I attended the Montreal en Lumières dinner at Ikanos last night, which featured Chef Glenn Forbes from Tadoussac and Ikanos’ chef Constant Mentzas preparing a five-course dinner of seafood, game meats, wild mushrooms and berries. They’re repeating the dinner tonight (two nights only!), and there are still a few tables free. Here’s what you can get:
Amuse bouche (pictured above):
Sea urchin with brunoise beet and pear brunoise (and lemon mousse for the non-lactose intolerants)
and diced scallop and clam with olive oil and pink peppercorns
1 st service:
Côte-Nord crustacean and seafood broth with razor clam, saffron and brunoise carrots and celery:
2nd service:
Seared scallops with foie gras terrine, diced celery root and apricot salsa:
This was my favourite dish of the night: A beautifully seared and creamy-on-the-inside scallop with a thick slice of foie gras terrine. The hit of curled green onion added bitterness and the tiny pieces of apricots added sweetness. And big grains of salt for a salty hit when you least expected it, bringing all the flavours together. A perfect balance.
2nd service, part 2:
Crispy sweetbreads with braised fennel, baby chard, veal jus and spinach purée:
The sweetbreads were wonderfully tender on the inside and charred and smoky on the outside.
3rd service:
Striped bass with sweet garlic, green peas and chanterelle and shimeji mushrooms
The mushrooms were deliciously salty and with the grains of salt on the fish’s seared skin made this very tasty.
3rd service, part 2:
Grilled cod, Jerusalem artichoke, white turnips and charred green onion
The cod was incredibly tender, though bland as cod usually is, so I ate each bite with some of the mushrooms from the striped bass and it was perfect.
4th service:
Deer filet mignon with Ferme Manicouagan haskap berries
I loved this deer. It was so flavourful and wonderfully medium-rare the whole way through, without any gradation (no parts cooked more than others closer to the exterior). There was so much flavour. I found the haskap berries too acidic and the wilted spinach too salty, but my friend loved the combination. I just closed my eyes and chewed every bit of flavour out of the deer. If red meat always tasted like that, I’d want to eat more of it.
4th service, part 2:
Duck breast with date sauce, parsnip chips and grilled maitake mushrooms
My first slice of duck was bland compared to the deer, but the second one (the slice right next to it) was super flavourful. Did I change or did it? If you’ve never had a parsnip chip, it’s a little sweeter than a potato chip.
5th service:
Neither myself nor my friend could have the regular desserts, which were:
White chocolate crème brûlée with fried cloudberries
and
Chocolate and ginger brownie with blackcurrant cream
So instead, we got some scoops of apricot sorbet with apricot marmalade (I think it was apricot marmalade, but it had these little seeds in it) and meringues. My friend laughed as I closed my eyes with each spoonful and smiled. Sometimes I love being lactose and gluten intolerant.
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