this week in food

Three things deserve praise:

1) pan-seared salmon with citrus vinaigrette and blanched asparagus, according to last month's Food & Wine. This recipe's a keeper.

2) Irish brown bread, also according to F&W. Dense and hearty. Was great with lamb chops. Add Guinness and you've got a full meal.

3) Sucrerie des Gallant, in Ste-Marthe (1 hour west of Montreal). Best cabane à sucre we've tried. Standard sugar shack fare (tourtiere, eggs, back bacon, potatoes, baked beans, pudding chômeur) done right.

Leméac

Montreal has loads of French restaurants, yet many of them are simply average. There’s your escargots drenched in garlic butter, your simple yet cozy veloutés, your meat under an unimpressive demi-glaze, your chocolate mousse, and so on. This formula is fine for some inexpensive BYOBs (l’Académie, par exemple), but at nicer establishments the stakes are a bit higher and the potential for letdown is much greater: le Mas des Oliviers disappointed us a few weeks ago for ordinary cuisine with subpar service and unfavourable prices.


I’m happy to report that Leméac, however, is well above average in almost every respect. Aspiring Foodie and I were there late on a snowy night a couple weeks ago to celebrate my birthday. We had a reservation for their 10 p.m. seating, when the menu becomes somewhat more limited and considerably more affordable (appetizer + main = $22!).


AF had been there a few weeks ago and was so satisfied with her meal that she ordered the exact same thing. I could see why. Her vegetable tian was a beautifully balanced appetizer of sliced and diced tomatoes, zucchini, and other veggies held together by a mild cheese and baked just long enough to seal the flavours in while preserving their texture. The perfectly cooked duck she had – complemented with a rich Austrian white wine picked from the extensive list – was so good, it brought her to tears.

For my part, the braised beef short rib was savoury and juicy and tender and delicious all over. The profiteroles we picked off the fairly long dessert list hit all the right spots. The one miss was my appetizer, ragout of escargots with tomatoes and a little short pasta, which was tepid and not terribly flavourful. It had me wishing I had ordered the tian. Still, the tartares and salads served to the adjacent tables looked very interesting, and we have no doubt that we’ll return to sample more of the menu.

With its rather posh interior and attractive clientele, Leméac is instantly very appealing. It’s in Outremont, well off the downtown/Old Port tourist path, which may have something to do with why it’s so good: a restaurant in that part of town wouldn’t be able to pack a late-night house unless it offered something special.

Le Parchemin

I had always wanted to go to Le Parchemin. Not because I had heard good things, or thought it was trendy or cool, or anything like that. I wanted to go because once, when I was walking by, I took a look at their menu and saw that among the standard (if not dusty) items like sweetbreads and rack of lamb and pot au feu was a dessert I had never seen on a menu before: baked alaska.

The day I saw baked alaska on the menu I was reminded of how cool I thought it was when I was a kid. Ice cream you bake? I mean actually put in an oven? How defiant! How interesting! Ingenious! Of course I had to try it. But I never got the chance. Twenty years passed and now here it is, on the menu of an archaic French restaurant. So I dutifully added it to the list of places I wanted to try, now that I am an aspiring foodie, and continued on my merry way. The problem was that no one wanted to come with me.

You see, the thing about Le Parchemin is that, in the minds of other foodies in Montreal, it’s sort of a relic. You know, a place your parents liked in the eighties. Which is fine, but there have to be some redeeming qualities, otherwise it is just a snotty French restaurant for old people. For instance, the food really isn’t that great, because you know, if it was, the foodies would go, snottiness and oldness be damned. (For an example of this, look at the success of Bonaparte, or Le Caveau, both of which are snotty and French and basically for old people.) And the menu isn’t really all that interesting, baked alaska notwithstanding. Also, we’re not talking about a place where one can see and be seen, or that has any kind of concept or novelty, so no new clientele are replacing the (ahem) old ones.

So what happened was this. My friend assisted someone in a winning hand at a poker tournament that resulted in his winning two gift certificates: one for Le Parchemin and one for Decca77. When asked which one she wanted, she thought of me (bless her heart) and chose the one for Le Parchemin. A couple of weeks later, heedless of the crazy storm that raged outside, we found ourselves snug as bugs in the dowdy, patrician dining room of Le Parchemin.

OK, so let’s talk about the ambience. Residing in an old presbytery, this restaurant’s dining rooms are fashioned after what I can only assume was a standard sitting room of a French aristocrat. We’re talking actual silverware, paintings in frames, wallpaper, window dressings, antiques. I sort of like the whole antiquated look, but I think that some things could probably be done to warm it up a little, as it was a little stuffy.

