FRONT AND CENTRE
Le Blumenthal in festive mood
Here we are in early June, and though it has been a rather chilly spring, Montrealers have been eager to spring into warm weather mode for a while, meaning crowded terrasses, exposed tattoos and days when I’m either caught wearing last season’s gladiator sandals on cold days or thick, black tights in the heat.
As city dwellers well know, once this Grand Prix weekend ends with a bang, the festival brouhaha descends upon us as predictably as Trump tweets following his weekly hissy fits. Be it jazz fest, Just for Laughs or FrancoFolies, Montreal is action central from June to September, especially in this summer of our 375th, when city officials are lighting up bridges and Biodômes, inviting puppeteers and street theatre troupes and, hopefully, rethinking that lame urban rodeo idea.
Ground central for this flurry of entertainment is Place des Festivals. Located a few blocks east of the city centre, this 6,141-square-metre space is next to Place des Arts, the Contemporary Art Museum and the Maison Symphonique de Montréal, creating a sort of Montreal version of Manhattan’s Lincoln Center. With more than 200 water jets bubbling away day and night, Place des Festivals also features the largest array of animated interactive fountains in Canada. Two excellent restaurants, Brasserie T! and Taverne F, face Place des Festivals on the east side, and on the west side there is now Le Blumenthal, an excellent new restaurant certainly worth recommending.
Located on the ground floor of the Maison du Festival in the space that last housed the Balmoral restaurant, Le Blumenthal is a joint venture between a group of restaurateurs and Spectra. Their goal was to create a non-profit establishment whose surpluses will be used to finance free events at the Maison des Festival and the jazz fest. Cool.
With more than 200 seats in play (150 of which are on the terrasse), this restaurant is sure to attract festivalgoers in a part of downtown with scant dining options beyond chain restaurants. Not only is the location a huge draw, but the food is surprisingly good as well. I say surprisingly because, with such a captive audience, they could no doubt fill the seats with famished tourists or the pre-theatre/presymphony crowd. But chef Rémi Brunelle has pulled together a menu filled with greatest hits from the bistro/brasserie canon prepared with enough flair to rise above the usual onion soup/ steak-frites predictability and, hopefully, draw in locals once the festival banners have been tucked away for the season.
The Le Blumenthal dining room is good fun as well. Designed by the Gauley Brothers (the duo behind, among others, the swanky Foiegwa, Bird Bar and Atwater Cocktail Club), Le Blumenthal is all high ceilings and walls of windows overlooking Place des Festivals below. There are communal tables, a swanky lounge area by the door, banquettes, magnificent chandeliers and a big tree right in the middle of it all.
In keeping with all the ambitious new restaurants, dinner at Le Blumenthal begins with the presentation of a cocktail list as well as a wine list, which is well priced, manageable in length and filled with a wide range of bottles and a good selection by the glass. Service is sharp, with inquiries made at the outset whether we had a show to catch (smart) and plates arriving quite quickly.
We began with a kale Caesar
salad, salmon tartare and a duck poutine. Kale is a you-love-it or you-hate-it ingredient, and I enjoy it when given the Caesar treatment. Brunelle gussies it up with Nordic shrimp, along with bacon bits, curls of Parmesan and croutons. I enjoyed every bite, but one question: Why such a small portion? I would have happily eaten double.
The salmon tartare was generous in portion, though, and I enjoyed scooping it up onto bagel chips between bites of the accompanying cucumber salad. Just excellent. As for the duck poutine, as promising as it sounded, the outcome fell short as the sauce was overpowering and the cheese scattered overtop was not the squeaky fresh cheddar “crottes” essential in the makeup of this Québécois classic.
Of the mains sampled, I highly recommend the hamburger. Enhanced with a melted slice of drippy cheddar, it’s served with good fries and crunchy coleslaw dressed with an especially spunky vinaigrette. A dish of lamb sirloin is another winner, with the meat roasted to the ideal rosiness, and a side of chickpeacovered baba ganoush and fiddleheads. A glossy black garlic sauce drizzled alongside worked well at zuzzing up all the flavours, and the fiddleheads were a good call at the height of the season.
The barbecued chicken was equally successful as the meat was brined, rendering it especially tender. The chicken, paired with herbed mashed potatoes, green beans and more fiddleheads, lacked that dreamy charred barbecued flavour and blistered skin, but the juicy texture made up for a lot.
Fish lovers should opt for the trout. Served with a mound of ratatouille, the two large pieces of fish were enhanced with a brown-butter-caper-and-parsley “grenobloise” sauce. All good, but what really impressed with the mains was Brunelle’s skill at cooking everything from that burger to the delicate fish so perfectly. Nice!
Desserts are few and not quite on a par with the rest of the menu. A crème brûlée flavoured with candy cap mushrooms had the requisite velvety texture, and the maple-like flavour imparted by the mushrooms is intriguing. But the passion fruit tart with meringue was a downer with its droopy crust and graham cracker crumbs sprinkled on top. I’d say go with the chocolate pot de crème, which, thankfully, arrives with a spiced biscotti to add a bit of texture.
Open but a month, Le Blumenthal is still in early-days mode, but I have faith they will tighten up the loose ends. When planning your upcoming festival outings, you now have a brand spanking new restaurant to add to your list of dining options. What a treat it will be to enjoy a meal in this gorgeous setting overlooking the festival madness, sipping a glass of rosé while scarfing back some fine food. Book well in advance, I’d advise, for on warm festival nights, a seat at Le Blumenthal is sure to be highly coveted.