When you’re a French restaurant, you don’t call your tom yum soup a “tom yum soup.” You say “black cod in tom yum broth.” That’s much better marketing when you’re charging $21 for perfectly tender fish, sustainable shrimp, earthy mushrooms, al dente carrots and blanched spinach to turn a carnivore into a vegetarian. Oh right, and there’s a coconut foam. You can bet your Foodora account that no casual Thai restaurant in Montreal is foaming coconut milk for your tom yam. The soup doesn’t traditionally even have coconut in it.
But marketing, flavour combos and exceptional execution are three things that this long-awaited restaurant, brasserie and bar from the father and son team of Richard and Jérémie Bastien. Richard Bastien, father, is chef-partner of Léméac in Outremont, another upscale bistro (oxymoron though that is). The other is money, it seems, because who can sit on Old Port real estate for four years while a restaurant the width of a city block is being renovated?
More impressive than the marketing, however, is the fact that the wait, for us starving patrons, was worth it.
The space is gorgeous. The long, narrow restaurant channels Paris with its checkered floors and suited-up servers (reminiscent of L’Express on St-Denis). the entrance leads to the bar and brasserie seating. Walk a few more paces and you hit the restaurant dining room, with its separate menu.
This is not the refuge for the hipster crowd or another small plates wine bar. There are some young professionals, but there’s a slightly older crowd, à la Léméac. There’s $10 valet parking after 5pm.
I’d come for lunch or after work just to sit at the bar and watch presumably million dollar deals being made. Groups come for birthdays. You could take your grandma here. You could take your out-of-town guests. Just tell them not to wear sneakers.
While you’re at it, tell them to order that soup, followed by the char-grilled duck breast with peanuts, chrysanthemum (it’s a bit like artichoke) and black bean sauce. Or the leaner venison, with squash (three ways, I believe: puréed, roasted and shredded spaghetti), maitake mushrooms and red wine jus. These guys make a darn good jus. It is a brasserie/restaurant after all.
The chefs have had time to perfect the menu, so every ingredient serves a purpose, is perfectly prepared, serve at the right temperature, plated beautifully, has flavour. Ingredients tend local. Wine tends French and natural, though not flagrantly so. The flavour combinations are creative, but not weird, avant-garde or foreign. Everything just works.
Remember, I mentioned the separation between church and state…er, brasserie and restaurant? The venison is on the restaurant menu (read more upscale and more expensive). The brasserie is far from the cheap, neighbourhood joint it’s supposed to be, and calling it an “upscale brasserie” is a misnomer. But all the usual suspects are on both menus: pot-au-feu, blood pudding and grilled sweetbreads are upscaled for the restaurant and bouillabaisse, salade niçoise and steak frîtes are on the brasserie side.
The hummus with a single fried gnocco (a lonely version of the fried potato pasta), the charcuterie platter and the homemade pretzels are snacks, and are great bar or brasserie eats. But you can’t get them in the restaurant.
Fortunately, you can get the passionfruit pavlova at the brasserie or restaurant. The giant wedge of perfectly soft, chewy and crispy meringue is set off by the sweet-and-sour passionfruit sauce with the fruit’s sour and crunchy seeds. It’s a gluten free, dairy free treat with three – count ’em –three scoops of coconut sorbet in place of the traditional cream. Homemade, of course, that smooth and creamy sorbet.
With such a large menu, so long perfected, I’ll be back to try everything else. This is the kind of place with legs. Like Léméac, it’s poised to become a neighbourhood staple, even with the Old Port prices. They’re making up for lost time, after all. And yet, I can’t help thinking of all the luscious duck breast we could have eaten…but would it have been as good?
Monarque
406 St-Jacques, Montreal
514-875-3896
Hours:
- Restaurant: Mon-Fri 11:30-2pm, Mon-Sun 5:30pm-10pm
- Brasserie: Mon-Fri 11:30am-midnight, Sat-Sun 5:30pm-midnight
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