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).