La Chronique
99 Laurier West
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7 1/2 out of 10
Contemporary/Mediterranean
The Festival en Lumiere makes me feel a little like a kid in a candy shop…well, a Westmount candy shop where a lollipop costs $5. Sometimes that lollipop is worth it, like when it’s a gift for your birthday, and it’s rainbow-flavoured so you enjoy the whole thing instead of getting bored after 3 licks of the same taste.
La Chronique is offering (though it’s now sold out) a $25 lunch with optional wine pairing for an extra $20. I booked weeks in advance and waited until last week for what I hoped would be a great meal. Was it worth it?
Yes, very much so. $25 for three courses, well-executed, in a fancy setting, with a good sommelier, and poor hydration.
I’ll admit I was more than a little nervous after I arrived and my friend had been sitting for 10 minutes without water. Yes, it’s my fault I was five minutes late, and he was five minutes early, but he was sitting down with absolutely nothing in front of him besides an empty water glass. The restaurant was certainly not in a panic, and while other tables had water and bread and first courses, my friend had nothing but a non-smile and was as miffed as I was that there was nothing to sip. After I sat down water still didn’t come for a good 10 minutes. Our server had another table in the same sitution. What the server didn’t know was that the man at that table was a connoisseur of great French wines. He happened to be a great composer who has written entire musical works named after vineyards in the Burgundy wine region. You don’t not give this man water. Of course, he is far too much of a gentleman to say anything, and he waited patiently – and I waited patiently to say hello until he had a glass of wine in front of him, and at long last, some bread.
Strike no. 2 was the grilled octopus appetizer. Yes, on the outside it was charred and looked gorgeous with its bumpy purple skin curled over thinly-sliced fingerling potatoes, roasted red peppers and artichoke hearts, all smothered in green olive oil. But the octopus was chewy on the inside, fatty on the outside and greasy all over. The artichokes were so vinegary that they made you pucker, completely messing up the balance of the dish, making the roasted red peppers and wine seem too sweet by comparison. Fortunately I could now comfort myself with the mini-breads. Skip the oregano one, go for the one with a little bit of sweetness, tons of yeast, and the French baguette top, and sprinkle on a little coarse salt (and butter for those who can). “Mediterranean-inspired meal”? Where was the olive oil on the table?
A few quick notes on the wine: With the octopus was a Cazes Canon Muscat. It’s a slightly sweet wine from Rousillon, France that you can find at the SAQ. for $15.50 a bottle. It’s organic and is a beautiful wine with slightly sweet seafood, as this dish was meant to be. Too bad it’s not spring when this dish could have been made with naturally sweet artichokes.
Now I said this meal was worth it and from what I’ve written above it may not seem that way, but I still insist it was a great value, mostly based on the next course. For some reason “Mediterranean-inspired” seems to mean “Spring” to most chefs. It gives the semblance of lighter dishes such as an almost-dairy-free risotto with peas, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, a little bit of toasted sesame seeds, a single dis-robed mussel, 3 (hopefully Nordic, thus sustainable) shrimp, 2 simply seared scallops, 3/4 of a serving of seared tuna (well, you can cross your fingers it was the deemed “sustainable albacore” tuna from B.C., but who knows, and as if I believe that anyway) and a sauce vierge of olive oil, a little lemon and some herbs. It was perfect. Everything spring should be. It’s hardly a light dish with all that olive oil soaking into the already-creamy risotto, but it’s so heart healthy and soft but chewy, warm and satisfying, nutty and a little sweet that this shouted beaches. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was an unseasonably warm day and while risotto usually means winter comfort because of the presence of a ton of butter, cream, and cheese, the peas and zucchini – the fresh green of the dish – more than implied warmer weather to come. And my lactose-intolerant stomach was very happy. Unlike the artichokes in the grilled octopus starter, the cherry tomatoes were sweet and not acidic, so balanced well with the scallops instead of overpowering.
