soupnancy

Cooking fancy food all the time, I crave and love the simple things the most. In the summer it's easy, yah, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, corn, whatever - on their own they are beautiful, a revelation every year. Tomatoes with sea salt and olive oil, wilted greens with garlic, a carrot pulled out of the earth, corn on the cob, these are incontestible good tastes. A crinkleroot sandwich! A sauté of wild mushrooms! Wild greens in a meslcun with some berries, herbs and olive oil! All simple foods but alas, only in season. In the dead of winter, we have less to get excited about; there are always mashed potatoes, and like others mentioned, there's always bread and butter, buttered noodles and eggs. My favourite is boiled basmati rice with garnishes from my fridge (a little sausage, some scallions, an egg, some greens..). But the best of all common foods is the GRILLEDED CHEESE SANDWICH made with a good cheese and a good bread, with a some good mustard.

Fun reading.. I've been on both sides of the hors d'oeuvre disaster, seeing a creation that seemed like a great idea in the kitchen become impossible in the cocktail scenario, and I've dribbled crumbs and sauce all over many a fancy outfit. In any case, your vivid descriptions of the hits and misses above bring it all back, and will serve to remind me to steer clear of the messy things. Although images of molten foie gras, gooey projectiles and prissy guests fumbling with their food can be amusing here, they don't really make for good business. Thanks..

Why are seared scallops on every menu?? Readily available good scallops (rarely dry, but still). Easy to cook, easy to sell. No MEP, all you do is remove a little muscle. You know that it will go out right with a minute of coaching and a hot pan whoever is cooking.. adaptable to a myriad of recipes/ seasons, you know it's a winner, giving you a dependable fish/seafood option on the menu, and most importantly that it will sell, you won't be stuck making fish croquettes for a lunch or staff meal. The unilateral thing - that's one of those 'anyone could have thought of that and haven't we always been doing that?' kind of things, but the fact is that once it was indeed deemed innovative but now has become blah. I remember doing it at L'Eau à la Bouche in 2000 or 2001, anyway before CCP, but like Auberge Hatley, it was certainly following a semi established trend in France.. I think cooks want to be doing other things today, but people love it..

Here's the deal.. As for the mushroom event, we added a weekend (November 9-11), but there are only a few spots still left on Sunday the 11th (lunch). Besides that, the rest of the year, we operate mainly on the weekend with a regular menu of five courses featuring wild plants, mushrooms and game, 55$ BYOW, and the menu changes every week. You can see the last 10 menus on the site; they are up to date. Yes, you can come only 2 (people), Saturday is the day - when we are always open because the demand is there, otherwise we open for groups of 10 or more any night (so then you can add on also). The 25% deposit thing is just to scare people into taking their reservations seriously - we rarely enforce it except for large groups. When you ask about English, well.. we are anglo friendly (afterall I am one), however François, the owner and host doesn't speak English, so much of the elaborate descriptions and storytelling takes place in French, but some of the waitresses speak English, and good food and ambiance makes all that irrelevant, we hope..

I was lucky enough to dine at Toqué since my last post. Again it was stellar. No tuna and avocado in sight, instead an array of ultra seasonal dishes featuring the best of what’s available locally. Each dish was bright, with plenty of flavour, yet subtle, with spot on sauces and garnishes, always with a surprising flourish. Stand-outs were the oyster amuse with radish, my companion’s lobster ravioli, the scallops and the vegetables that accompanied my lamb and my mackerel, not that the protein part wasn’t exquisite too. It’s just that there were little chanterelles, wild sea greens, baby seasonal veg, nasturtium, rose petals, raspberries, all kinds of fresh local stuff treated magnificently everywhere. Just about every time I’ve eaten at Toqué, I’ve felt that this kitchen was peaking, and especially lately, when funny enough, I am more picky and less wooed by fancy-pants food than I was before. I just feel like they’ve finally grown out of the old, quaint and amazing-for-its-time Toqué and grown, falling into stride with their new digs and ever prominent reputation, while always staying true. Joe Beef and many others in Mtl. are equally good at their own thing, and I might be more often inclined to dine in that kind of more casual place, but that doesn’t take away from Toqué being at the height of fine dining in Montreal. All restaurants are different beasts anyway, you just have to know which one suits you and your mood. But if you want to wow, knowing that you are going to a formal - fine food place, Toqué is it.

I get them from straight from the farm, from Ferme Bourgeois in St-Canut when available. But I do know that they are available at Jean Talon; when I was on the des Kiwis et des Hommes show, they found me some, sorry I don't know where..

I think many people give Lesley too much of a hard time. Credentials aside, a critic’s job is a difficult one. I know I couldn’t sleep at night having to give one or two or three or no stars to a restaurant that you know has a team of hard working people behind, especially knowing how many details make the restaurant experience an ephemeral one. There’s also the inherent struggle in rating restaurants of all kinds - you have to make it all fit when you’re reviewing high end places, bistros and everything in between. And then you have to deal with the backlash. It would be much more stress-free to be anonymous à la Ruth Reichl; it is much harder to be yourself, to be forced to be transparent, to answer for your calls in a small city. You speak of her being biased. Any human being is. I don’t know her, but I feel that she does make an effort. The Toque review to me was a surprise. At the same time, she doesn’t pretend to be above it all, she lets her personality come through. She’s opinionated but human. So sometimes, you can tell she liked this or that because of who she is. You know who her favourites are, and what ticks her off. Then again, she admits to not knowing anything about barbeque instead of acting like she knows it all. Even if I don’t always agree with her, I think she does a good job, showing a balance of professional experience and common diner experience. She isn’t that critic who is a journalist first, who could often learn much more about food, nor is she a stalwart food industry person who is out of touch with the average person – she is somewhere in between, and closer to the consumer. She’s not perfect, but my bet is that she serves the the average diner well with her reviews. Although I do love/ hate the stars.

Toqué may not be beyond reproach, but no restaurant is. I am happy that Leslie gave them the four stars they deserve. Toqué (after 15 yrs) is still head and shoulders above most restaurants in Montreal, especially now that every other restaurant is a bistro. Not that there is anything wrong with bistros, we all love our bistro fare, but Toqué is something else. Good for them for keeping la haute gastronomie alive in Mtl when no one else wants to do it.