Now let’s talk about service. Our waitress was very nice, if a bit eager—she asked us what we wanted to drink before we had even been given the wine list. (On the topic of the wine list, let it be said that prices were very reasonable. Not an outstanding selection, but very affordable.)

Now let’s finally talk about menu because, remember, this is the one and only reason I was there. The baked alaska had been removed from it! Nowhere to be seen! And when I asked our nice waitress if I could still order it I was told the menu had been updated, and no, I could not.

So as tears fell from my eyes, we ordered our meals. I ordered a green salad to start and the grilled salmon with eggplant and thyme puree. It was just OK. The salad tasted as though it had Miracle Whip in it. The fish was overcooked and thus a little dry (but I like it that way, so I can’t complain). The veggies were interesting, though—for instance, I would never have thought to mash beets. And the presentation was great.

My friends M and C ordered the French onion soup to start and they thought it was just OK too. For mains, C ordered a tuna steak (special of the day), which she thought was overcooked, just as my salmon had been. M enjoyed her rack of lamb with Boursin and herbes de provence but did not consider it to be remarkable in any way.

For dessert, we had a very small portion of chocolate mousse which was, like everything else, just OK. Certainly no baked alaska, anyway.

All in all, this experience was just so-so, just like everything else. The highlights were the wine prices and the service, which was not at all snotty and was very attentive without being overbearing. They even let us sit around and talk without hassle.

The lowlight, other than the obvious lack of baked alaska, was the food. The menu was boring and the execution was off.

Will I ever go back? I don’t think so. I think Le Caveau and Bonaparte win.

And I’m still on the lookout for baked alaska.

O Noir

O Noir is Old News, or so it seems, and was probably well on its way to obsolescence (or at the very least, kitschy novelty, like that haunted house restaurant) when we dined there a few months ago. Just over a year old, O Noir is a concept restaurant in which patrons are to eat in complete darkness, served by visually-impaired staff. Having begun in Germany in 1999, the concept spread throughout Europe, Australia and the US. Montreal, being a pretty ambitious city in many ways, least of which epicurially, had to follow suit.

Armed with a handful of close friends, my husband and I found ourselves in the reception area of O Noir a few months ago, choosing our meals from the short and unspectacular menu, and talking amongst ourselves. I had read somewhere that this would get to be a loud dining experience, and I could already feel the headache coming on. It's true that when one of our senses is limited in some way, the others will do what they can to compensate, and in this case I think we were speaking louder than we needed to, and hearing more than necessary. Despite incessant shushing from other tables, the dining room did get to be quite loud and even boisterous at times.

After placing our orders and deciding on a bottle of wine, we were introduced to our waiter, a seeing-impaired man by the name of Amaldie. He made us line up at the curtained threshold of the dining room, our left hands placed on the shoulder of the person in front of us, and then led us into a totally black room. It felt eerie and detached, somehow, like being part of a league of the departed, on some sort of deathmarch through Hades. It was an alarming contrast to be led this way into a place typically associated with warmth and comfort.

We were placed gingerly at the table, seated one at a time by being held and guided by Amaldie's hands and soft words--here is your chair, do you feel it? Please sit. I instantly had the urge to map out my surroundings, know its borders with my hands since I could not with my eyes. I felt my plate and my glass and the edge of the table, then across to where my friend Michelle sat. I felt to my left where my husband sat, wanting to know if there was a wall beside him because somehow I sensed that there was. Also I thought I saw the seam of a ceiling above us as we were being led to the table. There was both a wall and a ceiling seam. Knowing this somehow made me feel more secure.

Some of us were having a hard time adjusting to the darkness and were feeling insecure and claustrophobic. A friend of ours complained that his eyes were trying so hard to see that they were giving him a headache. All of us were immersed in the process of acquainting ourselves with the darkness and were talking in exclamations and giggling--our voices had started to develop an almost shrieking quality. Meanwhile the other tables had begun to fill up, and the phantom voices of our neighbours were loud and scared, too.

Each time a waiter would walk by, he'd call out:

ATTENTION!
ATTENTION!

so every now and again there would be a rush of air as someone walked past, and this disembodied warning across the darkness.

After a while we could start to make out other things that were not quite as black as the rest, like the doors to the kitchen, and the doorway to the reception area we had just been brought in from. I could see the shadow of my hand in front of my face, and sometimes even the waiters walking by, which comforted me further.

By the time the food came I was so comfortable and snug, I heartily tucked in with abandon.

First, a piece of almost-warm bread with a little plastic container of butter arrived. We ripped the bread open with our hands, relished the feel of it. The guts of this bread felt wonderful, soft and pillowy and warm. We had a hard time making use of the instruments at our disposal, like knives, so some of us opted to use our fingers instead.

