It’s a long bus ride up St-Laurent to Pastaga Restaurant in Little Italy on a Monday night.
The neighbourhood’s southern tip has none of its weekend charm—no Italian shouted from doorways, no shoppers buying canned tomatoes and imported olives at Milano’s, no Fifa World Cup fans throwing their hands in the air over a goal at Cafe Epoca.
Even if it were the weekend, you wouldn’t make it to those quaint spots if you were coming from the south. Instead you’d get a dirty underpass through a no-man’s-land that’s the connection between Mile End and Little Italy.
So arriving at Pastaga leaves you a little skeptical of what’s to come. But you’ll relax when you realize the upscale store of La Guilde Culinaire cooking school is located next door. And you’ll relax even more when you see the menu and wine list, the glass-fronted brand new open kitchen, the dark-stained wood furniture, and the two-tiered space design that’s created by tables up front and raised tabletops in the back (rather than a trip-inducing step to create levels—a server’s worst nightmare, and never a good idea in a wine bar when people sometimes have trouble seeing a step on their way to the washroom after a couple glasses of Crémant d’Alsace Extra Brut “Nature” from Domaine Stoeffler. Or maybe that’s just me, and I should learn to walk better in heels).
Speaking of that sparkling wine, I didn’t love it. It had a little Gewurtz or Reisling funk to it. It had tiny bubbles and a lot of effervescence—good signs—but it wasn’t refreshing and clean like a 100% Chardonnay Champagne. Still, at 12 euros a bottle on the other side of the pond, even after import fees to a fancy Montreal natural wine bar like Pastaga, a ~$10 glass is a pretty good deal on well-made bubbly.
We didn’t wait long for appetizers, it being Monday night and all, but the space did fill up with two well-dressed young women at a refurbished wooden tabletop nearby and a handful of tables up front over the course of our salmon gravlax with shaved salmon jerky. Those are hard-won bums in seats on a Monday night in Little Italy.
And the restaurant deserves it, as we tasted with the salmon. The chef, Martin Juneau, has won a bunch of awards in his lifetime at different restaurants, including Newtown on Crescent, which hasn’t seen such good days since he left. But Pastaga is establishing itself as a trek worth making for even those who wouldn’t venture from the swank of the Old Port or the flash of Crescent Street.
Pastaga is Juneau’s newest place. But he sneaked his way into my heart before I even tasted his food, by inviting chef Jeremy Charles of the top restaurant in my hometown of St. John’s, NL to spotlight at Pastaga for one of his Royal Canadian Monday events. I think he’s even gone to Newfoundland himself for a couple of chef-sharing events. I hope there was seal involved. It’s very sustainable, after all.
After all that, it wasn’t even Juneau in the kitchen the night I went to Pastaga, it being a Royal Canadian-less Monday night. I could see everything through the glass. There were a couple younger chefs professionally compiling plates of Juneau’s creations with a large LCD television showing the soccer in the background. Sure makes prep time more fun.
Okay, the food. I’m getting there.
Appetizers: I shouldn’t really say main dishes and appetizers, since the menu is divided into “cold” and “hot” dishes. They’re all small plates and the server recommended at least two per person. At between $15 and $18 a dish, that’s better than an app and main at most fine dining establishments.
So lets start with that salmon. The server said the Atlantic salmon gravlax ($15) was the most popular app. I normally never order Atlantic salmon because it’s normally farmed, generally horribly raised, wreaking havoc on wild fish populations, and tastes bland compared with wild salmon (though commercial wild salmon is illegal because stocks are too low).
But after all his trekking out to Newfoundland and awareness of sustainability issues, I’d be surprised if Juneau put a disgustingly raised farmed salmon on his menu. I do know of a better farming setup in Newfoundland that started fairly recently, so I’m crossing my fingers that the fish was from there.
The house-cured salmon came with creamy fingerling potato knobs drenched in a rich, slightly sweet homemade mayo, fresh parsley, and an umami punch from the grated smoked salmon jerky on top. This salmon got a hot-smoke for a week, then a freeze before being grated over top like Parmesan (or Italian bottarga). Was there a drying period in there? I might have forgotten the sequence of events in its creation.
On its own it didn’t taste like much (it wasn’t over-salted, thank goodness), but with a bit of the gravlax and potato, it brought everything together. And it looked pretty. That’s kind of important sometimes.
