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EATING HIS WORDS   (p. 2 of 3)

1   |   2   |   3   |   Nov '04

Les Chèvres specializes in vegetables, which makes me wonder about the name. Perhaps it was selected because the restaurant is so serene and mannerly it particularly appeals to old goats like me.

I tend not to order vegetables in restaurants, although I am willing to consume them when they appear without warning on my plate. Here the vegetarian tasting menu sounded savoury and satisfying, and I loved everything except the moulded tower of potatoes and artichokes, rather pedestrian despite an olive-marinated panko topping. Boone refused to rely entirely on plant growth. His meal included a terrine of foie gras that reminded me of the terrine I once ate at Pierre Gagnaire’s three-star restaurant in Saint-Étienne, France (now closed for reasons having nothing to do with the foie gras).

Nothing about Les Chèvres is fanciful. The wood is blond, the walls light green, the exposed pipes wrapped so they don’t look ugly. The parsnip soup is sweet and memorable and so is the corn flan, and any item made with chocolate should not be overlooked. There was no restaurant like this when I lived in Montreal, but that’s not the fault of the city. There were none anywhere.

The food is every bit as good, although more elaborate and expensive, at Brontë, which is located in the Meridien hotel, a bit of a downscale locale for such high-brow fare. The chef has a wonderful touch with presentation (everything artfully intertwined) and unusual combinations (yes, lobster wrapped in Parma ham works). I can’t say much for the name: Go to Brontë with your wife, as I did, and I guarantee she’ll call you a nitwit before the meal is over for never having read anything by Emily, Charlotte or that other one. Advice to the owners: Change the name to Bronson (as in Charles), and the guys will pile in.

These days, the city’s most acclaimed restaurant is Au pied de cochon, which combines elements of La Binerie and L’Express. While there are few restaurants like Les Chèvres, I know of none whatsoever that resemble Au pied de cochon, where the cuisine is Nouvelle Depression and the decor is part coffee shop, part bistro. I tried such uplifted standards as foie gras poutine (French fries, pork gravy, cheese curds and sautéd – but badly deveined – foie gras); pudding chômeur made with butter and maple syrup; and a lobster roll consisting of an intensely flavourful one-and-a-half pound lobster flown in from some far-flung part of Quebec, arugula, what seemed like one-and-a-half pounds of mayonnaise plus foie gras terrine, all on thick, toasted brioche. I took two huge bites of this $45 creation, this sub of Frankenstein, and surrendered.

For simpler meals, I admired Bu (a wine bar) and Delfino (a neighbourhood fish house). In general, I avoid wine bars, which tend to offer flights of opened-yesterday Rieslings accompanied by domestic charcuterie. Bu is the wine bar idealized, with a stunning list and a rational staff. Here, indeed, is domestic charcuterie, but it’s hard to resist, particularly the house-made capicollo (Italian-style salami) and the locally made bresaola (air-dried beef). The gravlax would have captured my sliced-salmon sweepstakes had Delfino not served smoked salmon from New Brunswick that was the epitome of softness, richness and maple accents.

Delfino is a mom-and-pop-style establishment where the fish filets are cut, scaled, deboned and grilled to order. I asked owner George Georgi if such attention to detail was paying off, and he replied, “Montreal is a nice city, a great city, but it pretends to be rich and it is not. The few rich people who are here do not spend their money here.”

“The girls are now forbidden to go out with the customers,” said my waitress, who wore a skimpy outfit that made her breasts pop out, like puff pastry.

I was at Globe, the restaurant on Saint-Laurent credited with creating employment opportunities for young women who might otherwise have squandered their youth modelling. This is where a dazed Ben Affleck tended bar. The same sort of overly appealing women also work at Buona Notte, just up the street, except they seem to be even taller. (I remember when only Parisian waiters looked down on me.)

Besides chatting up the waitress, I tried a few entrees. Crispy oysters sat in a pond of jus. The same for the liver. Ditto, the steak. The food here is nowhere as perky as the waitresses. Mostly, it’s wet.

“Do movie stars try to date you?” I asked, when the waitress returned.

“Hasn’t happened to me,” she replied. “The ones who did are gone.”

“To Hollywood?”

“Some left to be actors. I don’t think it worked out. Some of them are a little naive.”

Amazing. Women today still fall for the same lines they did in the 1930s. I thought letting them into the taverns was going to solve that problem.

I had one more reservation, at Anise, but I had already made up my mind about Montreal’s new restaurants. They are more authentic than most of the places I’ve admired over the years. The restaurant culture of Montreal is now where it should have been heading all along. The products, the chefs and the menus are resoundingly local and startlingly singular. The great allure of eating in Montreal today is that you could not possibly be anywhere else. And you would not want to be.

I never did go to Anise. My wife and I walked by and looked in. The $65 tasting menu included duck tartare.

“I’m not eating that,” she announced. For once, I had to agree with her.

When I called to cancel, to make certain I wasn’t doing Anise a disservice, I asked the gentleman on the line if the duck tartare was indeed raw duck.

“It’s nice,” he said.

“You know,” I said, “not a lot of people hold raw duck in high esteem.”

His reply warmed me, for as much as I admire all that has come to pass in Montreal, I appreciate a culture that honours its past. Clearly, Anise does that.

“It’s all right,” the man told me. “It’s French duck.” [ ]

Fork it Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater, a collection of Alan Richman's food writing for GQ, was published by Harper Collins in October 2004.

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