, served in a bisque-style broth, boosted by the elegant lobster sauce and earthy taste of the lentils.

Main courses were all played simple as well, the most basic being a dish featuring a thick slice of ham paired with pappardelle bathed in a carbonara-inspired egg yolk sauce. The ham was superb, meaty as all get out, in no way watery, and deeply flavoured. The pasta was rich and delicious. I noticed this dish listed on the brunch menu as well and it feels like a brunch dish. But for dinner, why not dress it up with a vegetable accompaniment (asparagus?) to cut through the meat and starch? 

St-Pierre is an excellent fish cook and the fish featured on his menu, hake, is served in a bisque-style broth on a bed of lentils. I loved the way the meaty fish was boosted by the elegant lobster sauce and earthy taste of the lentils. I’m not sure what cherry tomatoes were doing in there, but otherwise, good stuff. And finally, we enjoyed a luscious mushroom risotto filled with browned button mushrooms, al-dente shiitake mushrooms and a breadcrumb/sesame seed/lemon zest topping. I tasted a few bites of this verging-on-soupy risotto, envying my friend who ordered it after every bite.

So far the meal had been both simple and satisfying, but the desserts left me longing for more. The first, a “passion flakie aux framboises” (a puff pastry square filled with whipped cream and blackberries, served with a raspberry sauce), lacked any kind of wow factor to merit the calories. I’d say the same for the rubbery maple blanc manger that reminded me of those dreary desserts served in boarding schools. A chocolate bread pudding with hazelnuts and cherries sounded promising but lacked that extra something (ice cream, whipped cream?) to make me lick the plate clean. 

Superbly rich and delicious: ham paired with pappardelle bathed in a carbonara-inspired egg yolk sauce.

Service was very friendly if a little shaky, and because of the three-separate-room-layout, the ambience was limited to the – crowded – tables around us. Word to the wise: don’t plan on discussing personal issues here unless you want the whole room in on the details.

Oddly enough, the one thing that bothered me here was the element of the restaurant I initially admired most: the simplicity. As much as I liked the no-frills cuisine, as the night went on, I yearned for more. I’m not talking French fussy here, but with a chef of St-Pierre’s talents I’d like to see a little more complexity in the plates. Right now his menu is set at $30 for two dishes, so the price warrants that kind of approach. So how about a few more extras, like an optional cheese course to accompany those last sips of wine? As St-Pierre is from the province’s richest cheese-producing region, he can certainly find three of four to add to his menu. 

That said, I left La Petite Maison eager to return. Here’s hoping that when St-Pierre settles into the new space and finds his rhythm, the dishes may become a touch more elaborate. It’s always a treat to be eating at the table of such a talented chef, a man whose cooking will never require even a smidgeon of gold leaf.   

criticsnotebook@gmail.com 

Twitter.com/LesleyChestrman 

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m. 

When Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman visited Pastaga last June, she found chef Martin Juneau busier — and better — than ever. We have dipped into the archives to bring you her review of the St-Laurent Blvd. establishment.

Pastaga
6389 St-Laurent Blvd. (near Beaubien St.)
Three stars out of four
Price range: Cold plates $15.50-$19; hot plates $17-$19.75; desserts $8.
Phone: 438-381-6389
Open: Lunch Fri. 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; dinner Sun. to Tues. 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Thurs.-Sat. 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.; brunch Sat. and Sun. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Licensed: Yes
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: No
Vegetarian-friendly: Not especially
Parking: On surrounding streets
Reservations: Essential

 Ten years ago, my friend Jean-Philippe Tastet, restaurant critic at Le Devoir, told me to haul my keister over to a little Plateau restaurant called La Montée de Lait. Having already reviewed it, I wasn’t enthusiastic to return. “Chérie, you must go,” he insisted. “They have a new chef, a young fellow called Martin Juneau. C’est hallucinant.”

“Vraiment?” I said.

“Vraiment!” he answered. Tastet was right to insist, for Juneau was indeed a talent. His cuisine was an adroit combination of offbeat flavours and up-to-date cooking techniques. Every dish was a revelation, with vegetable accompaniments and sauces never once making more than one appearance during the meal — quite the feat on a menu this complex from one of the tiniest kitchen spaces in the city.

And that was just the beginning.

La Montée de Lait moved to a larger space and became the more gastronomic La Montée. A wine bar, Bouchonné, came soon after. In 2011, Juneau won the Canadian cooking competition Gold Medal Plates. For a while there, Juneau was The Guy.

Behind the scenes, though, all was not quite so rosy. After struggling on the downtown scene, La Montée moved to a new spot on St-Laurent and adopted its old name. But the new La Montée de Lait eventually went bankrupt and Juneau incurred serious debts. His next post, at Newtown, was forgettable, but then this highly photogenic chef’s TV career got going for two seasons of Et que ça saute!

Then in 2012, Juneau opened Pastaga, a restaurant/wine bar that featured his immensely appealing small-plate cuisine paired with natural wines. It was a hit. His style was sophisticated and his ingredients were top notch. I walked away from my first meal thoroughly impressed. Despite the La Montée debacle, Juneau, in this cool new space, was the chef scene’s comeback kid. And he hasn’t stopped since. The number of projects he’s involved in today is mind-boggling.

At Pastaga, Martin Juneau has created a restaurant/wine bar to feature his immensely appealing small-plate cuisine paired with natural wines.

Besides Pastaga, Juneau and partner Louis-Philippe Breton have opened several businesses on neighbouring Beaubien St., including the Monsieur Crémeux ice cream shop, Le Petit Coin grocery store and, their latest, a wine shop called Cul-Sec, where you can purchase a bottle of privately imported wine as long as its coupled with a takeout meal.

And there’s more. Juneau is also a partner in Ward associés, a wine agency run by Pastaga sommelier/brilliant wine agent David Ward. He is also the consulting chef at Commerce, a wine bar from the MTL Cuisine restaurant group in the former Bar Boeuf space in Old Montreal. Then there is Pub Sir Joseph, where Juneau is a partner. Add to that a new TV show on Zeste TV with U.S. barbecue specialist Steven Raichlen about grilling, called La Tag Barbecue, and you’re looking at Quebec’s busiest/most business-centred cook.

With so much going on, one can’t help but wonder how much of Juneau’s attention is allotted to maison mère, Pastaga. I’ve seen Martin Juneau at food symposiums, I’ve seen Martin Juneau at the airport, I’ve seen Martin Juneau on TV and I follow Martin Juneau on social media. But the big question is, would I see Martin Juneau at his restaurant?

I showed up on a sweltering night in May, and I say sweltering because the air conditioning had conked out and most everyone at Pastaga was covered with a thin glow of sweat. The room was packed and stuffy — not the best ambience for dining.

Our sommelier arrived quickly with a cold bottle of “Lucky, l’homme qui débouche plus vite que son ombre,” a sulphite-free, white grenache from the Ardèche region of France produced by winemaker Gregory Guillaume. Already I was impressed. So much about dining in Montreal revolves around wine these days, and Pastaga has been serving such gems since Day One. We may place all sorts of gastronomic expectations on Juneau, but, really, Pastaga is as much restaurant as wine bar, and if you’re open to discovering the wild and wonderful world of natural wines, this is one of the best spots in the city to do just that.

As for the food, the menu isn’t long and the emphasis is placed equally on seafood, meat and fish. There are five cold dishes, as many hot, a Pastaga classics menu and a few daily specials. Desserts are not to be missed. The crowd was young, and whenever I’ve enjoyed the excellent brunches here, there’s always a stroller or two parked in the dining room.

For dinner, we began with three plates: burrata and mushroom focaccia, a cucumber gazpacho and marinated salmon. The focaccia is quite something, a sort of long slice of toast topped with plush burrata cheese, pickled onions, orange supremes, marinated mushrooms and bits of smoked tuna belly. What a great lineup of flavours — salty, fishy, acidic, woodsy, lactic — mixed in with all those diverse textures. Gorgeous.

The focaccia is quite something, a sort of long slice of toast topped with plush burrata cheese, pickled onions, orange supremes, marinated mushrooms and bits of smoked tuna belly.

The gazpacho was equally appealing as the cucumber flavour was pronounced and refreshing. I wasn’t as enthusiastic about the Nordic shrimp lined up on the rim of the bowl that were served “en ceviche” (a.k.a. raw) with cucumber chunks. Raw shrimp have this sort of wormy mouth feel that I find seriously unpleasant. Cook these babies and count me in.

The marinated salmon was another winner. Enjoyed with a glass of Spanish white, the thick salmon slices were enhanced with pulverized salmon jerky, fresh herbs and ratte potatoes enhanced with cream. It was all so lush and rich that two of us had trouble finishing it off. But was it ever good!

For mains, I’d highly recommend the rock cornish game hen. Succulent and tender, the meat was blanketed in crisp skin and served with chicken-filled dumplings and smashed Jerusalem artichokes with thick pan juices. It’s not an especially complicated dish, but the combination of sharp technique and fine ingredients elevates something simple like this from good to great.

I was a bit less taken with a dish of grilled monkfish with fiddleheads and ceps. Monkfish is prized for its meaty texture, but in this case it was the lack of flavour that did it in. The fiddleheads were fine and the pickled onions played their supporting role well, but as for the fish? Meh.

Desserts have long been a strength of Pastaga, and happily that’s still the case. I loved the little rhubarb and strawberry turnovers served with a quenelle of buttermilk ice cream. Even better was the millefeuilles, a phyllo-based cake filled with passionfruit curd, cashews and caramelized banana. Set on circles of caramel sauce, this dish was as appealing looks-wise as taste-wise, and isn’t that what a good dessert is all about?

The millefeuilles are a phyllo-based cake filled with passionfruit curd, cashews and caramelized banana.

After a night of fine food, cool wines, a bit of sweating and profuse apologies by our excellent waiter about the heat, I walked away satiated yet wondering; Where was Juneau? And just as I said as much to my dining companion, I saw him by the door talking to a few customers. So, I thought, there he is, a chef on the go, pausing for a breath of cool air before heading back to his burgeoning foodie empire filled with fiddleheads, ice cream, wine, TV shows, grocery stores, new menus and even more new fans. And all this in a mere decade.

“Hallucinant” for sure.

criticsnotebook@gmail.com

twitter.com/LesleyChestrman

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s (95.1 FM) Médium Large Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.

L’Express

Four stars out of four

$$-$$$

3927 St-Denis St. (near Duluth Ave. )

Phone: 514-845-5333

Website: restaurantlexpress.com

Open: Weekdays 8 a.m. to 2 a.m.; Sat. 10 a.m. to 2 a.m.; Sun. 10 a.m. to 1 a.m.

Licensed: Yes

Credit cards: All major cards

Wheelchair access: Yes

Reservations: Essential

Vegetarian-friendly: Yes

Parking: difficult on the street; lot nearby on the corner of Roy and Rivard Sts. 

Price range: Appetizers: $4.70-$33 (foie gras); main courses: $12.50-$27; desserts $1.55-$8.95. 

What would Montreal be without its restaurants? Just imagine our city without Au Pied de Cochon, Toqué!, Moishes, Café Ferreira, Le Filet or your particular favourite. Tough. But for me, Montreal without one particular restaurant would be unimaginable: L’Express. Not once have I walked past its cream-coloured exterior and black-and-white checkered entranceway without yearning to go inside. And when I do, I relish every moment, slowly hanging my coat up on one of the hooks beside the door, turning around to scan the scene, looking for familiar staff members like the legendary barman Monsieur Masson, the tall and handsome waiter Patrick, the debonair Robert. And then there are the maitre d’s: the ever-smiling Roch Arsenault and the razor sharp Josée Préfontaine. I have never been anything but thrilled to dine here. True confession: L’Express is my favourite Montreal restaurant. 

As the menu has hardly changed since the restaurant opened in December 1980, I, like so many, enter usually knowing what I’m going to eat. L’Express veterans – and there are many – all have their favourites.  For some it’s the fish soup, for others it’s the grilled salmon or onglet/frites. For me it’s the sorrel soup, the reliable rillettes or, when in season, a simple “artichaut vinaigrette.” My main course is always chosen in accordance with the wine, as the wine list at L’Express is arguably the best in the city. For that we can thank Mario Brossoit, the architect of this 11,000-bottle “carte” (there are two actually, the second with more limited selections) who selects his privately imported wines simply for being, he says, “good, affordable and festive.” Any chef, restaurateur or sommelier who has a great wine list today probably spent a lot of time drinking his or her way through this list. Even visiting wine makers head here to drink their own wines, often sold for less than in their own country, or perhaps a bottle of something rare like a Raveneau, Rayas or Rougeard. 

Homemade Toulouse sausages are back on the menu. Yum!

I’ve described L’Express as a restaurant wrapped around a wine list in the past, but that’s wrong; there’s so much more to this establishment than just that. After 35 years, the old-school bistro decor still looks chic, and for that the credit goes to the late Luc Laporte, the architect/designer behind many of Montreal’s most beautiful and enduring restaurant spaces. Regulars know the best tables are either located around palm tree mid-room, or against the south wall under the large mirrors, from where you can watch this movie set of a dining room in full action. And I love the pre-meal rituals at L’Express, the basket of perfect baguette, the eventual appearance of those dreamy cornichons, for some a beer, an apéritif or glass of Gérard Boulay Sancerre. While perusing the menu I always admire the fact that, despite the restaurant’s huge success, prices haven’t skyrocketed. 

