The big news from earlier this year at Toque! is that the chef de cuisine, Charles-Antoine Crete, left to open his own place. Since then, I’ve been wondering what’s happening in the Toque! kitchen, and how the food coming out of its hallowed walls compares to what came before.
But anything under the name of Normand Laprise, however, is bound to be quality, I figured. So this is how my return visit went a couple weeks ago:
1. Tomato amuse-bouche.
This started the tasting menu. It’s tomato season, so almost every course had tomato in it. I wish it was early spring. The first peas of the season are a whole lot less acidic than even the sweetest cherry tomatoes. This was a tomato foam with cocoa beans (the white things sticking out underneath) and basil flowers. The purple things look like lavender. They’re not, said the server. The foam was light and a little sour, but in a refreshing way. The cocoa beans didn’t taste like anything. Maybe an un-toasted almond mixed with a white kidney bean. Aka, not much.
Aside: The service is as amazing as always. And there was even toasted gluten-free bread and oil for us gluten-intolerants.
2. Next, scallops on the half shell.
This was a strong dish. The scallops were sweet and a tiny bit creamy, but the bee balm (?) mousse was only there for texture. The wild blueberries (or cassis?) were almost too strong for the delicate scallops, and the olive oil was only there for colour. There was no earthy olive flavour that could survive those berries. But I liked the berries, and I liked the scallops. I just liked them separately.
The wine pairing for the dish to come: a not too sweet rosé. I’m not a huge rosé fan but that’s mostly because they’re too often cheap and sweet. This was not. This was quality. Not too big, not too sweet, not too watery. But balanced enough to hold its own. Just right.
3. Yellow watermelon on crab with sea asparagus
This was a great dish with a couple of problems. It’s a thin circle of yellow watermelon on top of fresh crab with sea asparagus (salicorne). The sweetness of the watermelon—the sweetest local melon I’ve had all year in a season when every restaurant is throwing watermelon around like a doll—was a good combo with the natural sweetness of the snow crab. But the dish was so salty! There was just way too much sea asparagus, a saline fern as ubiquitous as watermelon. The salicorne needs to be in smaller pieces, and there needs to be less of it, or you’ll be choking on salt. But boy that crab and watermelon was excellent.
4. Razor clams with diced calamari, chanterelles and prosciutto
The server came with the consommé (tomato consommé?) and poured it over top of this dish.
We were instructed to tip the razor clam shells upside down and mix everything together. You can kind of see the shells under the green bean in the bottom left. It’s a long, luge-like shell, nothing like your average clam. The clams mixed with yellow and green beans cut on the bias, zucchini, and I think chanterelles diced with squid below. The liquid was mostly clam juice. Light and fresh.
It all worked. It wasn’t eye-popping, but it was solid.
4b. Optional fois gras
I went with the clams over the fois gras, but I heard the duck liver was excellent. Of course I tried a bite. Of course it was excellent. But is that a confit tomato or beet? For goodness sake, look at that sear:
Then a Beaune-Grèves wine for the upcoming swordfish. It was light and lovely. But I didn’t think it did anything for the swordfish, which was pretty perfect on its own:
5. Swordish
Mmm…corn foam sauce. Rich marsala reduction. (Was it marsala?)
Swordfish can handle bold flavours. That ballsy red wine, that rich pan sauce. It was perfectly tender and luscious and made me understand why swordfish is so good. I rarely eat swordfish because:
- It’s mostly not sustainable. Toqué! had just gotten an entire sustainably caught one in. What a treat.
- If it’s overcooked, the texture is like fish from a can and the flavour is nothing.
This swordfish was buttery and sweet, and really it was that corn mousse that stood up to the rich sauce and butteriness. Wow. Favourite dish of the night.
6. The duck breast.
Toqué!’s duck breast was one of the most spectacular things I’d ever eaten by the age of 25. When I’d had it last, it wasn’t cooked sous vide, which is the easy way to perfect duck breast. Instead, it was poached in maple syrup, and all that sweetness was seared into the thick, fatty skin. I understood the expression “chew the fat” for the first time.
This time, though, the breast was just good. Maybe this was the marsala sauce? It didn’t have the addictive maple in the skin, and I ended up spitting out a bunch of the fat. Better for my arteries, but not for my soul. 
The Pomerol from Chateau Gombaude-Guillot was the only pairing of the night that really worked for the food. I loved the quality wines chosen by the highly knowledgeable and passionate sommelier—most were organic or biodynamic, or unofficially so. I loved his descriptions. I loved his respect for the product and the consumer.
But this wine worked. It wasn’t big and fruity, and it wasn’t dry and too tannic. It was balanced in a very French style of less is more.
7. Cheese Plate
I couldn’t eat the cheese plate because of lactose, but I tried some plate elements I could have. Its strange green slime wasn’t bitter enough to be refreshing or anything enough to be good. It was colourful, though. The little salsa of tomatoes and strawberry was cute. What I wouldn’t have given for some more holy basil with its minty sweetness. Or maybe a different herb for once.
7b. Dessert #1
So instead of cheese, I got two dessert courses. The first was great. The ultimate seasonal berries alone would just be a glorified fruit salad, but add a lavender syrup, a couple baby leaves of holy basil, crunchy vanilla meringue and a refreshing sorbet and it’s a treat. You’ve got texture (crunch and softness), sweetness (fruit, sorbet, and meringue), bitterness (basil) and sourness (sorbet).
8. Dessert #2.
I kind of love “kitchen sink” desserts for the same reason I loved the dessert above—textures, flavours and contrasts. Here was a sweet-and-sour sorbet (elderflower? Strawberry? I’m sorry to say I don’t remember), with another slice of sweet yellow watermelon, a seabuckthorn granita (the ice. I think it was sea buckthorn anyway), pistachios, and strawberry purée. Plus more of that micro basil. Do other herbs grow in August?
So I have no idea who the chef de cuisine is now, but the restaurant is still great. Tomatoes are hard for wine pairing because of the acidity. And sea asparagus is just crazy salty. I didn’t have as many wow moments are last time, but my expectations were higher. And the plates weren’t Charles-Antoine abstract art style, but that’s okay. I once saw him decorate a large piece of brown paper the size of a blackboard at Omnivore Food Fest with gels and purées and jellies. And then the audience came up and ate what he designed. I’m okay with less eye-popping plates as long as the flavours are there, balanced.
I’ll be back, post-tomato season.
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