About the toasted sesame: a lot of people would think that sesame seeds have no place in this dish, but risotto is not supposed to be over-cooked and the rice should naturally have an almost-nutty flavour from being al dente, so the sesame seeds were a subtle emphasis of this nuttiness. It took me a little bit of time before I realized what it was even. With the two big juicy scallops you could go back and forth between the creamy nuttiness of the risotto and the tender sweetness of the scallops and in 5 minutes decide that an escape to Greece from Montreal for the rest of February would be a really good idea.
The only problem with the dish in my opinion is that the tuna was overkill and didn’t really add anything to the dish. It clashed with the scallops, even though it was properly-seared. I’m also longing for summer when you can get zucchini that taste like something, but even fresh they’re more for texture and colour than taste. And one mussel? Really? One? Not that I want a cook in the kitchen counting mussels for a plate, and maybe another diner got five, but they’re so cheap and actually go well with the scallops (unlike the expensive tuna) that a few more wouldn’t hurt.
The other main was Quebec lamb with a potato-eggplant purée and some kind of squash purée. I figured my risotti would be the dairy-heavy dish, but it was the bright orange purée that was sporting cream. The lamb was perfect, of course – so tender and moist with an olive jus (“sauce” for the rest of us) that soaked down into the purées.
Two reasons I don’t like this almost-perfect dish: there’s no texture, and the potato wrecks the sweet, smoothness of the puréed eggplant. You’ve got two purées and one falling apart piece of meat. Where’s the crunch, the chew, something that doesn’t remind you of baby food? Even the bread was soft. I know the risotto wasn’t exactly crunchy, but “lamb on thick soup” is not as appealing as what the dish was actually called. The best eggplant purée I’ve ever had sat under mackerel at the new Comptoir Charcuteries et Vins and it has now wrecked most other eggplant purées for me. My complaint (though others will surely disagree) was that the starchiness of the potato wrecked the slippery-smoothness of the eggplant. It also made it a little blander, and the olive jus made it slightly bitter, all of which take away from the natural sweetness. There was also an orange zest flavour that probably went with the lamb, but not with the eggplant and olive juice. But that could just be my personal dislike of things orange in most dishes.
The wine with the lamb was another organic option from the SAQ I’d bought before. It was just fine. Nothing to write home about, but definitely a decently-priced bottle to pick up for yourself sometime.
Dessert: A chocolate molten cake all wrapped up like a present in some phyllo pastry with a scoop of salted caramel and nutty ice cream (I think I may have that wrong, though, because it sounds amazing and was just fine, and the ice cream didn’t taste like much that was caramel or nutty). The chocolate cake was warm but that’s about all I can say for it. The allure lay in the fact that you have to wait an extra 10 minutes for it to warm up. “Ooh…It must be good.” I do love a place that doesn’t just nuke dessert. You could tell this was a restaurant with a lot of integrity in terms of ingredients and cooking standards, not just from the fact that they don’t microwave warm chocolate cakes….
The other dessert was wonderful: a pavlova with blueberry sorbet, creme anglaise and fresh blueberries. The meringue for the pavlova was rock-hard, being made in advance I’m sure, and you kind of needed a knife to cut it (which, I’m also sure, left some more lady-like patrons than myself with meringue flying everywhere), but the blueberry sorbet almost made me wish I’d actually ordered the trio of house-made sorbets because it was so good on its own – not too sweet, and with real blueberry flavour. It was better, however, with the pure sugar rush of the meringue and creamy, lulling sweetness of the creme anglaise. Even the blueberries actually tasted like blueberries instead of over-sized balls of juice and fibre.
Water! Water! Where’s the water? After a chocolate cake and an injection of sugar and egg whites you definitely need more water. My friend got his coffee but I sat empty-handed, again.
That was fine, though, as I was still lost in the risotto.
This particular festival en lumiere lunch is sold out, but an average (not three course…) lunch at La Chronique is actually very reasonable, so go another day and cross your fingers for risotto. You can also go to the $60 “Mediterranean-inspired” dinner for the Festival that’s on until the end of this week, if you don’t mind a splurge. There will probably be risotto there too.
514.271.3095
How much: $25 lunch (3 courses during the festival, you can maybe get 2 for that much on normal days), $45 with wine pairing
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