The quail with peas, wild rice and endive: dependable and reasonable at $24.

L’Express’s food has often been described by two words: reliable and consistent – both true and admirable considering this restaurant often serves up to 500 covers a day. In November I dined here one late Monday night, ordered a fish soup and the main course of the day and, for the first time ever, left disappointed. I knew longtime chef Joël Chapoulie had retired after some thirty years in charge of the kitchens, and I feared a worthy replacement had not yet been found. Last year too the restaurant received a tremendous blow when one of the founding partners, Colette Brossoit (sister of Mario), passed away. With so many changes at hand, I worried that L’Express might be in crisis mode. But then came news that chef Jean-François Vachon, a cook who had helmed many excellent kitchens and recently revived the food for the Thursdays empire, would be taking over. I’ve dined here a half-dozen times since, and I’m happy to report this St-Denis landmark is back on track. In fact, the food has never been better. It’s not flashy, it’s not wildly creative, but boy is it ever good. 

Start your meal off with the leeks vinaigrette and you’ll be served a spiral of leek ribbons topped with a single olive and enhanced with the perfect dose of mustardy vinaigrette. Opt for the rillettes and you’ll enjoy the ideally seasoned and textured pork meat mixed with just the right amount of unctuous fat. The sorrel soup is as bracingly bitter and lemony as ever, and the fish soup is lush and deeply flavoured. Vachon’s famous onion soup is now on the menu and though I wish it were topped with just that much more gruyère des grottes, it satisfies nonetheless. The chèvre chaud remains a good bet as the salad seems less wilted and commercial than I remember (sad salad as well as stale croutons were always a former failing of this kitchen). At lunchtime — or any time — the rich croque-monsieur and textbook quiche are always a treat.

Leeks vinaigrette: enhanced with the perfect dose of mustardy vinaigrette.

I’m told that the onglet/frites is by far the best-selling dish, and I have never judged that slightly chewy but full-flavoured steak to be anything but delicious. But the fries weren’t always up to par on this plate and now they are: hot, crisp and golden … superb! And I like them even better when served with the back-on-the-menu homemade Toulouse sausages. Yum!

The best deal on the menu is probably the quail with peas, wild rice and endive, a dish that always comes through and for a reasonable $24. And the liver remains a go-to main course when I’m feeling the need for an influx of iron. I also enjoyed several daily specials of late including duck macaroni filled with peas and confit, a luscious risotto made with radicchio topped with arugula and Parmesan shards, and an appetizer consisting of a fried duck egg paired with nuggets of foie gras and sautéed oyster mushrooms. All terrific.

Highly recommended: the caramelized apple tart with vanilla bean ice cream.

For dessert (perhaps paired with a snifter of Poire Williams, Vieille Prune or aged rum?), I would highly recommend the caramelized apple tart topped with vanilla bean ice cream, the maple profiteroles, the apple and blueberry crumble, or the simple chocolate tart. I know everyone loves the île flottante but I find it’s the only dish at L’Express I consider “de trop.” And I wish the lemon tart could lose its apricot glaze topping to make it more of a restaurant dessert than coffee-shop pastry. Or you could always do what my friend Guillaume does and finish up with the three simple chocolate truffles. Voilà!

Another excellent dessert choice: the maple profiteroles.

I’ve always felt that, along with Arthur Quentin, L’Express is one of the two major jewels in the crown of St-Denis St., a grand Montreal shopping and noshing destination that has withered of late under the strain of endless construction. But I would march right over those cones to get to a restaurant like this. 

A recent list of Canada’s 100 best restaurants was released last March, and the fact that L’Express wasn’t included discredited the entire operation for me, but also had me thinking that maybe we take L’Express for granted, no doubt a consequence of its long and reliable existence. Busier, noisier and miles more chic than most, what is often dismissed as just a very correct French bistro is clearly above the fray. Nobody understands customer service quite like L’Express. And, as Carly Simon sings in the song we all know, nobody does it better. 

criticsnotebook@gmail.com 

Twitter.com/LesleyChestrman 

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.

It’s enough to make the chests of beleaguered Montrealers swell with civic pride. In the current issue of the tony Town & Country, Alan Richman, one of the most esteemed food writers on the continent and a 16-time James Beard Award winner for his prose on the culinary arts, has deemed Montreal to be the “best restaurant city in America.”

By “America,” most assumed Richman would have been restricted to the United States of America. Nope. He makes no apologies in going outside that box to select Montreal, “a city with the culture, the cooks, the restaurants, the provisions and the hospitality.” Then again, he does feel that “Montreal is spiritually a part of the U.S., a kind of New York City in miniature, although it’s even more like an independent city-state.”

In his recent foray to town, Richman caught all sides of the resto scene and deduced that we are the “food capital of North America.” He dined at Les 400 Coups, Foxy, Lawrence, Le Mousso, Maison Boulud, Maison Publique, Toqué!, Le Vin Papillon (part of the Joe Beef mini-empire) and Hôtel Herman — which is neither a hotel nor is named for any particular Herman. But he also hit such prolie institutions as the Montreal Pool Room, Beautys and Schwartz’s.

Richman is no stranger to this town. Though born in Philadelphia, he toiled as a sportswriter for the Montreal Star in the 1970s. It was also at the Star, under the pseudonym of William Neill, that he matched wits with Françoise Neill (pseudonym of Bee McGuire) and began a new career as a food critic. He later returned to the U.S., where he became most known for his richly colourful gastronomy essays in GQ.

“I’ve always loved Montreal since I lived there in the ’70s, and if I do something that makes Montreal feel good, I’m perfectly thrilled with that,” says a buoyant Richman in a phone interview.

“When I left Montreal, the mayor was Jean Drapeau, and he hated me so much that his chief of staff called to say that the mayor wanted to tell me how happy he was that I was leaving town.”

But as my colleague Lesley Chesterman, the Montreal Gazette’s fine-dining columnist, points out: “Mayor Denis Coderre would do well to present Richman with a key to the city. He has done so much for the city. His story could do more to boost tourism — particularly in the dark days of winter when there are no festivals.”

Certainly — as U.S. film and TV execs are abundantly aware — our diminished dollar helps bring in visitors, which helps keep our chefs creating and their stoves burning.

Les 400 Coups (pictured in 2014) was just one of the Montreal restaurants visited by Alan Richman for his recent Town & Country piece.

Richman makes no apologies in snubbing his New York City home for top honours. “The zeitgeist of dining there is tiny restaurants serving fried-chicken sandwiches. We have moved into an era there where it’s not fine dining — it’s just casual food invented by chefs,” he notes.

“But to their credit, casual food is better than ever in New York. On the other hand, though, that’s all that anyone is interested in anymore. So I didn’t think they even see there is a problem in that. They think they’re doing just fine.”

In the Town & Country piece, Richman has this priceless quote from Joe Beef super-chef David McMillan: “We have the most advanced dining public in North America. I serve lamb liver cooked rare to 17-year-old girls. I sell tons of kidneys and sweetbreads. Manhattan is one giant steakhouse. Everybody there wants steak, or red tuna.”

Richman concurs: “Maybe I’m wrong and I’m an idiot, but I don’t think New York has any idea that it’s not as great as it used to be.”

Regardless, Richman has yet to be deluged by denunciations from the Big Apple for choosing Montreal. Nor, for that matter, has he had to deal with a wave of negative reaction from the Toronto foodie community.

“Toronto has done a great job with restaurants and has certainly pushed Montreal, but for me it’s always been Montreal. That might be unfair, because of my love for Montreal.”

“We can’t afford to sit back and be smug here,” says Joe Beef’s David McMillan (pictured in 2011). “There are so many chefs here pushing the envelope.”

Richman doesn’t disagree with the notion that it’s perhaps the stiff competition and a level of insecurity that pushes Montreal chefs to greater heights. “There’s a point to that in all professions. For most, as soon as they’re sure they’re the best, they stop trying too hard. I don’t think they’re trying that hard in New York to do interesting cuisine anymore.

“Yet Montreal is still striving, still not satisfied with what it’s done. It still thinks it can get better. That’s the key to everything — as long as there is room to grow and a certain insecurity. Insecurity is the key to success in life.”

McMillan attributes the stiff competition among Montreal chefs to the continuing evolution of the local restaurant scene. “We can’t afford to sit back and be smug here,” he says. “There are so many chefs here pushing the envelope. That’s why it’s really no great surprise to us that so many consider Montreal restaurants the best.

“Now what we’re seeing is American chefs more famous than we are by far coming here to our restaurants to learn about what we’re doing. They ask if we really serve horse or kidneys or quails. To me that’s normal, but to them that’s so exotic.

“Even in New York, they just play it so safe — it’s all chicken, steaks, tuna, veal. In Balthazar – the famous French brasserie in New York that serves 1,700 on a Saturday night — the chef says maybe he sells two portions of liver.”

And forget about rabbit. Balthazar’s chef told McMillan he wouldn’t even put it on the menu. “I asked what would happen if he put horse on the menu. He said there would be a PETA boycott outside the restaurant.

“Syrian and Korean restaurants in Montreal are more sharp than most American restaurants. A lot of money goes into the design of American restaurants, but not into the menus. Yet wherever I go in Montreal, I am so often blown away. Our cuisine simply stands out as unique, perhaps because we try harder.”

Alan Richman may have been blown away by Montreal’s haute cuisine, but he reserves special praise for 95-year-old Beautys founder Hymie Sckolnick (pictured in 2014).

It’s no surprise to Chesterman that Montreal cuisine receives such praise from Richman and others. “It’s deserved. But if I say we’re the best, no one will take me seriously, because every food critic says their city’s restaurants are the best.

“The thing is that when travelling outside the city I realize just how good our food is. But for others outside the city, I hope it’s not just a case of Montreal is where you go to when the dollar drops. They flock here like geese then.”

Chesterman recalls hosting a group of Americans checking out our restaurant scene recently. After making the rounds of eateries, one of the group asked what else they could do in the city. Chesterman suggested the Pompeii exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

“The woman wasn’t keen, and then asked if restaurants were all there was in the city,” she recalls. “I joked that we also had Arcade Fire here but didn’t know if I could find them at the moment. Sure, there is the OSM and many other attractions here, but the point is that there isn’t much in the off-festival season. So our tourism people should really promote our No. 1 draw: our restaurants, where people can eat exceedingly well for not a lot of money.”

Chesterman gives full credit to Richman for putting Montreal on the map. “Anthony Bourdain also has, but Richman did it 20 years ago, before anybody. Today, we now have our own chefs like David McMillan putting us on the map.”

Curiously, for all Richman’s admiration of our haute-cuisine creators, one figure particularly stands out for him: Hymie Sckolnick, the 95-year-old owner and founder of 74-year-old Beautys, who still shows up for work at the crack of dawn.

“There should be a statue of Hymie Sckolnick erected,” Richman says. “He’s unbelievable, the single best thing in Montreal — maybe even the world.”

bbrownstein@postmedia.com

twitter.com/billbrownstein 

Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman is a fan of what she calls the new Nippon wave of casual dining, so she was happy to try Thazard last June. From the archives, we bring you her review:

Thazard, 5329 St-Laurent Blvd. (near Maguire St.)
Two and a half stars out of four
Price range: Nibbles $2-$3; small plates $8-$18.
Phone: 514-802-8899
Open: Weekdays 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Tues.-Sat. 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Licensed: Yes
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: No Vegetarian-friendly: Yes
Parking: On surrounding streets
Reservations: Essential 

Ah, to be young in Montreal, especially when it gets warm, and restaurant terrasses are spilling over with gorgeous twentysomethings sipping cocktails, nibbling charcuterie. Politics? Potholes? Playoffs? In summer, who cares? From June to August, Montreal is in deep short-skirt/muscle-shirt mode when the living is easy, the festival ambience kicks in to overdrive, and on steamy nights, the lines at the neighbourhood glaciers snake down the streets. Few cities “do” summer better than Montreal.

On an especially sweltering recent Friday, I headed to the Main, more specifically the strip of St-Laurent between Laurier Ave. and St-Viateur St. that has once again reclaimed its status as the cool section of that iconic street. In the 1980s, this very same hood was ground zero for branché Montréal, and the epicentre was the unbeatably awesome 24-hour bar/eatery/magazine stand/candy counter Lux.

I’ve mentioned Lux in this column before — and how I miss it! You’d go to Lux to people-watch and gaze at pictures of Madonna or Sam Shepard in Interview magazine, which you couldn’t afford because you had blown your money on a bowl of Lux french fries, enjoyed with — gasp! — mayonnaise. Sure, there was The Shed down south on the Main, near clubs like Business and DiSalvio’s, but the streets around Lux in the ’80s felt a little bit like Soho, where you could easily imagine a scene from Scorsese’s After Hours coming to life.

Sadly, when Lux closed in the mid-’90s, that scene more or less died with it. Years passed, and restaurants came and went. But now that whole section of Mile End is feeling fresh again, thanks to a bevy of new hip retail stores and especially restaurants like Lawrence, Soy, Sel Gras, Maïs, Sparrow and Magpie. As of last November, you can add the new Japanese bistro Thazard to that list.

