Toque!

I had dinner last night at Toque! (I wish my folks would have included some mandatory punctuation in my name. Maybe Patrick^), thanks to a generous birthday gift from colleageus (thanks guys!). The restaurant has been around for a almost a decade, but recently moved into a larger space. The facade of the restaurant is a bright, cheery alien flowerpot of some kind. The interior has a clubby feel to it: red and magenta tones in both the plush carpet and the wall hangings, well-spaced tables and translucent white/pink flattened oval lamps hanging from the ceiling like little UFOs. The center of the dining room is dominated by a glass-encased wine cellar — servers trod up and down the stairs inside this fishbowl, surrounded by bottles of wine floating atop brushed metal poles. One of the waiters told me that all of the wines on display were not on the wine list and bottles are rotated every three weeks, since both the temperature and the vertical position of the bottle is bad for the wine.

While Toque’s (sorry, Toque!’s just looks too weird) menu does offer ala carte options, their six course blind tasting menu seemed the way to go. Although I don’t typically eat any meat besides fish, I figured I would let the kitchen cook for me, without letting my weird culinary proclivities get in the way. They also offer optional wine pairings with the tasting menu, which I had.

The amuse was a sardine, served with “fresh cream cheese” (which turned out to be, amusingly enough, craime freche — apparently the language laws, which made Schwartz’s Jewish Deli into Chez Schwartz Charcuterie Hébraïque de Montréal, have an unconscious impact on reverse translation as well) and a red pepper reduction. Over the past several years, the fresh sardine (and other small, oily fish) have made a welcome return to many restaurant menus. The sardine was good, but not incredible. The accompaniments seemed detached from the fish; tasty on their own, but not really complimenting the sardine. The French white it was served with, opening up minerality in the wine that was hidden before

The first course, razor clam on parsley root puree with a clam juice foam (yes, you can apparently foam clam juice), was a standout. The razor calm, apparently a bit of an exotic food in land-locked Montreal, was fresh and cooked perfectly — each bite gave the slightest resistance before succumbing with a burst of the sea. The parsley root puree, an incredibly comforting root vegetable with a hint of vanilla, played off the Alsatian Viognier well.

The next course, seared duck foie gras, was, in many respects, a traditional composition. The liver was served with flavors of apples: apple sauce, minced stewed apple and dried apple slices, along with matsutake mushrooms. The matsutake is a highly prized mushroom in Japan. Small boxes of fresh matsutake will routinely retail for over $100. The mushrooms have been cultivated in the Pacific Northwest, both in the US and Canada, as well. While the matsutake served with the fois gras lacked the full heady fragrance of a truly great Japanese matsutake, it was a welcome surprise, especially since I will miss the majority of the matsutake season in Japan.

The next course was a single pork ravioli, served in a bit of pork broth and diced wild mushroom. Pork and I are not the best of friends, so I did not enjoy this course as much as I probably should have.

The main course was venison, from Quebec, served with lobster mushrooms, caramelized onions and a foie emulsion. It was a generous portion — easily more meat than I’ve eaten in years — cooked rare to avoid toughening the naturally lean meat. It was not gamey at all; it was mostly a textural foil for the venison reduction, mushrooms and onions.

For the cheese course, Toque! offered a choice of 5 Quebecois cheeses and 1 French. I tried all 5 local cheeses and was impressed by a local cheddar (a semi-hard cheese with a great tang) and a hard blue. None of the local cheeses could compete on an international stage, but they were all very enjoyable.

For dessert, two small, local apples, one filled with creme brulee and enhulled in caramel, the second filled with crumble. The apples were accompanied by an incredibly light thyme-flavored milk ice. Each spoonful dissolved on the tongue almost instantly, It was an excellent end to a very enjoyable meal.

The service was attentive and correct, without being overbearing. I had some minor nits with the wine program and service, but nothing too terrible.

The biggest compliment I can pay Toque is that I’ll be going back next Tuesday on my own dime. The GM promised me a totally different menu, so maybe I’ll do a quick followup.

Posted by pmk at October 20, 2004 5:10 PM | TrackBack