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Bô Cuisine Asiatique


Thesorus

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Openned about 2 weeks ago ...

First, the restaurant is at the old "café ciné-lumière"; they cleaned it up, and it looks nice, red and black in the front of the room, with large chinese lettering painted on the walls; simple but elegant table and accessory design.

I went there for lunch time last thursday; and had only a look at the night menu; but for lunch, they offer a variety of wraps, and a small ( 6 ) number of table d'hote dishes with some revamped classics; their version of the generic "poulet du général tao" looked very different from what I'm used to see, less sweet than usual, the chicken looked real, and not overly fried. My plate was the sauted aubergines, which was nice as well, don't remember the exact details, but was enjoyable nonetheless.

Staff was nice.

I might try it again tonight.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Went there for dinner the other week, on a saturday night, and was sitting at the small bar ( more on that later )

I was hungry, so I decided to try 2 entrées, the wonton soup, which was very good, a nice broth, and some meaty wontons in it, the broth was tasty wiht a touch of ginger; for my second appetizer, I went for the pork dumplings, while good, they were not standing out.

for the main meal, I had the baked scallops with the creamy tobiko sauce; a nice idea, but a bit too creamy for my taste, maybe if I had only the soup it would have been ok ! :rolleyes:

I also had one of their "special" martini, basic martinis lightly flavored, mine was with leaf coriander, refreshing.

A note on the bar; I went there alone, and did not want to be sitting at a table by myself, the table layout was not set up to accomodate one person, and did not want to sit on right next to a couple while the other tables were empty, so I was offered a place a the bar ( 4, 5 places available ) , nice, I can do a bit of people watching, but as the evening went on, I felt a bit out of place; Other people people came in and wanted to be seating at the bar ( restaurant was full that night ), but the staff did not want to have other people there. So at the end of my meal.

I enquired about that, and they told me that because they just openned the place, they did not want to put too much people there, and that eventually they let more than one person sit there.

'ny way... I will give the place a couple more weeks before trying again.

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Inspired by Thesorus we ventured out last Thursday:

The décor, clean, red and black with a hardwood floor. A bar and a few tables at the front with steps up to a dining area at the back.

There are ten other people in the place when we arrive and, as it turn out, the waiter is my friends neighbour from Westmount. We look over the menu and decide on a few appetizers to share and then one main between us. The service is good, even if the waiter seems a bit hesitant to recommend any one dish over another.

After a bit of Tsing Tao our food starts arriving.

Scallop tartare with a creamy tobiko dressing comes in a martini glass with some cuke, pickled ginger and small sheets of toasted seasoned nori (like the japanese snack packs) on the side. On top rests a crispy strip of some deep fried dough. The suggestion is made that we wrap the tartare in the strips of nori “like a Chinese taco”, and although this is a good texture play, the flavour of the seaweed runs all over the tartare, which is a mix of mayo (Japanese?) and tobiko with some super fresh scallops. Much more to our liking is the crispy strip, the texture is even crisper than the nori and the flavour is neutral and slightly rich from the frying. It goes much better with the tartare.

Steamed pork dumplings with Szechwan and chilli vinegar dipping sauces come in a little bamaboo dim sum steamer. Four cute little soup dumplings (tang bao?) staring out at us. Although I love delicate dumplings, these are overly so. The wrappers are so fragile that any attempt to extract the dumplings from their steamer home results in torn skin and, more unfortunately, spilling of the delicious broth inside. The filling, texturally I find too delicate and in need of more spring. The flavours are good but fragile, and can’t compete with the dipping sauces both of which are based on Chinese black vinegar, one with somewhat thickly julienned ginger, and the other we presume to be the Szechwan style. Neither are very spicy and both are very very similar in flavour. What really stands out on this plate, and it comes back again, is a salad of shredded nappa cabbage, topped with salsa of ginger and chopped canned lychee. It took us about 5 minutes to dissect this salad, the lychee being the mystery ingredient, and it is a total winner. If they offered this salad by the bowlful I would definitely be in line.

Grilled baby squid was unavailable so at the waiters suggestion we settle on the grilled chicken satay with kaffir lime and peanut sauce. The chicken is lightly marinated, perfectly cooked, and rests on some more sexy nappa salad with lychee salsa. A generous moat of thai lime flecked peanut sauce surrounds, rich, not too sweet. I really like this dish. I couldn’t put into words why and no it’s not just the lychee salsa. It’s just a dish that comes together for me, the sum of the parts being more than the whole and all that. Probably also the lack of sweetness that is the bane of so many peanut goop sauces.

Billing your General Tao chicken as the best in the city takes a bit of balls and I have to confess that I am not really a General Tao fan; I can count the number of times I’ve eaten it on one hand, but I like to think that maybe I’m just waiting for a revelatory experience. So we orderd the Tao.

Once again the meat is perfectly cooked and the batter is light. The sauce is thin but intensely sweet (maltose?), Sean assures me that sweetness is a Tao trademark but I still find it overpowering. It needs heat to balance it out, and, although there is good meaty flavour, the sweetness just blots it out for me. Now if you are a Tao fan this may be exactly what you’re looking for, a prefect blend of high quality ingredients with a nod towards the flavours of the Tao you had as a child. I approach this dish with no golden light cast by nostalgia and that may very well be my loss. A small side of steamed chinese veg, one fried rice noodle garnish that is spectacular and unwieldy and fabulous, some steamed rice, and there you have it. Am I converted, no. Is it a damn good Tao, you bet, probably just not meant for me.

I never made it to Soy, but I will definitely be back to Bo, for more food and to try one of their sexy sounding martinis.

56$ for food three beers, after tax and before tip.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
MaeveH gives Bô a thumbs-up in today's issue of Hour: Be my Bô baby.

I must admit that I found Bô somewhat disappointing. Not that the food was bad. In fact, i found it all quite good. The lemongrass and cilantro martinis are very refreshing. The food is prepared reasonably well and with subtlety. My problem is that the restaurant's conceit is that it covers all of the major cuisines of southeast asia (japanese, chinese, thai, indonesia and vietnamese). Thus it was my hope that I would be able to experience all of the aformentioned cuisines. However, to me the spicing and food were all prepared in a chinese manner, thus was served was all chinese food, though some dishes were inspired by, say, vietnamese or ... spices. Like I said the food is quite good, but was not congruent with my a priori expectations.

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does it have good gyoza? i herd that montreal has great asian food i need a fix of greasy dumplings

I never heard such a thing, in any case ....

Bo does serve it as an appetizer but I didn't partake. If I would be in a need of a gyoza fix I would go to Isakaya.

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carswell you make me laugh out loud

i guess the answer is NO!

when i used to live here before the answer i knew was NO not compared to even toronto forget about comparing to new york

but now with the big asian community you would hope a better resto market would show up

i will try isakaya and report back for the gyoza. so far i had them at sakata and they were like tiny balls of rubber

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