The dining room.

A term designating a fish belonging to the mackerel family, Thazard is the brainchild of two of Montreal’s most happening restaurateurs, Edward Zaki of Chez Victoire, Mimi la Nuit and BarBounya, and Dave Schmidt of Maïs, Datcha, Le Mal Nécessaire, Kabinet and Maison Sociale fame. The dynamic duo hired chef Hachiro Fujise (formerly of Café Sardine) to concoct a Japanese bistro menu. Cocktails were a given, and to further entice the after-hours youngins, from Thursday to Saturday the kitchen service would run until 2 a.m. (though that has since been scaled back to 11 p.m.)

When the restaurant launched in late 2014, there was a lot of buzz about the French-style guéridon service and hotdogs made from octopus. But on my visit, both the service trolley and the octodogs were nowhere to be found. The charcuterie platter and seafood platter from the original menu appear to have been scrapped, too. Yet there’s more than enough here to satisfy.

Hachiro Fujise prepares a poutine miso.

Fujise’s North American/Asian fusion cooking is presented in a small-plates style, with a steak and burger for those with bigger appetites and four ramen bowls to boot. I’m a fan of this new Nippon wave of casual dining laden with tatakis, tartares and tofu, especially in hot weather, when a little spice and a lot of greens make sense. What a treat it was to be in this stunning space filled with young diners feasting on spring rolls, salmon and ramen.

We began with two cocktails, both excellent, if a little on the small side. Thazard’s wine list isn’t especially long, but the private imports on offer are tempting and well-priced. We opted for a bottle of Muscadet Clos de la Févrie, a great choice to pair with this food and, at $48, an affordable one at that.

Salmon tataki and green papaya salad were the first two dishes to hit the table. Served with blobs of shiso jelly, green tea-infused oil and ginger-infused balsamic, the squares of slightly seared salmon had enough in the way of flavour enhancers, and a few vegetable chips to add texture. Very nice. The papaya salad was just as good, though I think a little Thai-style heat would have kicked the flavours up a notch.

The chicken karaage is a house favourite.

After a surprisingly long wait (in a half empty restaurant), we were served our first hot dishes: chicken karaage and chef Fujise’s take on poutine. The chicken, a house favourite I’m told, deserves all the praise it has been getting. Served in round nuggets with garlic aioli alongside as well as green herbs and kimchee, the chicken was lightly spiced, moist and just great when dunked in that potent garlic mayo. Yes! The poutine was piggier and even more delicious. Starting with a bowl of dreamy french fries, the poutine variation included a topping of kimchee, miso butter and cheddar cheese curds. The combination of flavours was an absolute treat, with a serious dose of tang boosting every bite along with the gooey cheese and perfect fries. I ate the whole bowl. Wonderful.

The poutine miso: deliciously piggy.

I guess I should thank the kitchen for the long wait before the next course in order to digest the poutine, yet the room was hot (an upping of air conditioning is in order) and the lights were constantly being lowered. After 20 minutes, I was ready to curl up under the table and take a nap. But then came the Wagyu burger and a bowl of tonkotsu (pork) ramen.

The burger was good, and the accompanying fries were again, terrific. But the burger was garnished with kimchee, and by now we had eaten kimchee on three dishes. There is such a thing as kimchee overload; another drawback in using it on the hamburger was that it overwhelmed the flavour of the meat. Why bother using such elite Wagyu when the spicy, pickled cabbage is the flavour that dominates?

The tonkotsu ramen. Yes, please.

As for the ramen, based on a pork stock enhanced with shoyu (soy sauce), and served with pork belly, the classic boiled egg, and leek-infused oil, this version was kotteri-style: thick and opaque, packed with emulsified fats and made from long-boiled bones. Slight smoky and with a rich mouthfeel, this version was very good, though probably better as a meal onto itself than the final dish of a long, hot night. I could manage only half the bowl — but I enjoyed every slurp.

Dessert might sound crazy after all this, but we polished off most of a matcha crème brûlée despite it’s gloopy texture. I also enjoyed the molasses cookie coated with a thick lemon icing and served with a luscious, spiced chocolate mousse. Yum!

Prices are reasonable, especially as two dishes per person would be adequate (we had three and staggered out stuffed). Thazard also serves lunch weekdays, with most dishes priced under $13 and wines by the glass at $6. Sweet!

Though I still think my generation was lucky to have hot spots like Lux to make us feel with it in our youth, I’m kind of jealous that young people today can enjoy restaurants like Thazard, with its slick decor and inventive Asian menu. It may not be open 24 hours a day like my old hangout, but they sure do more with the french fries.

criticsnotebook@gmail.com

twitter.com/LesleyChestrman

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.

***

“Is Everyone a Critic?”: A panel discussion 

Lesley Chesterman will be part of a Facebook panel on Tuesday, May 17, at 7 p.m. She will be talking about the role of the critic — “Is everyone a critic?” — along with fellow veteran Gazette critics T’Cha Dunlevy (film) and Bill Brownstein (culture). Gazette engagement editor Mick Côté will moderate. Tune in here to join the conversation, which will start with these questions: What makes a critic? Has the internet reshaped the job description? How do critics go about doing their work? 

Piment 2

One star out of four

$$-$$$

201 St-Jacques St. (Near St-François-Xavier St.)

Phone: 514-849-8668

Website: piment2.com

Open: Sun.-Thurs. 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Fri. and Sat. 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Licensed: Yes

Credit cards: All major cards

Wheelchair access: Yes

Reservations: Recommended

Vegetarian-friendly: Yes

Parking: On the street with meters

Price range: Soups $4.50; noodles $8.50; small plates and dumplings $4.50-$9.50; main courses $14.50-$16.50.

Nostalgia is an emotion that can play out as either a comfort or a disappointment. When I listen to old R.E.M. songs, this wave of nostalgia washes over me and I’m suddenly back with my friends at the Forum in the ’80s. Whenever I eat a spaghetti Bolognese, I remember the joy of scarfing down loads of my mom’s spaghetti with “meat sauce” (no one called it Bolognese back then) in the ’70s. And when I drive up the Main, I scan all the locales of the clubs I used to frequent in the ’90s.

We Montrealers are especially nostalgic. Blame the people who rhapsodize endlessly about Expo 67, the roller-coaster of good and bad times, or the fact that we once had a reliably winning hockey team, but there’s no denying Quebecers are a sentimental bunch. Even our licence plates are emblazoned with the ultimate nostalgic catchphrase: “Je me souviens.”

Of course, nostalgia can also lead to huge letdowns. Who hasn’t met a teenage crush who didn’t age well, or ran into a beloved old teacher who has no idea who we are? And is it me, or was the raspberry swirl ice cream better at Le Bilboquet in the early years?

Some of my biggest nostalgia bummers have come from restaurants. Returning to a beloved restaurant of old with high hopes is a risky proposition. Remember that hot Italian place where you first tasted tiramisu and veal scallopini? Go back and see that the room hasn’t been renovated since your last visit and the wine list is as stodgy as those dishes you once loved. Ugh.

Entering Piment 2 last week, I wondered which side of the nostalgia coin would be played. The place is a new take on a name that is sure to be familiar with restaurant-goers: Le Piment Rouge, that bastion of Szechuan cuisine, owned by Hazel and Chuck Mah, where the city’s movers and shakers used to feast on crispy spinach and moo shu pork. Last reviewed here in 2011, the restaurant had undergone an elaborate renovation at the time and the food was a step up from my previous visit. Located in the historic Windsor building, Le Piment Rouge gave downtown restaurant-goers a rare destination for a sumptuous dining experience. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enjoyable.

Then three years ago, alas, Le Piment Rouge quietly closed. Diners eager to eat Szechuan downtown could still head to the excellent L’Orchidée de Chine, but options were diminishing for lovers of this feisty (if not necessarily authentic) cuisine in posh surroundings.

Piment 2’s Szechuan shrimp were plump and fresh.

Never being one to pass up juicy Hunan dumpling or crispy duck pancake, I was happy to hear the Mahs were opening a new restaurant highly influenced by their old. This one would be called Piment 2, would be located in Old Montreal, and would be more casual than Le Piment Rouge. Smart.

Arriving at Piment 2 on a recent Friday night, the room was almost empty — not surprising, as the restaurant had just opened in December. The space is quite magnificent, with high ceilings, beautiful murals, concrete floors topped with large Persian rugs and a huge open kitchen. The acoustics are a problem, though. With those towering ceilings and blaring background music, I had a tough time hearing my dining companions across the table. In a room this empty? Not good.

I wasn’t wild about the wine list, either. Though there are wine racks displayed around the entranceway, the selection is minimal and not all that interesting, with all the bottles seemingly culled from the same wine agency and prices at three times that of the SAQ. Paying $60 (that’s $78 with tax and tip) for a $20 bottle really rots my socks, but as the bottle prices started at $50 and selections were few, I didn’t have much choice. Hands down, this is the laziest wine list I’ve seen in ages.

General Tao chicken is among the familiar dishes on Piment 2’s menu.

Service wasn’t much better. Our young waiter took our order with as much enthusiasm as a teenager who is asked to clean his room. When I mentioned the high wine prices, he said, “That’s not my responsibility.” OK, but it is his responsibility to clean the used cutlery instead of removing it from the plate and plunking it down on the table as he did. When ordering, he couldn’t provide much — no, make that anything — in the way of suggestions or descriptions. Hands down, this was the most indifferent waiter I’ve had in ages. That’s two “hands down” in this review so far. Hmm …

As for the food, I’ll try to be a bit more enthusiastic. The menu features a familiar mix of noodles, soups, appetizers, specials (main courses), fried rice and dumplings. I ordered quite conservatively from this numbered menu that didn’t grab me in any way, shape or form.

We began with a bowl of Hunan dumplings, those beloved slippery soft pork-filled pockets served in a peanut sauce. I liked the bold peanut flavour of the sauce, and the dumplings themselves were luscious. But why was the dish served lukewarm? By contrast, the Beijing-style dumplings were hot and delicious. I popped a few in my mouth, enjoyed their deep flavour and debated with my friend over whether they needed a dipping sauce. (She said yes; I shrugged.)

When a dish of firecracker dumplings arrived at the table, we all oohed and ahhed. The won ton dough was sliced into ribbons and deep-fried, resulting in a chrysanthemum-shaped dumpling filled with minced shrimp, pork and shiitake mushrooms. Served with a Day-Glo sweet sauce, these dumplings were more about the dough than the filling. Pretty, yes! Memorable? No.

Piment 2’s firecracker dumplings are given a striking presentation.

And I’m still at a loss regarding Piment 2’s rendition of spring rolls. Shaped like Pop-Tarts made with thick sheets of fried won ton, these pastry pockets were filled with a chunky mix of chicken and/or vegetables. By making it as heavy as a commercial egg roll, the cooks found the perfect way to ruin a delicate dish like spring roll — especially served with that much mayonnaise drizzled overtop.

The main meat dishes arrived next, accompanied by steamed rice (good) and a dish of sautéed vegetables (very good). We went for the classics here: General Tao chicken, sesame beef and Szechuan shrimp, as well as a plate of spareribs the waiter forgot to serve with the starters. The chicken and beef were both thickly breaded, measly on the meat and coated in a too-sweet sauce. The shrimp were plump and fresh, but drowned in a one-dimensional sweet sauce. As for the ribs, not only were they fatty, but again, everything was coated in cloying sauce.

Our waiter arrived with a platter of fresh fruit (yes, I was recognized), which we barely touched, having already surpassed our sweet intake for the night.

The meal reminded me a lot of the ’80s Szechuan food on which establishments like Le Piment Rouge were built. But we have moved on from the sweet, the gloopy and the Day-Glo, as well as the feeble wine lists and indifferent service of yesteryear. Sometimes it takes a look back like this to see how far we’ve come. 

criticsnotebook@gmail.com

twitter.com/LesleyChestrman

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.

***

“Is everyone a critic?” Tune in for our Facebook panel discussion

Lesley Chesterman will be part of a Facebook panel on Tuesday, May 17, at 7 p.m. She will be talking about the role of the critic — “Is everyone a critic?” — along with fellow veteran Gazette critics T’Cha Dunlevy (film) and Bill Brownstein (culture). 

Gazette engagement editor Mick Côté will moderate. Tune in here to join the conversation, which will start with these questions: 
— What makes a critic?
— Has the internet reshaped the job description?
— How do critics go about doing their work? 

Lesley Chesterman will be part of a Facebook panel on Tuesday, May 17, at 7 p.m. She will be talking about the role of the critic — “Is everyone a critic?” — along with fellow veteran Gazette critics T’Cha Dunlevy (film) and Bill Brownstein (culture). 

Gazette engagement editor Mick Côté will moderate. Tune in here to join the conversation, which will start with these questions: 
— What makes a critic?
— Has the internet reshaped the job description?
— How do critics go about doing their work? 