It was a strange thing. The bread was not in any way spectacular but eating it in the dark made it so delicious we could hardly contain ourselves.

The next course was an avocado salad. The avocado felt overripe and mushy and as I ate it I could not help but imagine it being brown and past its prime. The lettuce did not much do more to alleviate this less-than-compelling fantasy, and neither did the taste. In fact, it was quite bland and could have used more acid (lemon maybe?). However, what it lacked in flavour and texture it made up for in fun! Still unable to navigate a fork, I liked to fish around for the icy little wedges of avocado with my fingers and slurp them up with my lips. I passed my bowl around and let people stick their hands in too. Somehow, in the dark with friends, it does not occur to you that almost every finger at the table has been in every mouth and in your food as well.

(From Matt: Yes, most of the food was unexceptional, but the grilled octopus salad I had for an appetizer was definitely a standout.)

The main course arrived shortly threreafter. Mine was a plate of tenderloin strips, about an inch thick and three inches long, with a vegetable medley and some boiled potatoes that had been sliced. Some of the meat had been cooked to perfection, but others felt too raw, so I greedily gnawed at the edges of each of these slices like an animal, leaving a mess of half gnawed meat sliced on my plate.

I was disappointed by the accompaniments though. The potatoes were so boring I had to keep myself from falling asleep at the table. And the vegetable medley consisted of frozen, water- logged carrots and other equally atrocious, completely unrecognizable veggies.

Other entrees round the table consisted of pork steak, veal, and chicken florentine I simply didn't have the guts to taste. Call me paranoid, but I like to see my chicken before I eat it.

Dessert was your garden-variety hunk of dark chocolate/raspberry mousse cake, which I gladly slurped up with my fingers, and at one point even bringing the plate up to my mouth and eating face-first. I submit that there is no better way to eat cake.

All in all, I'm glad to have experienced O Noir. The food is nowhere near incentive enough to go back, but it is simply something that must be experienced firsthand. Also, there may never be occasion to eat with such abandon--we ate like there were no rules, no one cared, and no one was looking anyway. Which is my kind of eating.

BU

The Montreal High Lights Festival – a cultural, gastronomic and recreational happening to help snap locals out of their winter doldrums – wrapped up this weekend. Since my wife and I had never attended any of the fine-dining events in previous years, we wanted to give one a try this time around. We mulled over a few events, disregarding those that either (a) were prohibitively expensive or (b) revolved around foie gras (a food that one of us, to put it mildly, truly abhors). Finally, we settled on Dark Chocolate on a White Night, a serving of desserts and sweet wines at the wine bar BU. Good sweets by a renowned chocolatier, with wine chosen to match . . . how could we go wrong?

Well. Some unfortunate things happened. The inadequate service could inspire another blog altogether. Suffice it to say, being made to wait 15 minutes in a crowded doorway for someone to acknowledge our reservation and direct us to a table (which was not even properly set with the chocolate squares that every other table had) made a poor first impression. However, the dark chocolate squares that we did finally receive at least lived up to anticipation. Rich, deep and smooth, the squares had varied percentages of cocoa (63, 66 and 70) and unique flavour overtones of flowers or fruit or leather. It’s a mixed blessing that this stuff is available only in Italy: the price of a few boxes could add up to that of a small villa.

The wines chosen all had their merits, though none of them really knocked our tuques off. My wife had never been very interested in sweet wine to begin with, and this evening confirmed her suspicion that desserts are generally better off being paired with a good coffee. I, on the other hand, appreciated the wines (I’m sorry I can’t remember exactly what they were, except that they were all Italian), but I wasn’t convinced that they matched the desserts. A white with hints of almond and lemongrass was pleasing, though it didn’t add much to our experience of a chocolate and squash (!) cream (which was instantly, soundly rejected by one of us and merely tolerated by the other). A chocolate semifreddo was a winner, and so was the light, fruity red it was paired with – though, again, one did not seem to truly enhance the other. The chocolate mousse was indeed a very good one, though it seemed like too “safe” of a menu choice (but given the chocolate and squash cream, maybe safe is the way to play). Its corresponding wine – a sediment-laden red whose first pour was, despite the waiter’s efforts to convince us of the contrary, past its prime – may as well have been called a port. Our refill (when it eventually came) was better, though still a bit too sweet for our tastes. Finally, a lone marble-sized praline was pleasing but seemed oddly lacking in nuttiness. Although, it should be added that at this point we were so peeved with the service that we just wanted to beat tracks.

Maybe we shouldn’t have set our hopes as high, but we ended up feeling that the $90 we paid would have been much better spent on either a three-course meal or some champagne and a box of truffles. In any case, we can at least cross BU off our list of places to try (and return to).