“The place has been packed the whole time we’ve been here,” notes my aunt’s astounded cousin as we’re finishing our brunch at Lawrence. From our corner table, we’ve seen the steady stream of diners coming, waiting and grazing at the Mile End’s longest standing gastronomic brunch.
Since the restaurant started serving brunch in early 2011, it’s been hard to snag a table without a requisite 30-minute wait. Now, with more Mile End brunch options including Arts Café and Fabergé, it was finally possible to get some slow-cooked pigs trotter with grelot potatoes, seasonal asparagus, fiddleheads and radishes and poached eggs before my blood sugar took a midday nosedive and no amount of Aperol spritz’s, Black Velvets or other boozy brunch creations could save it.
I admit, I’m not a brunch person. As a gluten-intolerant, lactose-intolerant person who generally doesn’t eat pork or beef, watching other people devour pancakes, French toast, bacon and hollandaise while I sip water and cut into bland poached eggs accompanied by nothing (or worse, out-of-season cantaloupe and honeydew) sounds like a nightmare. Martin Picard’s annual sugarshack would be my personal hell.
But Lawrence gave me hope. I interviewed the owners Sefi Amir and Marc Cohen for a radio documentary on farm-to-restaurant relationships and they won me with their devotion to animal welfare. They know every farmer of every piece of meat they sell by first name. They’ve been to the farms. They don’t buy rabbits anymore because they can’t find a source they ethically support and can afford to buy. They’re not millionaires. And I knew that when I ordered the $15 pigs trotter dish, I was getting my money’s worth. Salaries are a huge cost for restaurants, and this one hires staff to butcher all that meat, braise bones for stocks, slow-cook odd cuts until tender, sear vegetables without them turning to mush and then arrange it all on gorgeous plates/works of art.
My only complaint with my pig’s trotter dish was the 1/4 cup of fat at the bottom of the bowl. But most of the trotter’s love handles had been lovingly melted off the salty, rich meat, and that’s where it inevitably ended up — who am I to complain?
Light fare this is not, but you’ll leave satisfied. And full. Point in case, the kedgeree, a British-Indo curried rice dish with parsley, sweet cherry tomatoes, smoked haddock and poached eggs.
Then there was the baked eggs with oyster mushrooms and celery root, served au gratin and en cocotte with buttered bread on the side.
And there was the mysterious scrapple, a meatloaf made with the tastiest bits of pork scrape (when you do your own butchering and don’t want to waste, you get inventive). It was served with bacon, buttered bread and mercifully refreshing watercress.
We skipped the famous scones with homemade jam and clotted cream and the waffles, that day served with the season’s first strawberries.
And we sure didn’t need a donut for dessert. Espressos, please. All the better to help my happy, ethical, sustainable slaughterhouse of a stomach digest what I’d just put in it.
Lawrence Restaurant
5201 boul. St-Laurent
Montreal
514-503-1070
Hours: Dinner Tues-Sat 5:30-11pm, lunch Tues-Fri 11:30am-3pm, brunch Sat-Sun 10am-3pm
How much: $15-$25 per person at brunch, $65 per person at dinner including tax, tip and a glass of wine
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