The name Harricana might be familiar to Montrealers as the store that specializes in recycled fur hats. But this brasserie is actually named after one of the same name located in Abitibi (Amos to be exact), which for 12 years was the family business of the new Harricana’s owner, Marie-Pier Veilleux. Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman visited last June, and found a bright spot in the area between Little Italy and Park-Ex. From the archives, we bring you the review:

Brasserie Harricana
95 Jean-Talon St. (corner St-Urbain St.)
Three stars out of four
Price range: Snacks: $3 to $18; snack bar dishes: $5 to $20; main dishes: $16 to $32; desserts $4. Lunch buffet, $17.
Phone: 514-667-0006
Open: Daily, noon to 2 a.m., Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. (brunch 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.)
Licensed: Yes
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: No
Vegetarian-friendly: Yes
Parking: On surrounding streets
Reservations: Essential

Walking, driving or cycling around the city, you pass by empty rental spaces and think: Would that make a good restaurant? Is this a smart place for a café? Why doesn’t someone set something up here? And then you see a nice restaurant open in a cool space in the perfect spot and — bang — it lasts less than a year. Odd, but there you have it.

Figuring out what makes a restaurant a success is a challenge because I have seen establishments with terrific food and a great location fail and, on, the flip side, mediocre kitchens thrive. So, what’s the secret? An original concept is always welcome, really good food will always play in a restaurant’s favour and a lower price point helps. These three attributes are probably what make Brasserie Harricana such a hit, and to those I would add a fourth: beer.

Open since December 2014, Brasserie Harricana is part restaurant, part bar and part microbrasserie (craft brewery) located in an expansive corner space between Little Italy and Park-Ex. It’s not exactly the hippest of hoods and yet the restaurant was packed both times I visited, once on a Thursday night and then on a Monday at lunch. Full for the Monday lunch service? Interesting.

Laura Boily-Auclair, left, Marie-Pier Veilleux and Marc-Étienne Carrier at Brasserie Harricana on Jean-Talon St. last June.

The name Harricana might be familiar to Montrealers as the store that specializes in recycled fur hats. But it’s actually named after a brasserie of the same name located in Abitibi (Amos to be exact), which for 12 years was the family business of the new Harricana’s owner, Marie-Pier Veilleux. Sadly, the Amos Harricana was destroyed by fire in 2013, but the spirit lives on in the new business, where they serve 41 beers on tap. Master brewer Mathieu Garceau-Tremblay brews five in house at present with more to come.

There are a few ciders, lemon bourbon and a spiced rum made here in Quebec, and all are distributed via a swanky Flux Capacitor system shipped in from California that ensures the right level of carbonation for each brew. The beverage list also features a limited number of cocktails, some of which are non-alcoholic, but don’t look for wine at Harricana. This place is definitely more brasserie than bistro.

Designed by Alain Carle Architecte, the room is a huge part of the appeal. Divided into several spaces, the restaurant is set on multi-levels. It’s all quite bright and airy, with dusty pink tavern chairs set at window-side tables around the perimeter of the room. Ceilings are high, the Lambert et Fils Studio light fixtures are exquisite, the floor is subway-tiled and the noise levels aren’t overwhelming. I like it here, but what I really liked about Brasserie Harricana was the food.

Designed by Alain Carle Architecte, the room is a huge part of the appeal. Divided into several spaces, the restaurant is set on multi-levels.

The menu is part modernized tavern snacks and part comfort food. From the first bite to the last, it was obvious the person in the kitchen can really cook. When I asked Veilleux who was behind the stoves, to my surprise she answered: “My mother, Danielle Veilleux.” Mme Veilleux and crew’s cooking is not complicated, but the ingredients are first-class, the plating is clean and the seasoning is bang-on.

At dinner, we began with two salads, a fattoush salad and a Caesar. Identified on the menu as the “fattoushie de Steph,” the fattoush includes a generous helping of feta, radishes, romaine, grilled pita bread and kale. Everything was bright and fresh, and the play of textures was good fun.

The Caesar was textbook. Though served for two, we requested a single portion, which I soon regretted because, again, the freshness of it all, and the acidity vis-a-vis the fat in the dressing was perfectly balanced.

For the mains, we opted for the fried beer-can chicken and the veal liver. Served in a half portion, the chicken arrived with a heaping helping of fries, mayonnaise and gravy. Moist and full-flavoured but not crisp-crusted as you would expect fried chicken to be, the bird was still a treat and the fries were sublime. My only hesitation was with the coleslaw that was drenched in vinaigrette.

Fried beer-can chicken.

The liver was almost as good.

The two thick slices of “foie” were tender and rosy on the inside, and served with the requisite mashed potatoes and sautéed onions. What’s not to like? Oh, wait, I could have done without the shrivelled baby spinach overtop. After two glasses of beer, a blanche and a blonde (priced at a reasonable $4 each), we polished off a slice of carrot cake and gâteau Reine Elizabeth and called it a night. And what a delicious night it was.

Plenty of beer is on tap here.

A few days later, I returned for lunch. Lunch is a big draw for one big reason: the buffet, an all-you-can-eat selection including a soup, salad, and two hot dishes, as well as a few mini desserts and a small glass of beer. All that for $17. Nice. The one on offer two weeks ago included a zucchini gazpacho, a spinach and feta salad, a braised fish dish and a chicken pot pie. Yum!

I passed on the buffet (not the smartest of moves, but I saw it too late), and ordered à la carte. First up, a great hamburger served with the option of fried oysters. I passed on the seafood, but the hamburger doesn’t need enhancing because it’s already loaded with fixings (bacon, cheddar, pickles, etc.) and it’s just terrific.

The burger is terrific.

I’d also recommend the club sandwich that’s served with a fine kale salad alongside. Yes, the sandwich would have benefited from a little more in the way of filling considering its price ($16), but the portion was generous. And, because I was curious, I ordered a “pain poutine sauce maman,” which consisted of a hot dog bun filled with poutine and topped with a dense tomato meat sauce. As fun as it was to see this Québécois tavern dish rejuvenated, it’s not something I would eat again unless a hangover was involved.

Pickled eggs are part of the home-cooking ethos.

Great food, excellent beer and cool surroundings are all “on tap” at Brasserie Harricana, and you can add sharp service to that list. Our waitress, Laura, was not only downright lovely, but skilled at providing beer-pairing suggestions for the food.

Exiting the restaurant on both my visits, I looked back at this brilliant new restaurant, on this nondescript corner. What a boon Brasserie Harricana is to this up-and-coming neighbourhood. I plan to return often, not only for that enticing buffet, but to sample more of Garceau-Tremblay’s home-brews. I’m not the world’s biggest beer lover, but after a few meals here, that’s bound to change.

criticsnotebook@gmail.com
twitter.com/LesleyChestrman

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.

Kitchen Galerie

**1/2 out of ****

$$$-$$$$

60 Jean-Talon St. E. (Corner Casgrain Ave.)

Phone: 514-315-8994

Website: kitchengalerie.com

Open: Tues.-Sat. 6 p.m. to closing

Licensed: Yes

Credit cards: All major

Wheelchair access: No

Parking: Easy on the street

Vegetarian-friendly: Not especially

Reservations: Essential

Price range: appetizers $5-$26 (foie gras); main courses $21-$57.50; desserts $6.

When we think about restaurant categories, phrases like “casual,” “fine dining,” “chef-driven” and the all-encompassing “ethnic” spring to mind. The word “hot” used to pop up quite often, in a line like: “So, what’s the hot restaurant these days?” I can think of several that fit that category, helmed by the branché chefs du moment. 

For a while, chefs Mathieu Cloutier and Jean-Philippe St-Denis were on everyone’s hot list. Opened in 2008, their restaurant, Kitchen Galerie, was hugely popular. The crowd was filled with oyster-sucking and côte-de-boeuf-munching foodies. The menu featured not one but five foie gras starters. A tablecloth-free zone, Kitchen Galerie was staffed with three chefs — c’est tout — serving up plenty of delicious, reasonably priced food. They cooked it, they served it, they often poured your wine. The restaurant was small, but portions were large, and a night here was a lot of fun. 

At their peak of popularity, the duo opened Kitchen Galerie Poisson in Old Montreal, and took over as consulting chefs at the east-end bistro Chez Roger. Accolades were many, especially after Cloutier won the prestigious Gold Medal Plates competition in 2009. He eventually took part in Ça va chauffer!, a TVA show. The fans descended. Business was brisk.

Kitchen Galerie reopened last month with more or less the same menu, but an increase in seats from 27 to 90.

But in 2013, St-Denis decided to take a break from the kitchen. Cloutier took on two new partners, Mathieu Bourdages and Alex Mevel, with whom he also owns the year-old restaurant Brïz, along with chef Fabrizia Rollo. (St-Denis is now chef at St-Marc-sur-Richelieu’s Les Trois Tilleuls.) Last year the group closed Kitchen Galerie for renovations, and a month ago the restaurant reopened with more or less the same menu, but an increase in seats from 27 to 90. 

The space now includes the main room with a large open kitchen and bar seating, a dining room next door and a small streetside shop where they sell salads and sandwiches to go.  The walls are painted black and hung with squiggly tableaux, as well as blackboards that list the daily specials. Background tunes fall into a category I call “chef’s iPod” — rap meets heavy metal meets I-don’t-know-what. Let’s just say this isn’t a restaurant I would take my parents to, unless we weren’t planning on doing much talking over the racket. That said, at each of my visits the crowd was hardly as young as expected. I figure some of Cloutier’s fans from his TVA days have remained faithful to this address. 

Kitchen Galerie’s pork ribs are a standout, served on a bed of fantastic french fries.

A young sommelier, Gabriel Gallant, is now part of the team, and his wine list features some interesting, mostly privately imported bottles, with many under the $75 mark. He’s also adding a few cocktails to the selection; I recommend forgoing the sweet strawberry mojito in favour of the far superior “English” mojito made with gin and a splash of ginger beer. It pairs beautifully with one of their seasonal starters, a plate of snow crab legs with a crab croquette and a square of home-cured salmon. Served with ginger beer foam and a few squiggles of herbed crème fraîche, the dish is simple, elegant and probably off the menu by now, but hopefully there will be a new seafood appetizer to take its place. Those up for something light could opt for that old warhorse of an appetizer, salmon tartare. This version is a bit mayonnaise-heavy, but fresh, well seasoned and more chunky than mincey. Good, yes. Exciting? Hardly.

Save for oysters, the crab dish and one fish main, Kitchen Galerie’s focus is definitely carnivore, and several meat dishes are not to be missed. The first is a variation of a Pogo where a Gaspor pork sausage is fried in tempura batter and served with a mustard dipping sauce. Though it may have been better coated in cornbread (closer to the real McCoy), this starter was spicy, crispy and just a bit greasy. Yum! 

Kitchen Galerie’s hot foie gras starter comes with gingerbread and a red fruit sauce.

If you really want to go all out, I’d recommend the hot foie gras with gingerbread and a red fruit gastrique (sweet and sour sauce). It had been ages since I ate a serious plate of seared foie gras (the ultimate ’90s appetizer), and this one did not disappoint. Sliced thick and perfectly caramelized, the liver had that ideal pudding-like interior and crisp crust, which was well matched by the spice bread and bracing fruit sauce. 

The best dish I tasted at Kitchen Galerie was the pork ribs. Slathered in a dreamy barbecue sauce (as in, this is the barbecue sauce you dream about), the ribs were collapsing-off-the-bone tender and served on a bed of fantastic french fries. Despite the guilt involved in lapping up this calorific rack of loveliness, I savoured every last bite, licking my fingers — and the bones — clean. Yes! 

If you prefer something more sophisticated, try the duck magret. Presented on a huge white plate (one of the signatures of this restaurant), the duck was paired with celery root purée, fiddleheads and Brussels sprout leaves. Bit of a strange juxtaposition, with the ultimate spring vegetable served alongside the ultimate autumn vegetable, but whatever — the duck was a hit.

In Kitchen Galerie’s variation on a Pogo, a Gaspor pork sausage is fried in tempura batter and served with a mustard dipping sauce.

I returned a few days later to try one of the restaurant’s most popular menu items, the côte de boeuf for two. We ordered it “super-sized,” which means topped with truffle slices and foie gras (at this point, why not?). Again, the foie was delectable and the truffles added a welcome hit of luxe. But the meat was a disappointment. Tough and not especially flavourful, the steak looked gorgeous but came up short. Considering how popular it is and the price ($90 or $115 when gussied up), this hulking rib steak would be better if they opted for a cut with more marbling (which adds flavour) and a few weeks of aging (which adds flavour and tenderness). The cooking and presentation, though, were commendable.

If you can manage dessert after all this, there are three, starting with a vanilla-bean-heavy crème brûlée with a thick caramel coating. There’s also a plate with a mixture of silky white chocolate and dark chocolate creams, which are scrumptious but rich. The third is a deconstructed lemon tart that’s too acidic and, frankly, a bit of a mess. Could everyone who is busy deconstructing desserts please start putting them back together again? Talk about your tired trends.

Kitchen Galerie is a fun night out because of the big food, the noisy room, and the cool chefs cooking right there in front of you. This is not the place for those searching for intricate plate presentations or Boccherini minuets in the background. Yet despite the former hot status of this restaurant, it feels a little unfinished for now, and I can’t help but wonder why they held on to that old menu with one too many passé dishes. The idea of expanding and renewing the restaurant to breathe new life into the business is certainly a smart move. But while they were at it, why not update the content of the plates?

criticsnotebook@gmail.com 

twitter.com/LesleyChestrman  

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m. 

