“Can we go to that place you sent me last time?”
Designing food itineraries for friends and family travelling to Montreal is like giving a kid a firecracker—dangerous and fun. Last time my mom was in town I dropped her off at La Porte for a solo dinner I couldn’t stay for, sad that I couldn’t join her in what turned out to be the best lamb of her life. I’d always thought of La Porte as a fish place, as the Northern French family-run restaurant (with chef Thierry and host Pascale Rouyé) twice did amazing things with fish for me. But my mother’s rave reviews of her dinner brought us back to the restaurant together for dinner a year later. There, I learned for myself that La Porte can handle just about everything, though the fish is, as I remembered, perfectly cooked.
Why doesn’t everybody with tastebuds know about this place? I’ll take it over Les 400 Coups, Garde Manger, or Au Pied de Cochon any day. There’s nothing wrong with those places, but they have far more buzz than La Porte. Is it too stuffy? I don’t think so. The service is wonderfully French and familial. The restaurant is beautiful, with deep purple, exotic silks draped along walls in a vaulted space. There’s a small back room that feels more private, and an open kitchen where you see the chef focusing on the plating of every dish. He doesn’t waste a step, but neither does he seem hurried or stressed. Watching him move, it seems that cooking is his natural state.
And this is all and well, but then the food comes, and that’s when the restaurant bowls you over. The menu has different options, from à la carte, to a $65 four-service “pleasure menu” with amuse and mignardises (and optional cheese course), a six-service $85 “gourmand” menu, and a $100 eight-course discovery menu with an amuse-bouche, two appetizers, fresh market fish, a main course, cheeses, dessert and mignardises. Sounds good on paper, looked great in presentation, but it tasted even better.
First, on wine: The selection by the glass is intentionally small but carefully chosen to match the food. It’s good quality private imports at very reasonable prices. They also have a couple half bottles (one white—Sancerre, I believe—and one red), and the list of bottles is predominantly French, and predominantly lovely. I took a glass of the Loire white. That’s all the description it had. I asked what would go with the fish I chose for a main and this was the answer. It did. At La Porte I have no problems with trust.
To start, an amuse bouche of cured salmon with half a small, candied, bitter orange fruit that made this extraordinary. What was the name of it again?
Then a single seared scallop ($19 à la carte…maybe that’s why this place isn’t abuzz with expense account-less diners) with diced wild mushrooms and pesto. The earthiness of the mushrooms and bitter pesto balanced the sweet scallop:
The appetizer of the day was crab and Nordic shrimp. And since the season just started, every local, seasonal restaurant in the city has the gems on their menu. Here it’s served with an avocado purée, tart Granny Smith apples, and sweet apple chips. Again, the perfect balance of savoury avocado, sweet acid from the apples, and sweet seafood, with so many textures that your mouth stops thinking and just smiles:
The mains: Icelandic cod (farmed, but MSC certified, I believe) with roasted potatoes, seaweed, kale, partially dried tomatoes, sweet roasted and grilled shallots, and foam (seaweed foam? I forget, I’m afraid).
The fish was just flaking and perfectly tender. Cod never has a lot of its own flavour, so the little spurts of sweetness and tartness from the tomatoes ad the salt from the diced kombu seaweed on top brought it to life. And despite the foam, it wasn’t a fussy dish. It was light but not small, fresh but not bombastic.
But I liked the fish of the day even more, mostly because of the ham chips that were little salt explosions, working the same way as the seaweed in the dish above so that every little nibble seasoned an entire bite of halibut. With mushrooms that soaked up the cooking juices, snowpeas with real flavour of their own (not overwhelmed by sauce or other elements of the dish), and a fava bean purée bed:
The only thing I didn’t think worked was the meat jus. It was so strong and rich compared to the rest of the dish and really didn’t work with anything else. If this had been beef or lamb, then it would have been great, but with the fish? Maybe not. Still, I just avoided it and the dish was perfect. They had probably changed it because I couldn’t have the original dish (gluten and lactose intolerant that I am).
But then.
Wow. The best dessert I’ve eaten in a restaurant in…I don’t know how long. I gave my restrictions (no gluten, no dairy, no chocolate, no coffee), which would stump may a chef. And thank goodness it was a quiet night when the chef could be creative, because this is what the chef came up with:
Spun caramel shards on top of a banana-caramel sorbet with caramelized pineapple wedges, butterscotch, pistachio marshmallows, dairy-free white chocolate bark, yuzu jellies, and a couple dabs of brightly singing sea buckthorn purée (the other ubiquitous ingredient on locavore menus). And believe it or not, it all worked together. The not-too-sweet pineapple with the cold and light but dense sorbet, the savoury-sweet marshmallow, the simple but addictive jellies, and the shining sea buckthorn that broke through all the sugar. And those bitter caramel shards and the pistachio marhsmallows were just enough savoury to balance.
Heaven in a dessert slab.
The maple macarons, dark chocolate-wrapped marshmallows, and yuzu candy mignardises were indulgent, but not necessary after the dessert made up of the restaurant’s collection of petite sweets:
La Porte
3627 St-Laurent, north of Prince Arthur
How much: $65-$120, plus a $10 glass of wine or $50 bottle.
Hours: Lunch Tues-Fri, noon to 2pm; Dinner Tues-Sat 6pm-10pm
Reservations: Yes (Open Table)
Phone: 514-282-4996
Leave a Reply