Diner with a difference
DEVILLE DINERBAR delivers crowd-pleasing, creative updates to American classics in copious portions, and with price-tags to match
Deville Dinerbar
Good bet
$$
1425 Stanley St. (near Ste. Catherine St. W.)
Phone: 514-281-6556 Website: www.devilledinerbar.com
Licensed: Yes Credit cards: All major cards
Wheelchair accessible: Yes Vegetarian friendly: Limited Open: Mon.-Thurs. and Sun. 11 a.m.-11 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.-midnight
Price range: Appetizers $9-$19, mains $15-$35, desserts $9-$13
Flashy marketing often has the opposite of the desired effect on me, so I’ll admit I waited a while to visit this brash and bold new downtown restaurant.
But if you have a spare 15 minutes, visit Deville Dinerbar’s website. I clicked my way through the design-a-thon of imitation-vintage film footage, with black-and-white faintly Prohibitionesque characters cutely going through retro hijinks in ironical moustaches and form-fitting outfits. I waited patiently for the site to load and letters to float across the screen, I watched a 2D animation of a cheeseburger doing a burlesque striptease, but still I couldn’t find the prices! Grr.
In its promotional material, of which there is a considerable amount, Deville describes itself as “the love child of whimsical nostalgia with the spirit of the 21st century.” It was launched downtown last year by the Tzemopoulos brothers, the same family behind landmark Reuben’s deli and slick Anton & James cafeteria. With lots of glitz, lots of staff, lots of menu and lots of ambition, it belongs to the bigger and better school of business.
The multi-tiered restaurant incorporates upstairs and downstairs dining rooms, a heated patio and a gleaming kitchen full of intense activity.
Splashy in pink, black and white, seating areas are decked out with marble tables surrounded by neon backlighting and two-tone graphics. “The colour scheme of a prom,” my friend commented, as we slid into a rounded booth to the sounds of Bryan Adams’s Summer of 69 (how old, I wondered not for the first time, was he in 1969?).
The super-stuffed upholstery wedged us right up against the long leather menu offering an enormous list of dinerish culinary touchstones.
Like a Top 40 playlist, the selection of updates to classic Americana conceived by chef John Zoumis is obviously intended to check the boxes, and will for many people.
Our ponytailed and smiling waitress took us through the highlights: bacon-weaved meat loaf, pasta with lamb ragu, lobster BLTA (with avocado), mac and cheese wontons and Philly cheesesteak spring rolls. The approach is unabashedly crowd-pleasing, but not uncreative.
So how was the food? Lots of positive things to say: Servings were copious, ingredients fresh and clean, and the quality high.
A surprisingly good appetizer of ahi tuna tacos set the tone for the whole meal: the fish superbly fresh, the presentation fun and the seasoning predictably tending toward sweet. Strips of translucent rubytoned yellowtail with a barelythere sear, studded with white and black sesame seeds, came on three puffy fried won ton “taco” shells. These imploded under the teeth, the shards mingling with Asian slaw and microgreens.
The sauce I found too sugary, but the wasabi-lime mayo — pleasant and creamy if not particularly punchy — worked toward countering it.
Our most impressive main was the rotisserie chicken: marvellously juicy, tender, tasty, slow-cooked free-range Quebec bird (free range being as, if not more, important a distinction than organic these days). The maple syrup glaze, mingling with the jus from the meat, was again sweet, but on the side of delicate. The poblanopepper stained rice — think arroz verde — added a darker, greener, herbier element to the mix. And the aji amarillo dipping sauce, made with hot chilies, was a nod to Peru’s mastery of pollo a la brasa, a national staple. I walked away with affection for this plate, along with leftovers.
My friend’s choice was the General Tao chicken salad, a coup of culinary assimilation I’d normally overlook. In a bowl bigger than her head, there was a huge amount of baby spinach, swirls of carrot and pepper, grilled pineapple, cashews, and sprouts in a musky “Hunan” vinaigrette. What was missing was heat, and the coated chunks of meat came off more like chicken candy. Though it had little to really distinguish it, this entry delivered on many counts.
Dessert of banana cream pie was a Paula Deen proportioned tumble of bananas (warm but not really caramelized as advertised), vanilla custard, whipped cream and caramel in an Oreo cookie-like crust. A shame, y’all, that this sweet fest didn’t seem particularly integrated.
Deville is the golden oldies concept stepped up for a savvier modern public. In terms of quality and originality of the food, it’s light years from typical diner knockoffs, and a stratospheric improve- ment from Nickels and kin.
The corporatized party atmosphere works 1950s detailing into a modern business casual experience. For suits at lunchtime, it’s a fun environment that has elements of Cheeburger Cheeburger and M:brgr put together (it’s not all burgers here, praise be, but there are several, including one for $35). For suburbanites dreaming of a world beyond Dix30 or Centropolis, it’s downtown in Technicolor. (There are adult-content milkshakes — one with Cognac, for example — along with more innocent dime-store-style malteds.)
As for its claim to be “the next evolutionary step in classic American diners,” well, hmmm. It was both bigger and better than I expected. But the experience was so stylized that I felt disconnected from the place itself even as I ate there.
And those plus-size portions, large enough to induce a food hangover, come with price tags to match. A meal here is easily a bigger expense than you might expect for a better night out.