Nothing says summer like a 30-degree sunny day and a sizzling steak on the barbecue. 

Try this bistro favourite. This recipe is by butcher Yves Baudry, who used to be the head butcher at the Boucherie de Tours at the Atwater Market, Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman says. Any good butcher is sure to carry the cut.

BAVETTE À L’ÉCHALOTE
Serves: 2
1 one-pound (about 500-gram) portion of bavette
1 French shallot, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon butter
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons finely-chopped flat leaf parsley

1. Prepare the bavette by slicing it into two equal steaks. Set aside at room temperature.

2. Prepare the shallots: in a small pot, heat the butter over medium heat and add the shallots. When they look transparent, add the vinegar to deglaze. Let the liquid reduce by half. Set aside in a warm place.

3. Cook the bavette over high heat on the barbecue for four minutes on one side and two minutes on the other. Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately with the shallots and a sprinkling of parsley.

If the skies turn to rain, you can also cook the bavette in a grill pan on high heat for the same amount of time.

Eat, Drink is a regular suggestion for your dining or cooking pleasure that is originally published on our phone app, which you can download here for your iPhone or here for your Android. Thoughts? We’re right here: smartphone@montrealgazette.comThoughts? smartphone@montrealgazette.com

Chambre à Part

** out of 4 stars
$$$
3619 St-Denis St. (Near Cherrier St.) 
Phone: 438-386-3619
Website: restaurantchambreapart.com
Open: Tues.-Fri. 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; Mon.-Sat. 5 to 11 p.m.
Licensed: Yes
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: Yes
Parking: On the street
Vegetarian friendly: Yes
Reservations: Recommended  
Price range: Appetizers $8-$16; main courses $17-$23; desserts $9-$10.

If you were interested in opening a fancy restaurant, say, 30 years ago, chances are you would have leaned toward the French or the Italian. And when building your menu, chances are you would have leaned toward the classics, like canard à l’orange or pot-au-feu for the French, and pasta puttanesca or veal scallopini for the Italian. The way to play a restaurant back then was safe, because when people went out, they usually chose a favourite spot with a dish in mind, be it Dover sole or a big fat steak.

Dining in a restaurant remains an event for a special occasion, but it was a predictable one in the past, whereas today, dining out is about adventure. Head to the hot new eatery that opened 15 minutes ago, and you probably aren’t going out for steak as much as something you never tasted before, such as garlic-shrimp-style frog’s legs with asparagus and smoked paprika. And no, I didn’t make that up. It’s a real dish.

The pressure for young chefs to be creative is high because, let’s be honest here, few of them are making a name for themselves serving good ol’ steak/frites. No, these days you have to reinvent the wheel — or rather, the beef tartare, the onion soup and the lemon tart. On the high end, I often wonder whether creating is taking over from the actual act of cooking. Such thoughts wafted through my mind often when dining at the new St-Denis St. restaurant Chambre à Part.

Opened at the end of 2015, Chambre à Part is brought to us by the team behind the neighbouring La Fabrique: chef Jean-Baptiste Marchand and maître d’ Stéphanie Labelle. Add to that mix Jérôme Rouault (winner of Season 4 of the Radio-Canada series Les Chefs!) and mixologist Vijay Pillay, and you have a foursome with much to offer.

Entering the restaurant, it’s obvious these young entrepreneurs aim to do things differently. Located in the space that last housed the defunct Belgian restaurant Witloof (all that remains of that former tenant is the checkered floor), Chambre à Part has a sort of British feel about it, like a restaurant you’d find attached to a chic garden where visitors could enjoy lunch (organic, of course) with a pot of tea. The decor is whimsical, with mismatched chairs, black-framed windows, exposed brick walls, a large communal table and smaller ones decked out with all-too-rare white tablecloths. It’s a soothing — dare I say feminine — space, and wasn’t all that populated on the Tuesday night I dined there. But with a streetside terrasse in the works, that should change. 

Served with mustard seeds and a string of baby pickled vegetables, Chambre à Part’s pâté en croûte was perfectly seasoned.

Labelle is a wonderful hostess/waitress/sommelier, easily one of the best who has served me in this city. Her welcome is warm and her menu descriptions are enticing — as are her wine suggestions. Chambre à Part’s wine list is a real winner, with an emphasis on organic wines, be they natural, biodynamic or “raisonné” (in which pesticides are used only when crucial). Prices are fair, with many bottles in my preferred less-than-$60 range. Labelle pointed us to a chenin blanc from the Loire that was not only delicious, but worked well with the food. We began with two cocktails — one with pear, tarragon and vodka, the other with apple, ginger and vodka. Nothing earth-shattering here (or especially vibrant), but they made for pleasant sipping. 

Now, as for the food …

Chambre à Part’s style features intricate plate presentations and complex cooking techniques: mousses, foams, mincy vegetable cuts, sous-vide-cooked fish and meats. There’s plenty of technique on display, but the emphasis on spiffy presentations often outshines the flavour factor. And when the cooking technique is off, it’s all the more obvious when there isn’t a pile of french fries to hide behind. 

The kitchen started strong with a pâté en croûte served with mustard seeds and a string of baby pickled vegetables. I loved all of it — the way the golden crust hugged the terrine, the perfect seasoning of the pâté, the bull’s eye of foie gras in the centre, the bracing little accompaniments. Full marks.

Chambre à Part’s trout was served on a mix of snails, oyster mushrooms and cannellini beans, with tarragon mousse piped in between.

But the next dish, curried lentils, left me scratching my head. I imagined a moist mound of legumes with a sunny curry flavour. Instead, the kitchen sent out a round of lifeless, dry lentils, studded with overcooked vegetables, barely spiced and topped with cork-shaped croutons. I love lentils, but this is the kind of dish that gives pulses a bad rap.

Though beautifully presented, a lobster entrée was another letdown. The ingredients were presented in a curve shape, with the seafood interspersed with basil mousse, pieces of zucchini and zucchini beignets, carrots, dabs of sauce, fiddleheads and more. Lovely to look at, yes, but the mix of flavours wasn’t all that appealing, especially the hog-the-spotlight basil. Worse yet, the lobster was tough and shrivelled, and the flesh was more grey than pink. That one needs a rethink. 

The next two main courses were just as pretty to look at — and just as disappointing taste-wise. Lightly spiced pork loin was served with “orgetto” (barley cooked risotto-style) bathed in a watercress coulis and surrounded by pan juices spiked with apple cider vinegar. Topped with bits of cooked radicchio and baby turnips, the pork was undercooked (I’m all for rosé, but this was rare) and there were too many bitter ingredients with nothing to provide contrast.  

Trout sourced from des Bobines fish farm was cooked sous-vide and draped on a mix of snails, oyster mushrooms and cannellini beans, with poufs of tarragon mousse piped in between. Again, what was lacking here was flavour: the tarragon mousse was subtle, the soft pieces of fish didn’t taste of much and the mélange underneath was all earthy tastes. And how about a contrasting texture?   

Oranges were cooked sous-vide, caramelized and paired with a pound-cake-like mirliton and lemon-thyme cream at Chambre à Part.

With wine left in our glasses, we opted for a cheese course, and I was so happy to enjoy three varieties of cheese with no excess fussiness on the plate. That simplicity carried on with the first dessert: a soufflé flavoured with cranberries and a spoonful of maple butter. As much as I was yearning for simple, this plain-Jane soufflé was pushing it. But with the final dessert came the return of the fuss: oranges were cooked sous-vide, caramelized and paired with a pound-cake-like mirliton and lemon-thyme cream. Labelle told us the orange segments were cooked twice, but considering how firm the peel still was, a third time may be in order. As for the cake and thick herb cream, well, by now I had had my fill of dry textures and herb creams. Both those plates went back unfinished. 

As much as I wanted to adore Chambre à Part, ultimately only one plate — the pâté en croûte — wowed. The rest, with all the pomp, left me wanting — wanting bold flavours, diverse textures and sharper cooking techniques. What I did get at Chambre à Part was a lot of creativity. But I didn’t come there for an art show — I came there for a satisfying dinner. As the best cooking manages to provide both, I hope they will get there soon. 

criticsnotebook@gmail.com 

twitter.com/LesleyChestrman  

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m. 

Les Deux Singes de Montarvie
** out of four
$$$

176 St-Viateur St. W. (at Waverly St.)
Phone: 514-278-6854
Website: lesdeuxsingesdemontarvie.com
Open: Tues.-Sat. 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Wheelchair access: No
Reservations: Essential
Vegetarian-friendly: Yes
Parking: Street with meters
Cards: All major cards
Price range: Five-course tasting menu: $65, vegetarian tasting menu: $50.

Consulting the website TripAdvisor for restaurant information has become the norm. I do it not so much for local reviews, but certainly for out-of-town lodging and eating recommendations. On the whole, my experiences have been mixed. In Aix-en-Provence, I ended up in a shady bistro gnawing my way through a tough côte de boeuf surrounded by Americans who obviously appreciated the tip “the owner speaks English.”

In Salzburg, my TripAdvisor search for authentic cuisine landed me on a pub terrasse overlooking a back alley full of Japanese tourists taking pictures of their weiner schnitzel. And in New Hampshire, my TripAdvisor advice led me to a bar where the diners around me were glued to the flat screens watching a baseball game. To be fair, the bar served a pretty terrific hamburger … with a rotgut California cabernet.

If a tourist were using TripAdvisor to locate Montreal restaurants, the best he or she could do would be one of the 30 seats at the Mile End restaurant Les Deux Singes de Montarvie. Last reviewed in these pages by yours truly 10 years ago, this beloved neighbourhood restaurant has become one of the toughest reservations to garner in the city thanks to its Montreal’s #1 Trip Advisor ranking. And if that weren’t enough, the recent 2016 Gault & Millau Montreal restaurant guide awarded it a staggering 15.5/20 rating, placing Les Singes de Montarvie above restaurants like Joe Beef, Le Club Chasse et Pêche, Maison Boulud and that other TripAdvisor fave, Europea.

My review 10 years ago rated the restaurant two stars. But it seemed a lot had changed since then, including the owners. According to those two outside sources, this was one of Montreal’s top restaurants. Had I missed something? Time for a return visit.

The open kitchen at Les Deux Singes de Montarvie, where plenty of assembly is going on.

Having tried several times to book a table here, I was surprised to nab a reservation through Open Table a few days before my chosen date. Hooray! But when I showed up, the waiter told me my reservation was actually for a week later. Ugh (or, as we say in French, “pas fort.”) Happily, he found two seats for us at the bar surrounding the open kitchen, which meant we watched the three young chefs assemble dishes all night long. Notice the word “assemble” there. I’ll get to that later.

There are two menu choices at Les Singes de Montarvie: a five-course tasting menu and a five-course vegetarian tasting menu. They have two dishes in common, but otherwise they are very different. The style of cuisine is hard to pinpoint as the emphasis is centred on pretty plate presentations.

Set tasting menus alleviate stress in the kitchen, but they also eliminate any chance of spontaneous cooking. While enjoying a couple of cocktails, (a delicious mojito made with cachaça and a mango daiquiri spiked with ginger) I watched one chef gingerly place slices of octopus around a mound of lamb tartare, while another arranged baby greens and edible flowers on a pea tart. One chef would occasionally use a burner or pull something out of the oven, but this kitchen looked a lot like a big garde-manger section, as most everything is served cold.

The amuse-bouche consists of melon balls, pineapple and cherry tomatoes, served in a pool of gazpacho.

The wine list is a disappointment. It’s not pricey, but it’s not all that interesting, either. Considering that Montreal has become a destination for drinking a wonderful array of natural, biodynamic, organic and rare-find wines, this blah selection just doesn’t cut it. And I think a sharper wine program could help breath some life into this cuisine, because as pretty as these plates are, most could use a boost. Also, what a wasted opportunity to offer tasting menus but no wine pairings to match.

The first dish that arrived was an amuse-bouche consisting of melon balls, pineapple and cherry tomatoes, served in a pool of gazpacho, finished off with a squiggle of coconut cream and baby greens. Colourful and lightly spiced, this generous amuse provided a nice hit of summery flavours.

Then came that octopus-topped lamb tartare that arrived on a pea coulis, topped with flowers, looking gorgeous. But after a few bites, the strong taste of the raw lamb overwhelmed the octopus around it. The lamb and octopus pairing was a first for me, and, I’m hoping, a last. Talk about your strange bedfellows …

Octopus-topped lamb tartare set on a pea coulis, topped with flowers.

Over on the vegetarian menu came a plate of tempura vegetables served with a miso sauce and slow-cooked egg yolk flavoured with soy. The deep-fried vegetable mix was grease-free and pleasant, but that miso-egg mix was off-puttingly strong.

Next up was the pea tart, a delicate pastry shell filled with hummus, followed by a mix of chick peas, fava beans and peas, and then finished with Asiago cheese cream, pea tendrils and flowers. It was probably the best dish of the night, even though the fava beans were undercooked. And by now it also started to hit me that the portions were overly generous for a multi-course tasting menu.

The pea tart.

