You’ll never hear me say, “Boy, we really need more bistros in Montreal.” There are already great ones (L’Express), very good ones (Café Cherrier) and scores of mediocre ones. But when I heard Le Balmoral in the Place des Festivals, smack in the middle of the high-tourist area around the Place-des-Arts metro, was getting a bistro revamp and that the new place, Le Blumenthal, was getting good reviews for its locavore menu, I was interested. I was more interested when I heard the wine menu was natural- and biodynamic-leaning. And I was far more interested when I saw the prices.
The prices aren’t hiked up for the tourist crowd. Not even the wine. In fact, especially not the wine. They’re only about two times SAQ prices. In this area of the city, you’d expect at least three, since restaurants make so much money on wine and this is such a high rent area. But one reason the prices might be a little lower is that, as the menu states, “Le Blumenthal is a non-profit restaurant. All profits finance the free activities presented at La Maison du Festival de Jazz.” So prices can theoretically be lower since their margins are lower, I guess?
I usually put more effort into choosing what to eat than drink, but here the wine was a tougher choice. Actually, reading the list felt a bit like being a kid at a candy shop. There were impressive bottles of Greek, Czech, South African and even Canadian wines as well as lots of French listed by region. We wanted a bottle of red, so the biggest draws for me were these three:
- The Olivier Lemasson Poivre et Sel 2016 at $61.
- Maury Sec 2013 Grand Largue, La Petite Baigneuse at $70
- Morgon 2016, Marcel Lapierre at $72
I’m not a huge wine connoisseur. I just know these are great bottles. So we called over the sommelier, who said the same and described each lovingly. We went with the Lapierre, a classic Gamay. There’s nothing funky in this wine from Beaujolais, made by a disciple of Jules Chauvin, the father of the natural wine movement. Lapierre actually died in 2010 but his son Mathieu took over in 2005, continuing the father-son tradition of the Domaine.
This wine is also available at the SAQ for about $35, which means some sulfites are added, but it’s very minimal. It’s a very stable wine, as in, the chances of it going off in transport are very low, unlike some other purist natural wines.
It’s medium-bodied with a beautiful blend of fruit and minerality. It gives me goosebumps. You could drink it with anything or by itself. We had fish and duck to pair, so it was perfect.
First world problems, yes.
The Food
We started with the salad ($7), the salmon tartare ($15) and the beet salad ($11).
I don’t generally order $7 salads when there’s octopus on the menu, but the octopus app costs almost as much as a main and the kitchen would have to skip the curry butter because I’m gluten intolerant, so I went with the salad instead. Thank goodness.
It was nothing but lettuce, with a mustard-sherry vinaigrette. And it was awesome. Those lettuce greens from Chez Birri are incredible. Yes, incredible lettuce. Birri is a producer with a stall at Jean-Talon Market, and it sells to a ton of restaurants in Montreal. Most don’t have the balls to feature the lettuce all on its own and charge $7 for it because they know how to make a great vinaigrette. This was the best salad I ate this year. The vinaigrette sticks into all the nooks and crannies of the lettuce leaves, which weren’t wilty soft or romaine-tough. The lettuce I pulled directly from my own garden this past summer couldn’t compete. And the whole mustard seeds were a nice touch in a vinaigrette that wasn’t overly oily, tart or sweet – it was just right.
Here’s the beet salad with carrots, orange, homemade ricotta and honey vinaigrette:
The vegetables are pooled on top of the thin ricotta spread below and topped with arugula and sunflower seeds. Simple.
As for the tartare, it was a little less classically served, with an avocado purée (right), horseradish on top and an arugula salad (left). My gluten free mother couldn’t have the bagel chips that were supposed to come with it. I didn’t want to know if the salmon was farmed Atlantic or something more sustainable. That probably makes me a bad Newfoundlander (I lived through the cod moratorium, after all, and hate all the antibiotics that go into the ocean through fish feed strewn over in-ocean Atlantic salmon farms, and are swept out of the cages where they infect wild fish. All I can say is that the salmon was hand-chopped to a consistent size large enough to make it toothsome and not mushy.
Main courses: duck breast ($28) and trout ($25).
The duck breast was roasted until the skin was crisp and the fat had soaked through the meat. It came with squash purée, peppers and a sea buckthorn sauce as well as the restaurant’s favourite sunflower seeds, which popped up everywhere. Those orange berries on the duck? Those are the very sour sea buckthorn berries. They’re high in anti-oxidants and now being grown in Quebec. Their acidity is balanced by the sweet squash and a rich duck jus.
The trout came à la grenobloise (with browned butter, capers, parsley and lemon) on top of French green beans and broccoli-rabe with a side of ratatouille. The caper berries on top were a great local touch. The large, brined berries are exactly like capers, just bigger. The green beans were a generous serving and perfectly al dente. The ratatouille tasted fresh, despite it being November – long paste pepper and eggplant season.
Would I go back? Definitely for wine. The food prices aren’t as much of a steal, but the money goes to the Maison du Festival de Jazz, so if you like those free concerts, it’s hard to be a Scrooge about it. And the food is very well prepared, mostly made with local, sometimes seasonal ingredients, if not exciting.
Are you allowed to just order a salad and split a bottle of wine?
Le Blumenthal
Address: 305 Rue Sainte-Catherine O., Montréal, QC
Hours: Mon-Wed 11:30am-10pm; Thurs-Sat 11:30am-11pm; Sun 10:30am-10pm
How much: ~$50 per person for a main and a glass of wine with tax and tip; ~$170 for a two-course dinner for two with a bottle of wine
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