SUCH GOOD FOOD, SO LITTLE TIME
Five great new restos: Ottawa writer spoils himself on a culinary journey through Montreal
Some time after his stint as a dishwasher in a St-henri pizza joint and before he cooked in some of the best restaurant kitchens on three continents, Andersen Lee had stars — specifically Michelin stars — in his eyes.
“I was young and a little silly,” says Lee, who is all of 25 now.
Before the pandemic, when the Brossard native was barely out of culinary school, he dreamed of making the most refined food possible, ideally at the kind of fine-dining destinations that top the prestigious World's 50 Best restaurants list.
It should go without saying that to fulfill that ambition, leaving Montreal would be a must.
“I truly wanted to be a three-michelin-star chef,” says Lee. “I thought that Montreal's restaurant scene wasn't really worthy compared to New York, compared to San Francisco.”
Lee's ambitions helped power him ahead of 1,200 applicants from 74 countries to win the 2019 50 Best BBVA Scholarship. Lee won the opportunity to intern at the storied restaurants Odette in Singapore, Core by Clare Smyth in London and Quintonil in Mexico City.
But when he returned home from his culinary globe-trotting, Lee realized he had taken Montreal and its restaurants for granted.
“It made me realize the Montreal restaurant scene was unique,” Lee says. “I came back to Montreal and it was everything I ever wanted.”
In January, Lee opened his Mile End restaurant, Oncle Lee, where he serves elevated but approachable Chinese-influenced food. Think beef tartare with fermented chili bean paste, a special of snow crab with spicy noodles, or five-spice duck breast and confit on a platter meant for convivial sharing.
On a recent Friday night, Oncle Lee was a crowded, buzzy place bathed in red lantern light that seemed to fulfill Lee's revised notion of an ideal eatery.
“It's more like it's a restaurant down the street and it's great,” he says. “You're going to be properly served, and you're going to eat really well, and you're going to drink really well.”
Even if Lee's restaurant isn't gunning for haute cuisine accolades, the World's 50 Best organizing gave Oncle Lee its blessing, naming it one of the hottest global restaurant openings for 2024.
But on the weekend when I visited Montreal, I tried four other restaurants, all opened since the beginning of the year, that I thoroughly enjoyed along with Oncle Lee. None was especially posh or flagrantly expensive, and all left us with thoughts of returning.
At Ohayo Café in the Plateau, I devoured a shrimp burger that was as impeccable as it was massive. As tasty as that lunch was, I coveted the examples of Japanese east-meets-west “yoshoku” cuisine that I watched land at other tables, including egg salad sandwiches, curries and pulled lamb on noodles.
This new coffee shop-café from chef Hiroshi Kitano is right next door to its sister restaurant, the Japanese bistro Kitano Shukudo, which in its previous incarnation as Bistro Otto was ranked 72nd on last year's Canada's 100 Best restaurants list.
I also lunched at Café Miracolo, the new Italian restaurant on the Main just beside Schwartz's Deli and the sister restaurant of Darling and Majestique.
The ambience here was eye-widening and retro, with flowers, a long, marble-topped bar and even a ceiling-high lineup of religious statues thrown into the mix. Our food was showy and Instagram-friendly, too, including a gigantic and shareable breaded pork chop.
A late afternoon stop at Bar Vivar, on Duluth Avenue just across the street from Au Pied de Cochon, made us feel as if we were back in northern Spain.
We snacked on octopus croquettes, transcendent, sliced-toorder Iberico ham and superb olives, washing them down with sherry and cider. Chef-owner Georges Greiche, a Joe Beef alumnus, celebrated snow crab season by preparing one of Quebec's finest crustaceans in the Donostiarra way, its meat bolstered with extra crab flavour and stuffed back in the shell. A slice of the almond cake called torta de Santiago was a perfect meal-ender.
Greiche, who is Montreal born and raised and 34 years old, says he's been visiting Spain repeatedly since he was a child and developed an emotional attachment to the country and its food.
“All my earliest memories of what a meal was, sharing it at a table, trying new things, was always Spain,” Greiche says.
At Juliette Plaza, which is next door to chef-owner Charles-antoine Crête's fabulously fun and acclaimed restaurant Montreal Plaza, we loved our expertly made yet whimsical small plates.
First came some simple and even nostalgic snacks — cocktail sausages, chicken terrine wrapped in cabbage and miniature cones filled with tartare, avocado, pickled cucumbers. Then we went heavy on the seafood, savouring the eatery's nduja-spiked coquilles st-jacques, sweet, simple snow crab and Nordic shrimp with a umami-rich mayo, and scallops on rice.
A bowl of buffalo ice cream, nestled in a red wine reduction and olive oil, was the best dessert of our time in Montreal.
While we wanted to try one more new restaurant, the Plateau restaurant Gino's, where lasagna and negronis are the specialties, we were too stuffed to fit in a visit.
Also on my radar are the much-touted Île de France, which opens in mid-may nine storeys above the Eaton Centre, and Bangluck, a Thai noodle place and grocery store opening before the end of the month in the Plateau.
In Montreal, there are so many new and promising restaurants, but for us visitors, so little time. Locals, as Lee now says, are spoiled. And we need to return.
ONCLE LEE
■ 222 Laurier
■ Ave. restaurantonclelee.com
OHAYO CAFÉ
■ 145 Mont-royal Ave. E.
■ instagram.com/ohayocafemtl
CAFÉ MIRACOLO
■ 3891 St-laurent Blvd.
■ instagram.com/cafe_miracolo
BAR VIVAR
■ 533 Duluth Ave. E.
■ instagram.com/restaurantbarvivar
JULIETTE PLAZA
■ 6220 St-hubert St.
■ montrealplaza.com
The writer was a guest of Montreal Tourism, which neither read nor approved this story before publication.