The two central dishes for each menu featured a pork chop for the meat menu, and risotto for the vegetarian. The pork was served hot alongside marinated raw artichoke, capers, radish, cherry tomatoes, potatoes and an artichoke aioli. Mixing hot and cold like this can work, but the artichokes were far too acidic and the meat was coated in spices that didn’t do it any favours. It all lacked cohesion. And as for the risotto dish, instead of being served the traditional way, the risotto was pre-cooked, shaped into quenelles, roasted, and served with white asparagus spears, king mushrooms, and smoked parmesan. There were plenty of complementary flavours going on here, but I couldn’t help thinking they should have stuck to the classic risotto preparation instead of this gummy baked alternative.

For dessert, we quite enjoyed the dense carrot and apricot sorbet paired with marinated cherries, strawberries and apricots, as well as little meringue nibs, which again was beautifully assembled in a lovely speckled bowl. But by that last dish, it was obvious that I was in front of a kitchen of arrangers more so than cooks. I ate plenty, and plates were oh so pretty, but my olfactory senses were left out of the process.

As the room filled up and I watched diners at their streetside tables eating the same plates I had sampled, I thought about Les Singes de Montarvie’s popularity. No doubt this restaurant lacks strong cooking, yet I can see why it is so popular. Though passé, the tasting-menu format still interests diners up for an evening of comely — and copious — plates. I can see how burgeoning foodies, on a first date, perhaps, can have a lot of fun here comparing notes on each dish.

Yet, as for the accolades provided by TripAdvisor and the Gault & Millau guide, alas, there I cannot agree. This is a pleasant restaurant filled with friendly people, with a great vibe and so-so food. Any seasoned gourmet entering this restaurant thinking this is the best Montreal has to offer will exit wondering how our city garnered such culinary red.

Which leaves me wondering: Why place huge aspirations on a restaurant that has no such pretensions?  

criticsnotebook@gmail.com

twitter.com/LesleyChestrman

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s (95.1 FM) Médium Large Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.

Toqué!

**** out of four stars

$$$$

900 Place Jean-Paul Riopelle (near St-Antoine St.)

Phone: 514-499-2084

Website: restaurant-toque.com

Open: Tues.-Fri. 11:30 a.m. to 1:45 p.m.; Tues.-Thurs. 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Wheelchair access: Yes

Reservations: Essential

Cards: Major cards 

Vegetarian friendly: Yes

Parking: Street with meters or parking lot with direct access to the restaurant in the Palais des congrès

Price range: Starters $16-$28; main courses $44-$58; desserts $17-$18. Seven-course tasting menu $132, additional wine pairings: $80-$105.

Our city is marred by a myriad of problems. Take your pick: endless construction, unpopular politicians, roads so riddled with potholes that I have changed my shock absorbers not once but twice this year. But if there’s one thing Montreal does well, it’s restaurants. Just look at the heap of accolades our restaurant scene has enjoyed this year. We have ambitious/talented/personable chefs. We have an impressive lineup of sommeliers pouring fascinating wines imported by avant-garde wine agents. We have a wide array of farmers and suppliers who help stock those kitchens. Most importantly, perhaps, we have a cast of customers with napkins on laps and wine glasses outstretched, ready to take it all in. Montreal restaurants are definitely having a moment. 

Dining at Toqué! on a recent Tuesday night, I wondered what our restaurant scene would look like today had the chef of this very restaurant, Normand Laprise, not made his way from his native Kamouraska to our fair city some thirty years ago. Say what you will about who the hot chefs are today, but no one will deny that Laprise is the one who put Québécois cuisine on the map. Yes there was great French food in Montreal before Toqué! opened its first location on St-Denis St. 23 years ago, and yes there were chefs using local ingredients years before that. But the place where everything came together at the hands of one chef who made Quebecers realize their cuisine was as much a part of their identity as their language and their culture was Toqué!. 

Laprise started his restaurant with $30,000 alongside partner and future dining room manager, Christine Lamarche. In the years that followed, his hunt for the province’s best ingredients was well under way and his innovations were many. Noma chef René Redzepi became famous for using foraged ingredients. Laprise was using foraged ingredients a decade before. Osteria Francescana chef Massimo Bottura was recently in Montreal preaching about the necessity of eliminating food waste. Laprise started that conversation years ago. The Toqué! kitchen is also where droves of young chefs learned to cook beyond the continental canon and go on to run some of the best restaurants in Quebec today. No doubt the effect Toqué! has had on the Québécois food scene with Laprise as its ambassador has been monumental.

Normand Laprise started Toqué! 23 years ago with $30,000 alongside partner and future dining room manager Christine Lamarche. Together they put Québécois fare on the culinary map.

The last time I reviewed Toqué! in 2007, Laprise was on a high seconded by his crazily creative chef-de-cuisine, Charles-Antoine Crête, who opened Montreal Plaza last summer. Yet for a North American restaurant, 23 years is a long time to maintain the top spot, stay relevant, continue to draw in the fickle and foreign foodies. Toqué! has topped many restaurant lists, yet has also fallen out of favour while new names rose to the top. That’s normal and fine — good even — on an ever-evolving and very strong Montreal scene. However, a few disappointing visits over the past couple of years left me thinking Toqué! was at a crossroads. Fine dining has taken a huge hit not only in Montreal but the world over. At a time when pizza is fantastic, tacos are terrific and tapas-style dining has usurped the tired tasting menu, posh restaurants often feel too fussy and too pricey. The question has become: why drop over $150 per person to eat at Toqué! when you can spend half that much at a great wine bar or even Toqué!’s sister restaurant, Brasserie T? 

Well I’ll tell you why: Toqué! is simply fabulous. Better than ever? Not sure. But the cooking coming out of this kitchen these days is impressive. Yes, prices are high (the majority of main courses are in the $50 range) but this is a gastronomic experience on a par with many of the world’s top restaurants where people are used to handing over hundreds to dine well. And you don’t eat this way every day. But when you do, and in a restaurant that understands how to go fancy yet maintain flavour, boy, is it an experience.

The star of this appetizer is the lobster, which is soft but supple, and lightly boosted by the delicate bisque.

Most everything tasted on their early summer menu was sublime. Beginning with a plump Lucky Lime oyster topped with a spoonful of wild sorrel granité, I sipped my way through a delicate cocktail made with gin, juniper, bittersweet vermouth, tarragon and lemon. Great match. 

Appetizers have always been the most polished course at Toqué! and that still holds true. In one, velvety pieces of lobster are served with white and green asparagus, oyster mushrooms, drops of green-garlic-flavoured oil and poufs of foamy lobster bisque. The star of the plate is the lobster, which is soft but supple, and lightly boosted with the delicate bisque. With this dish, sommelier Carl Villeneuve Lepage recommended two wines, a sylvaner from Germany and a chardonnay from Ontario. Take your pick; they both worked perfectly. 

His recommendation for the next course, calamari with cherry tomatoes, grilled tomato coulis, sea parsley, Kalamata olives and tarragon, included a rosé from Quebec and a vermentino from Italy. The dish was magical, with its tender squid, potent flavour enhancers and great mix of textures. But it was the superb wines (all organic and all new to me) that really brought these dishes to the next level. Toqué!’s wine list is better than ever, but I would slide that carte aside and trust this young sommelier (winner of Quebec’s best sommelier 2014, no less) to suggest the ideal pairings.

A razor-sharp, grenache-gris-based wine from the Roussillon was his choice for a third starter consisting of three, whisper-thin rounds of venison carpaccio, each topped with sautéed sea snails, melon, marinated zucchini and aioli. I rolled them up and popped them in my mouth thinking how Lamarche said this dish was Toqué!’s version of surf and turf. What a fun take on a tired classic. 

From left: sommelier Maxime Lavallée, chef de cuisine Pierre Joubaud, chef pâtissier Daniel Mongraw, sous chef Francis Allard, sous chef Guillaume Couture, sous chef Stephane Rebibo and sommelier Carl Villeneuve Lepage.

Mains may be pricey, but they’re also generous in portion (cost-cutters should not hesitate to share). Duck magret arrives with black garlic purée, asparagus, baby radishes, oyster mushrooms and an intense poivrade sauce. The meat is crisp-skinned, rosé and is served with the sautéed heart and seared filet mixed in with the vegetables. Talk about your faultless cooking.

A dish of guinea hen is different in that the bird breast is cut lengthwise and the two succulent slices are plated along with a square of confit meat that’s as rich and golden as a tarte Tatin. The vegetable here are fried fiddleheads with shiitake mushrooms, and the sauces include a rather sweet – though pleasantly so – rhubarb jelly. Again, Lepage’s pairings are inspired, with two different-styled syrahs recommended for the guinea hen, and a still Lambrusco and a heady garnatxa from Empordà (Spain) for the duck.

The rhubarb mousse included cream cheese panna cotta, strawberry compote, as well as lemongrass and strawberry sorbet – topped with strawberry tuiles and meringue shards.

We opted for the cheese course, which turned out to be the only misstep of the meal. The cheeses themselves were fine, but the presentation lacked finesse and the inclusion of an overbearing miso sauce was just plain odd. Hmm … over to dessert then – two mousses, one made with milk chocolate, the other with rhubarb. Flavoured with lime, the chocolate mousse was served with chocolate puff pastry, blueberry sorbet and a dark chocolate sauce flavoured with juniper. With its mix of textures and intensity of chocolate flavours, this was my favourite. As for the rhubarb mousse, it was gussied up with a cream cheese panna cotta, strawberry compote, as well as lemongrass and strawberry sorbet – the whole topped with strawberry tuiles and shards of meringue flavoured with thyme. It all looked pretty but ultimately, it was more frothy/mushy/sweet than satisfying. 

Quibbles aside, there’s even more to relish about a meal at Toqué!: the friendly greeting at the door, the sharp service under Lamarche’s watchful eye, the amazing bread (via Hof Kelsten bakery), the scrumptious sucre à la crème, financier and chocolate macaron on the mignardises plate. With cooking and service at this high a level, you are never swayed off course by too salty a dish or an overcooked fish. Everything just works at Toqué! — save for one element on the night I dined there: Laprise himself, who it turned out was not in the kitchen but at home celebrating his daughter’s sixth birthday. To think that I enjoyed that masterful a meal on a night when the chef was not behind the stoves speaks to the strength of this establishment.

After 23 years, Toqué!, you still make Quebecers proud with every bite. 

criticsnotebook@gmail.com 

twitter.com/LesleyChestrman 

You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m. 

Moleskine
Three stars out of four 
$$$
3412 Parc Ave. (near Sherbrooke St.)

Phone: 514-903-6939
Website: moleskine-mtl.com
Open: Tues.-Sat.: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. 
Licensed: Yes
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: No
Parking: On the street, metered
Vegetarian friendly: Not especially 
Reservations: Essential 
Price range: Appetizers: $10-$16; main courses $24-$30; desserts $6-$10.

Fifteen years ago, I reviewed a 40-seat restaurant on the Little Italy stretch of The Main by the name of Tentation. The chef-owner, Giovanni Apollo, offered an upscale French menu with dishes like lobster strudel and parmentier of baby rabbit. I recall the food being far more impressive than the cramped seating arrangement. But what really impressed that night was a young sommelier by the name of Véronique Dalle. To this day, I remember the Spanish wine she recommended with a deer loin served with blueberries. And she was just as sharp when she served me two years later at Apollo’s next restaurant, The Lychee Supper Club. This was back when Montreal sommeliers weren’t the rock stars they have become today. But Dalle sure was. In my review, I commended her superb wine recommendations and intelligent commentary — and ended by calling her a real pro.

There are thrills to be had when dining out at the hands of talented professionals, and Dalle is one of those people who makes a night of drinking wine not only pleasurable but fascinating. It’s no surprise after leaving Lychee, she went on to teach at the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec — the ITHQ — and trained dozens of young sommeliers who are on the scene today. Parallel to that, she became the head sommelier at one of the best — and first — wine bars in the city, Pullman. And at a time when sommeliers were starting to believe the hype, she remained humble.  

Chef Frédéric St-Aubin speaks with sommelier Véronique Dalle at Moleskine on Parc Ave. with owner Catherine Bélanger, far right, and her daughter Ernestine. Moleskine is actually two restaurants: Downstairs, pictured, is a casual, 40-seat space built around an open kitchen with a wood-burning oven. Upstairs is the gastronomic, 30-seat dining room, the focus of this week’s review.

While working at Tentation, Dalle had a few talented colleagues in the kitchen, including the likes of Mario Navarrete (chef-owner of Madre and Callao) as well as a certain Frédéric St-Aubin, who, for the past nine years, headed the kitchens at the tony private club Le 357C. Dalle and St-Aubin became fast friends during the Tentation days and always dreamed of working together. And at the new, coming-on-two-month-old restaurant Moleskine, they finally are, creating without a doubt one of the most exciting — and coolest — restaurants in the city.

St-Aubin and Dalle’s partners in this project are Pullman’s principals, Catherine Bélanger and Bruno Braën, who also happens to be the designer behind such restaurants as Bily Kun, Le Club Chasse et Pêche, Shinji, Pastaga, Pullman, of course, and now Moleskin. Named for fabric that covers notebooks, diaries, journals and some of the tables at the restaurant, Moleskin is pure Braën with an industrial glam look including a black and grey colour scheme, rough surfaces, chain metal curtains, and a choice of seating arrangements from bar stools to banquettes, to communal tables, to ’70s-style wicker chairs set around a table for five. I spent a night staring at all the kooky details of Braën’s design and only soaked up about half of it, though there was no missing the turntable where all the restaurant background tunes come via vintage vinyl, ranging from ABBA to The Eagles. In a word: wild! 