The other dish we started with was the Quebec halibut with lettuce. We couldn’t have the escabèche because it had dairy, which is strange for an escabèche, but that’s what we were told. But the fresh dill, green onions, and acidic vinaigrette was refreshing even without it. Not the same, clearly, but it was a tease of the rest to come.
Hot Dishes:
The two “hot” dishes we shared were the Outaouais bison and the cornish hen. The bison came two ways: as smoked meat and as some perfectly seared cut of steak. The confit potatoes were crisp and juicy and rich, and the anchovy sauce and olive crumble were two more punches of umami—savoury, salty, dish-uniting goodness. It reminded me of an upscale version of Cartel’s Peruvian-Chinese lomo saltado with filet mignon and yucca fries drowned in lightly sweetened soy sauce. Juneau’s bison is essentially Prince Charles (more popular than the Queen of England), and Cartel’s lomo is Lady Gaga. Both have their place.
Then the cornish hen. Really, this dish was all about the smashed broccoli underneath. That was the best broccoli I’ve ever had in a restaurant. It had a little bit of acid in the vinaigrette, which brought out its natural sweetness. It was far from mush, and much better than a potato purée. I hope I never see another potato purée when I now know that this is a gastronomic option.
And we got more of it because we couldn’t have the Parmesan jelly that was supposed to come with the crispy half-breast of fowl. Pays to be lactose intolerant? We also got some cauliflower in there.
And the micro-sprouts and herb mix on top added a ton of freshness. And the pan sauce was heaven. The artful splash of it was just enough for the meat.
And I really need to talk about the server again. He was great. I asked for a red wine recommendation to go with the bison but not overpower the cornish hen. He recommended a gamay, which I sampled and thought was going to be too tannic. So we brought the Chinon 2012 Épaule Jeté, which I’d had before. Again, too tannic, I thought, and I couldn’t tell how it would work with the bison (it’s worth trying, though, and is at the SAQ for $22). Then I tried a white, because maybe it was really white I wanted. A Manon 2012 from the Languedoc from Clos Marie. No, that wouldn’t work either. So I went back to the Gamay. I normally don’t want to try a bunch of wines at a restaurant, since tasting a wine is supposed to be about checking to make sure it hasn’t gone off, rather than making sure you like it. But at a wine bar on a night when the place isn’t packed, and you have an indulging server, it’s a treat.
And he was so right about the Gamay. All those tannins I was worried about disappeared with the bison. It turned rich, like a $60-$80 aged Bordeaux. That’s the magic of wine pairing. And once we’d finished the bison, I couldn’t drink it on its own. It was never meant to go it solo. But en couple, it shone. We should all be so lucky(?).
We were hoping for a raw sheep’s milk cheese we’d seen on the online menu, but the menu updates regularly at the restaurant and it wasn’t available that night. Dommage, mais the server suggested the kitchen could whip together some fresh seasonal strawberries with some sorbet.
Nah. You did well already. Lets quit while we’re ahead, we figured. Still, thanks for the offer. There are only so many fruit and sorbet desserts a lactose- and gluten-intolerant (or other) person needs.
The dessert wine menu was more tempting, but that bubbly hit hard while we were waiting for the first dishes to appear. When you can’t eat bread, having a glass of wine to start is not always the best idea on an empty stomach.
Other menu highlights included:
Cold: sustainable tuna tartare with herb mayo and crunchy vegetables (because it sounds boring, but nothing is boring here); Quebec grilled asparagus with 64C egg and grated duck breast (see here for a discussion on egg temperatures); and an incredible-sounding blood sausage mousse with bagel, charred onions, and liver mousse. Seriously? Two mousses? #brunchofchampions
Hot: Horse tournedos with bacon, beans, and mushroom bisque (tournedos are small, round pieces of beef cut from the end of the tenderloin); and deep-fried sea whelks with smoked sour cream, fennel, and French radishes. Essentially, a local take on calamari with a smoky aioli, fresh herbaceousness from the fennel, and crunch from the radishes.
Thanks for bringing a great restaurant to a neighbourhood in need of some Monday night uplifting.
Pastaga Restaurant
6389 boul. Saint-Laurent
Hours: Dinner Mon-Wed 5pm-10pm; Thurs-Sun 5pm-midnight; brunch Sat-Sun 10am-2pm; Lunch Friday only 11:30am-2pm
How much: ~$55 per person for two dishes and a glass of wine.
(438) 381-6389
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