Upstairs at Moleskine, offerings are more elaborate than on the ground floor. The designer of the space is none other than Bruno Braën, who designed Bily Kun, Le Club Chasse et Pêche, Shinji, Pastaga and Pullman, among others.

Before I go on, it’s important to point out Moleskine is actually two restaurants — three, even, if you count the takeout window outside.

For walk-by traffic, there is Moleskine’s takeout window. Pictured: owner Catherine Bélanger, left, designer Bruno Braën, chef, Frédéric St-Aubin and sommelier Véronique Dalle.

Downstairs is a casual, 40-seat space built around an open kitchen with a wood-burning oven. Pizza, soups, salads, sandwiches, pastas and homemade charcuterie are on offer, and you can either gawk at the chefs in action or sit by the window and watch the world go by. But my focus this week is on the gastronomic, 30-seat dining room upstairs, where reservations are de rigueur and the menu and wine offerings are more elaborate. 

St-Aubin’s background includes stages at the restaurant Troisgros in France and the Albergo Del Sole in Italy. He’s also a graduate of the Italian cooking course at the ITHQ, so his menu skews Italian.

After an amuse-bouche of trout bruschetta, dinner began with a panzanella salad, a grilled zucchini salad, and the most summery of ceviches. The panzanella was served in fancy form, with multi-coloured tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and croutons sliced small and garnished with herbs, parmesan shavings and a touch of minced anchovy. Beautiful.

The zucchini salad was more lush, as the ribbons of grilled green and yellow squash were strewn around dollops of fresh ricotta and dressed with a swirl of olive oil, basil leaves, and a sprinkling of chopped pistachios. Loved that.

The ceviche has slices of silky red snapper served with strawberries and whisper-thin shavings of fennel and radish.

But the best of the three appetizers was the ceviche, which featured a half-dozen slices of silky red snapper served with strawberries and whisper-thin shavings of fennel and radish. The dish was perfect, with such a winning mix of textures, colours and especially flavours. Add to that a glass of grenache gris from the Roussillon and a white Burgundy poured by Dalle (she served us two to compare with the various dishes) and you have a dish that’s not only delicious but ideal for warm-weather dining.  

The starters were great and the mains may even have been better. The first was a straightforward dish of pasta vongole, a tangle of linguini chockfull of clams, garlic, parsley and a few slices of red pepper. Big thumbs up.

Then there was the pork loin. Served in a shallow bowl surrounded by slices of Pacific-coast shrimp and fava beans, the tender slices of pork loin were then doused in lobster bisque. The caramelized slices of pork, cooked to the ideal light rosé, were great, and the accompaniments were bang-on. But that bisque was just tremendous. I lapped up every last bite and all but licked the bowl clean. 

The pork loin is surrounded by slices of Pacific-coast shrimp and fava beans, all doused in lobster bisque.

Next up was a duck magret, which, like the pork, was tender, caramelized and cooked to the ideal deep rosé. Here, the accompaniments included black olives, new potatoes, and a “sauce bigarade,” a citrus sauce with a sour edge. With a glass of cabernet franc, this dish was not only delectable, but technically faultless — as was everything served to me from this kitchen.

For dessert, we enjoyed an espresso cup filled with vanilla soft serve, chocolate sauce and caramelized marshmallow. Yum! Then there was the Nemesis cake: Made famous by London’s famed Italian restaurant The River Café, this flourless chocolate cake was moist, intensely chocolatey and served simply with a quenelle of coffee chantilly. Excellent.

For dessert, an espresso cup is filled with vanilla soft serve, chocolate sauce and caramelized marshmallow.

Moleskine’s excellent version of the Nemesis cake, made famous by London’s famed Italian restaurant The River Café.

Service provided by Dalle, as well as our friendly waiter, unfolded without a misstep. The wine list is short, about 20 selections, all Old World and primarily from France, with an emphasis on organic/natural wines. The selection pales next to the staggering wine list at Pullman next door, but Dalle’s intention is to keep Moleskine’s list concise, adapted to the menu, and ever-changing. You can opt for a bottle, but I say just let Dalle suggest pairings by the glass. Wine lovers should note sommelier and former wine agent Alain Bélanger works the floor alongside Dalle two days a week. To be served by either — easily two of the top wine experts in the city — is a real privilege.  

Moleskine’s chef, Frédéric St-Aubin, and talented sommelier, Véronique Dalle.

The only complaint I can drum up about my dinner at Moleskine was that the fumes rising to the second floor from the wood-burning oven could sometimes be a bit overpowering. Yet, otherwise, I cannot deny falling hard for this restaurant. The fresh and fabulous food, the stellar wine program, the laid-back ambiance and edgy decor seem to epitomize the best of what the Montreal restaurant scene has to offer these days. I can’t wait to return.

Next time, perhaps pizza downstairs?

Hvor

*** 1/2

$$$

1414 Notre-Dame St. W. (corner Lucien L’Allier St.)

Phone: 514-937-2001

Website: hvor.ca

Open: Wed.-Sun.: 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. 

Licensed: Yes

Credit cards: All major

Wheelchair access: No

Parking: on the street with meters and valet

Vegetarian friendly: Yes 

Reservations: Recommended  

Price range: Three-course tasting menu $45 (wine pairings $30); five course tasting menu $65 (wine pairings $45).

I begin this review with praise for another restaurant: the famed Sooke Harbour House on Vancouver Island. For decades, co-owners Sinclair Philip and his wife Frederique have served a daily-changing menu featuring local, seasonal and organic foods. “Wild foods feature prominently on our offerings,” states the hotel/restaurant’s website, “and our 35-year relationship with local farms, fishers, artisans and foragers has defined us and historically helped spur the Canadian industry into the common theme we have today in forward-thinking restaurants.” So strict are they about using local ingredients that coffee and orange juice are the only two exceptions made. Three decades ago it was practically unheard of for chefs to focus solely on local ingredients, so the Philips are true visionaries whose influence can be felt Canada-wide, especially in this week’s “forward-thinking” restaurant, Hvor.

Hvor (pronounced “Vor”) is the Danish word for “here,” and here, at Hvor, is just where I dined last week, seated on a comfortable banquette listening to the waiter explain that Hvor means “here” while pointing to a Danish landscape painting of a mountain. I wonder, is the name spiel supposed to transport me from trendy Griffintown to even trendier Danemark? Will the food be Danish? Is Smørrebrød in the cards? No, I’m told, the menu is based on local ingredients with the occasional exception made for something exceptional. Why, I wonder, are the Danes getting all the “eat local” credit when people like the Phillips where serving a locavore menu back when Mr. Dressup was still on TV? Hmm …

Now despite my confusion with the Danish name, I’m immediately taken by this four-month-old restaurant, where chef S’Arto Chartier Otis presides over the kitchen seconded by Janice Tiefenbach (formerly of Nora Grey) and pastry chef Éric Champagne (formerly of H4C). Chartier Otis is one sharp chef who has headed kitchens varying from the quite casual Les Enfants Terribles to the seriously slick Sousbois where he worked as co-chef. Between the two was a stint at the restaurant of Bromont’s chic Balnea Spa. No doubt Mr. Chartier Otis is an up-and-comer, or what the French call a “chef montant.” Early buzz on Hvor has been promising.

The dining room at Hvor is immensely appealing in a minimalist/white/casual kind of way.

So the concept here is local, which includes herbs and summer vegetables grown on a large terrasse above the restaurant. The dining room is immensely appealing in that minimalist/white/casual kind of way. The background tunes are groovy but need adjusting as the occasional song comes busting forth in this generally tranquil space. I’m here on a Friday night, expecting crowds, but the room is about half-full. I’m sure that will change.

Hvor is a gastronomic restaurant which means plates are pretty, ingredients are topnotch, and much effort has been made to produce nifty flavour combinations. Dinner is served in menu format, either three courses for $45, or five for $65, which are reasonable prices considering how soigné it all is. Wine pairings are available and I was happy to see sommelier Fred Fortin working the floor. Formerly of Laurea, Fortin is another up-and-comer who entered this establishment recently and is working on making the wine list his own. His wine pairings are definitely worth the added price. Save for one red that was served too warm (how’s that for a nit-picky comment?), his pairings were inspired. Those who prefer to order full bottles will find a good selection of privately-imported bottles, a little pricey maybe, but this list is in rethink mode so things should be changing.

Grilled lettuce topped with grated cheese, sprigs of dill, smoked scallop and herb cream: the smoky crunchiness of the dish worked.

As for the food, well … in a word: wow. From the arrival of amuse-bouche — an immaculate maki roll topped with a cornflower and wrapped in an emerald green Swiss chard leaf — I knew it was game on. Chartier Otis is a strong technician with an artistic eye and tastebuds fuelled by one wild imagination. There were so many new flavour combinations at play, fun twists and turns, and most of them worked.

The first dish, grilled lettuce, started off simply. Then came the initial flavour enhancer, a topping of grated cheese, a few sprigs of dill, and a smoked scallop and herb cream alongside. The smoky/crunchy lettuce was quite smashing on its own, but that intense green cream added a fascinating kick to every bite. 

We’re at peak summer squash season right now and the second plate celebrated just that. Arranged around a dried zucchini flower, the dish featured slices of torched hirame (Japanese fluke) as well as rounds of both zucchini and yellow squash along with a few dribbles of jalapeño oil and powder. Even if the pepper powder made it all that much too bitter, this plate was just so summery and lively. 

Grilled sea bream filet paired with a green bean salad, herbs and purslane: the sour citrus cream boosted every charred bite.

The next two dishes were the best of the night. One featured the most moist and delicious grilled sea bream filet paired with a green bean salad mixed with herbs and purslane. Chartier Otis could easily have stopped there, but he added a dab of sour citrus cream to the mix, boosting every charred bite with a hit of acidity and orange. Loved it. 

And then there was the pasta, or in this case, baby cavatelli made with buckwheat with beads of buckwheat crumble, bits of Swiss chard and a broth enhanced with miso. Aah … I could have jumped right into the bowl and rolled around in that salty broth while inhaling all those little al dente pasta nuggets. Bliss! And right when we were about to finish, out waiter showed up with two pieces of toasted bread with homemade butter and honey to help lap up the last of the pasta juices. Well that bread was an entity onto itself, and so utterly scrumptious that I stopped after the first bite, looked up at my dining companion, and caught him staring in disbelief right back at me, the two of us nodding in unison at how delicious it all was.  

The cavatelli nuggets: made with buckwheat, bits of Swiss chard and a broth enhanced with miso, the dish was blissfully indulgent.

What a treat this meal had been so far, so much so that the last of the savoury plates, slices of tender lamb loin with anchovy, olive and garlic cream could hardly compete. The most classic of the lineup, the lamb was technically perfect, but felt a bit out of sorts after all the lovely fish- and vegetable-driven dishes before. Maybe a lighter meat (pork, guinea hen etc.) would have been less of a jolt … not sure. 

For dessert, chef Champagne began with a terrific mille-feuille made with raspberries and chocolate cream sandwiched between layers of crisp, caramelized pastry. I lapped up every last crumb. I wasn’t as wild, alas, about his next dessert, a blood orange givré. Served in a hollowed-out orange shell topped with a swirl of meringue, the dessert was flamed at the table with a mix of Chartreuse and prosecco. As much as I loved the added bit of “cinéma,” the orange sorbet at the heart of it all didn’t taste of much. After a meal with so many bold flavours, that pretty little orange wimped out.

Dessert perfection: a mille-feuille made with raspberries and chocolate cream sandwiched between layers of crisp, caramelized pastry.

Save for a few minor disappointments, I was bowled over by my dinner at Hvor. Chartier Otis is one gutsy chef whose confidence shines through on every plate and with every bite. His menu changes daily, so chances are what I tasted will not be what you will taste. That itself is another boon to this vastly creative dining experience, the lack of dependance on signature dishes or well-known classics to draw in the crowd. It’s obvious this is a chef with real talent, working without a safety net, making Hvor one of Montreal’s most thrilling new dining destinations. And, keep in mind, it’s early days yet. 

“Le meilleur gâteau aux carottes au monde!” are the words staring back at me from a cake box in a freezer at my local supermarket. Of course I buy it. Who doesn’t want to know what the best carrot cake in the world tastes like? This one, made in Cowansville, is certainly better than most. But the best in the world? Ouf . . . those are fightin’ words. In the world of cake — or anything, really — finding “the best” is a quest that can span a lifetime.

I’ve been searching for the Holy Grail of cakes for some 40 years now, without even being fully aware of why or what I was after. Indeed, why care about cake? Perhaps seeking out something truly beautiful is a distraction from despair around us. For some it’s a search for the perfect single malt whisky, for others it’s the best pizza; or, totally unrelated to food, the ultimate dream house or ideal mate. In a way, such quests are really about finding an ideal: How good — no, make that satisfying — can something be?

For me, it’s cake because in the sea of sweet dreck out there, finding a great cake is such a thrill for the senses. There’s something soothing, celebratory and exciting about it. And who besides the most deep-seated curmudgeon can refuse a comely slice of cake?

If there’s a cake on your table, chances are there’s a celebration underway. And for that reason, our earliest memories of cake tend to focus on the ones we enjoyed at a birthday. Mine were always ordered from the same neighbourhood bakery, Graham Pastry in Town of Mount Royal. We all requested their chocolate marshmallow cake. Coated in a thick chocolate glaze, the dessert consisted of a bubbly chocolate cake on the bottom and a thick layer of marshmallow fluff on top. To this day, I haven’t a clue how they made it, and as that wonderful bakery closed in the 1980s, I will probably never know. But was it ever a masterpiece. It represented everything we were forbidden on a daily basis, yet on those birthdays we went wild. That cake wasn’t dessert, that cake was freedom!

Who besides the most deep-seated curmudgeon can refuse a comely slice of cake?

I more or less blame that marshmallow cake, coupled with an early weakness for Sara Lee banana cake, for my cake obsession today. I’ve travelled long distances in search of epic cakes, and been both elated and disappointed. I’ve handed over large sums for Parisian pastry shop cakes that left me cold, while I’ve paid close to nothing for diner cakes that had me licking the last smears of icing off the plate. I’ve discovered that you never know when or where you’ll find a great slice of cake. And as for finding the ultimate cake, I might just have found that, too.

***

After years of eating and analyzing, I’ve come to the conclusion that to really love a particular food, you have to start out by not being a big fan. “Are you a cake or pie person?” is a question that seems to arise every so often. Like me, most adults tend to answer pie, whereas kids like their cake. But pie is best when homemade, while cake can be greatly elevated by a professional. And because we pie aficionados love a pie so intensely, we tend to cut the mediocre ones a lot of slack. When it comes to cake, though, it’s all or nothing.

So what makes a great cake? Like a good steak, the best cakes are tender. Moist is preferable to dry. The texture must be light, yet the crumb should be tight. Fluffy is preferable to dense, and a good cake is never too bouncy. A tough cake means the batter has been overworked or the wrong flour was used. Sticky cake isn’t “yummy” — it’s undercooked. The flavour must be bold: a yellow cake must taste of butter and vanilla, a chocolate cake must be rich but not suffocatingly so. And let’s hear it for boozy cakes! A shot of Cointreau can work wonders on a lacklustre gâteau.

Then there is the cake’s coating: be it glaze, buttercream, whipped cream or frosting, the chosen topping must complement the cake. A thick glaze on an angel cake is as much of a disaster as buttercream on a pound cake. And cake eaters like their coatings sweet and silky.

Of course, a cake must be beautiful — and by beautiful I don’t mean covered in sugar flowers so much as appealing, which can be homey, chic or over-the-top. But a good cake is not just one you want to look at, a good cake is one you want to eat.

When I asked New York-based cookbook author and pastry chef/teacher Nick Malgieri to share his personal cake epiphany, he recalled his early days working as a pastry chef in 1976. “My first revelation occurred in when I was working pre-opening at the famed World Trade Centre rooftop restaurant, Windows on the World, with pastry chef Albert Kumin,” says Malgieri. “The owner, Joe Baum, wanted a ‘signature’ chocolate cake like the chocolate velvet at the Four Seasons restaurant had been. Kumin created the chocolate pastry cake: layers of cocoa genoise moistened with a syrup lightly scented with orange liqueur, crisp chocolate pastry layers, and thin layers of whipped ganache. More ganache enclosed the cake and that was covered all over with chocolate pastry crumbs. The synergy of crisp layer, moist cake, and creamy filling created a subtle interplay of flavour, texture, and richness that forever changed how I think of chocolate cake.”

The famous Le President cake by Bernachon, served at Restaurant Paul Bocuse in Lyon.

In the realm of cake, there are stars. Lindy’s cheesecake in Manhattan, or the chocolate-shaving-crowned Le President cake from Bernachon in Lyon, France, filled with hazelnut ganache and brandied cherries — both share star-cake-status. There are cakes associated with a country, such as German Black Forest cake, Australian Pavlova, English Battenberg cake, or Canadian Queen Elizabeth cake. Several Parisian chefs are famous for reinventing the classics, like the Paris-Brest cake of Jacques Genin or the Gâteau St-Honoré of Philippe Conticini.

Then there are the signature cakes associated to a certain pastry shop or restaurant that are all but trademarked. Chief among them is the Sachertorte, a cake whose recipe remains a well-guarded secret and whose origins were battled out in a seven-year legal war in Vienna when both the Sacher Hotel and the Demel pastry shop fought over who had the right to call their cake the “original Sachertorte.” In the end, the Sacher Hotel won out, but in some form of sweet revenge, Demel’s is the more delicious of the two.

The Peninsula Grill Ultimate Coconut Cake served in Charleston, S.C. 

Another famous cake that lives up to its hype is the 12-pound, 12-layer, $12-per-slice vanilla and coconut cake served at the Peninsula Grill restaurant in Charleston, S.C. In 2012, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office certified the cake’s national popularity when it awarded a trademark to, “Peninsula Grill Ultimate Coconut Cake®.” For a cool $130 U.S., the restaurant will even ship whole cakes directly to your doorstep. Having tasted this divine creation, I would bankrupt myself ordering those coconut cakes at an alarming pace if I lived south of the border.

Many famous cakes, unprotected by such trademarks, are victims of their popularity. Ever since Parisian pâtissier Gaston Le Nôtre created the famous gâteau opéra in 1960, the cake has been systematically ruined by many who try to recreate it, making this intense chocolate and coffee cake either too high (the cake must be no more than an inch in height) or too dry (the layers of almond cake must be soaked with coffee syrup). The biggest offender would be the ubiquitous Black Forest cake. Having tasted a superb version of this cake that hailed for the region of the Black Forest in the south of Germany, I can vouch that it has little in common with the insipid Black Forest cakes mass produced in commercial bakeries.

Black Forest cake at a bakery in Bernkastel Kues, Germany.

***

Some of the best cakes I’ve tasted have been the simplest and, like great savoury cooking, cakes are best when fabricated with excellent ingredients: good chocolate, real cream, pristine fruit. And you never know where and when that next great slice of cake will appear.

American baking authority Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of nine baking books including the beloved Cake Bible, has made countless cakes over her illustrious baking career, yet the one she loved most remains elusive. “The most memorable cake I tasted was 53 years ago in a little mall store in Princeton, N.J,” Beranbaum recounted to me in an interview. “It was a cheesecake that had the consistency of whipped cream but the flavour of cream cheese cake. I begged them for the recipe and even tried bribing them with a commercial roll of plastic wrap, as I worked for Reynolds Metals at the time. They accepted the wrap, but never sent the recipe. I’ve come close, but never duplicated it 100 per cent.”

Seduced by gaudy cakes as a kid in the ’70s, back when blue buttercream roses were all the rage, I was first impressed by a simple cake in the most unusual of places: a pub. Its name was The Turf and it’s located in Oxford, England. When most people come away from visiting this famous university city, they rave about the picture gallery at Christchurch or the deer park at Magdalen College. I left with memories of the perfect chocolate cake. It was so moist of crumb and fudge of frosting that I didn’t leave the pub before scarfing back three slices.

Because of the tradition of afternoon tea, you run into a lot of cake in the British Isles, and the Brits love their cake — proof being the astronomical ratings for the BBC’s reality show/baking extravaganza The Great British Bake off.

Mrs. Lamb’s sponge cake with strawberries at Ballymaloe House, Cork, Ireland. 

Another unexpected beauty came not in England but Ireland, and yes, in a tea shop. The place was Ballymaloe House in the south of the country near Cork. I walked in to their café at tea time, and there, on a pedestal, were the remains of a cake called Mrs. Lamb’s sponge cake, garnished with strawberries. Made with a crisp-on-the-outside/light-on-the-inside sponge, the cake was filled with organic heavy cream from their on-site dairy. The strawberries hailed from the walled garden next door. Just three elements in a cake so good that I actually teared up while eating it.

Related

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***

No doubt you can enjoy cake almost anywhere, be it for tea, dessert, a 4-o’clock indulgence or even — as the Italians do so well — for breakfast.

But for the true cake obsessed there really is only one city that can be considered cake central and that’s Vienna, a city known for its love of Mozart, Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, magnificent Rococo architecture, grand theatre and opera houses, and, of course, its kaffeehaus tradition coupled with a deep love of pastry.

Having admired the meringue-spun Spanische Windtorte on the cover of the Time Life Foods of the World book devoted to the cooking of Vienna’s Empire (published in 1968) as well as the dreamy photographs of the inside of Viennese and Hungarian pastry shops and coffee houses, I had long dreamed of sinking my teeth into several of Vienna’s old-world cakes.

Last spring, that crazy Vienna cake dream of mine was finally realized. I landed in the city of Freud, Strauss and the queen of “let them eat cake” herself, Marie Antoinette, one sunny June morning, eyed the many konditoreien (pâtisseries) and wondered, could cake nirvana be far away?

Whereas French pâtissiers champion creativity, Viennese pastry chefs prefer to focus on the classics, cakes with names like Esterhazytorte, Mozart-torte, Punschkrapfen and of course, the pope of Viennese confections, the aforementioned Sachertorte.

There are coffee houses throughout Vienna, but few would deny that in the city known as the Mecca of cakes, that the famous pastry shop and chocolaterie Demel is the Mecca within the Mecca. Established in 1786, Demel (pronounced “Deemel”) bears the title of Purveyor to the Imperial and Royal Court to this day. The shop is small and ornate, with dark wood, mirrors, crystal chandeliers, high ceilings and a well-worn cement-tile floor. The pastry counter, coffee bar and several rooms set over three floors are run by ladies dressed in black and white.

Unlike French pastry shops, where cakes are sold whole or in individual portions, cakes in Austria, as is the case in Germany and many Eastern European countries, are sold by the slice. After perusing the magnificent display in the glass case by the entranceway at Demel, I ordered four. We cake fiends don’t fret over details like calories; this was a cake orgy of the highest order and I was its most willing participant!

The Sachertorte at Demel in Vienna.

First up, Sachertorte. I had sampled the Sachertorte at the Hotel Sacher, a 10-minute walk away, but Demel’s was superior, less dry and with a luscious, tongue-coating chocolate glaze. I scooped up every last crumb, enhancing every bite with a spoon of schlag (whipped cream).

My next choice was a walnut cake. Topped with marzipan and flavoured with coffee, this torte was dense and not overly sweet, the perfect accompaniment to a “mélange” — a mix of frothed milk and steamed coffee similar to a cappuccino.

All good, but I had yet to fall off my chair in delight. But then came the third cake, the sugar-fondant-coated Esterhazytorte. Ouf . . . what a cake! This Hungarian cream cake, named after Paul III Anton, Prince Esterházy (a wealthy prince and diplomat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) consists of dense nut sponge cakes layered with butter-enhanced custard. Apparently it’s one of the most famous cakes in Europe, and after a few bites I see why. This was my third slice of cake, but I couldn’t help devouring it. The way its lightness was tinged with richness, and that nutty flavour coupled with the eggy cream. Yes! Could this, I wondered licking my fork clean, be the world’s greatest cake?

For Malgieri, who actually spent time in the Demel kitchens acquiring recipes, the best cake at Demel is the Russische Punschtorte (Russian Punch Cake). “I was in Vienna to write an article about Demel,” says Malgieri, “still the best pastry shop in that world capital of cakes. I had asked for a plain cake, a chocolate cake, a petit four, a strudel, and a fancy layer cake — a torte in Viennese pastry language. All the other choices were brilliant, but when I saw the recipe for the fancy torte, I was disappointed. Plain sponge cake, rum syrup, pastry cream, and meringue – I had been expecting a tiara-clad archduchess and they sent out a poor country cousin. One taste was enough to convince me how wrong I was.

“The understated elegance of the Russische Punschtorte combined simple ingredients into an astounding whole so much greater than the mere sum of its parts. It remains one of the most brilliant cakes I’ve ever tasted or made.”

The winner: A slice of Annatorte at Demel in Vienna. 

Yet I wonder if while at Demel, Malgieri tasted the Annatorte? After polishing off my three slices, I couldn’t resist one more cake, one I spied on the top shelf of the display case that caught my eye due to the sort of ruffled chocolate ribbon wrapping. I was told that coating was a thin layer of gianduja, a chocolate-and-nut paste like Nutella but with a thicker consistency.

The cake underneath was a thing of beauty: a perfect, six-layer triangle, three of ideally-moist chocolate cake and three of chocolate ganache cream, the whole spiked with orange liqueur. The cake itself was extravagant, but that ribbon of creamy chocolate nuttiness brought me to my knees. A complete contrast to the cakes I swooned over in the past, this cake was aristocratic, old-school, impressive in its confection but also deeply flavoured.

It was the best piece of cake I have ever tasted — and it only cost 4 euros ($5.80), a steal!

Of course, the quest for great cake continues. The search for one’s ideal is infinite and, without a doubt, a pleasure sure to last a lifetime. Meanwhile, I keep hearing about cakes in Hungary. I sense a thick slice of dobostorte on the horizon.

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You can hear Lesley Chesterman on ICI Radio-Canada Première’s Médium Large (95.1 FM) Tuesdays at 10 a.m., and on CHOM (97.7 FM) Wednesdays at 7:10 a.m.