CLASS MEETS COMFORT
Sur-Lie fills predecessor’s big shoes
Until today, the only time that Nick Berolo appeared in the pages of the Citizen was in 1999, when the then-20-year-old was written up for his graffiti skills — and for renouncing the vandalism that went with them.
Nearly two decades later, it’s a different kind of artistry that makes Berolo, 38, noteworthy. He’s the chef at Sur-Lie on Murray Street, which opened Feb. 11, and his dishes make big first impressions. Better still, the food from the Ottawa-raised chef, who studied fine arts at Concordia University but then wound up cooking in Montreal until he returned to Ottawa almost two years ago, is as delicious and well-conceived as it is beautiful and involved.
While Sur-Lie’s website describes its food as “locally inspired modern French cuisine,” it feels above all like a confident and experienced chef’s personal expression. What I’ve eaten and seen has stressed the “local” and “modern” parts of the description. The “French” factor has been most apparent in Berolo’s love of cooking techniques, both old-school and beyond, and in the deeply and lucidly flavoured sauces that have accompanied lean, often sous-vide-cooked, meats.
We had one grand dinner at Sur-Lie last week, although it wasn’t without a twinge of remorse. The new restaurant replaces Murray Street Kitchen, which was much-loved and celebrated thanks to chef Steve Mitton’s fondness and aptitude for charcuterie and carnivore-based eating. After eight years, that restaurant had its final service on Dec. 31. By then, the partners who would open Sur-Lie had already bought the building. After six weeks and extensive renovations, Sur-Lie opened, with Neil Gowe — a hands-on co-owner along with being a longtime Ottawa sommelier — on site.
Sur-Lie feels more spacious than Murray Street did. The charcuterie-showcase aspect of the bar is gone — Sur-Lie takes a more haute-cuisine tack — and the dining room, flanked by pale green walls and a white brick wall, has more presence. It’s a classy, comfy place, outfitted with black banquettes and cushioned seats, and the service, which included visits by Gowe and Berolo to our table, was very personable and knowledgeable.
There were different ways to go with Sur-Lie’s one-page menu of eight smaller items and eight mains. For example, our server said that the mains were quite shareable. Meanwhile, the restaurant also offers a multi-course tasting menu. For now, it can be ordered by single customers and not only by everyone at the table, and I decided to take Sur-Lie out for that deluxe spin, while my dining companions went for an appetizer and a main each.
Before any appetizers arrived, we received a lavish and promising tray of fresh, warm buns and flaxseed crackers, accompanied by butter and a puddle of dill oil. These on-the-house treats disappeared quickly.
The two appetizers were generously portioned, tasty, sleekly composed conversation pieces.
Berolo presented medallions of rabbit ($18), crusted in pumpkin seeds, in a still life with squash purée, bits of confit rabbit leg that mingled with black trumpet mushrooms, pomegranate seeds and a superior jus. A single squash raviolo topped the tallest piece of rabbit.
Beef tartare ($18) deviated in look and feel from the classic French template. The minced, raw beef filet that snaked across the plate nodded more to Asia, as our server had advised, with meat that was highly accessorized with bits of fermented cabbage, grilled romaine heart, pickled carrot and ginger vinaigrette, while dabs of cashew purée and miso-cured egg yolk added extra pops of flavour. A purist would probably have wanted more forthright beefiness, but as deviations go, Berolo’s was interesting and well executed.
Mains were massive and brimmed with well-chosen components.
Three sea bass filets ($28) were properly roasted and stood up their red wine reduction, while sunchoke, brussels sprouts and black trumpet mushrooms completed the plate. Three large pieces of beef filet ($38) sopped up their sherry-bolstered jus, as did shapely cylinders of fondant potatoes, blue foot mushrooms and more.
The tasting menu ($80) consisted of Berolo’s choices for the night, which were three appetizers and a main course, all scaled down, a pre-dessert and then a lavish dessert by pastry chef Gabriel Messier, who previously worked at the posh Quebec City restaurant Laurie Raphaël.
This parade of food’s overture was as simple as most of its followups were complex. Berolo sent out a single oyster, sitting on a bed of small black stones, its meat hidden by a mound of grated frozen foie gras. I wondered
how an oyster minus the usual contrasting hit of acidic brightness or heat would fare, but I wasn’t disappointed by Berolo’s less common indulgence.
Next came a down-sized plate of raw sea bream, adorned with trout roe, cucumber, pickled onion, dill oil and celtuce. Despite its size, the course was a study in refinement blessed with transformed and pristine ingredients and well calibrated hits of saltiness and crunch. Then, frozen foie gras made a return visit, as an oblong of the stuff sat in the basin of a bowl along with compressed apple, parsley purée and leek. Our server then poured smooth but humble potato soup into the bowl. I thought the soup was a bit under-seasoned, but other than that, the dish was sleek and comforting.
The star of the tasting menu’s main course, two medallions of rosy venison, came with their own chocolate juniper jus, plus accompaniments that offered different kinds and levels of sweetness — strips of spiced sweet potato flan that brought pumpkin pie to mind, date purée, candied pecans, disks of apple and lovely, mild Tokyo turnips.
The eating became sweeter still when Berolo brought out a box of clementines. It turned out that three (one for each of us at the table) of the fruits had been candied and halved so that their insides could be replaced by a satisfying, not-too-sweet chocolate mousse. After that fine bit of trickery came the elaborate dessert of triple-layered shortcake that included a strip of chocolate ganache, intense raspberry sorbet, a pert little lime marshmallow and more.
Cocktails here are classically styled while Gowe’s well-curated wine list stresses French and Canadian bottles and includes some good by-the-glass picks.
For now, the restaurant only serves dinner, but Gowe says that he hopes to serve brunch in time for Easter, as well as lunch when Sur-Lie opens its patio in May. As much as the departure of Murray Street Kitchen stings, there’s consolation in the arrival of SurLie, which seems to have latched onto the high standards and good kitchen karma of its predecessor. Out of the gate and as befits their experience, Gowe and Berolo have created a distinctive new restaurant worth the splurge.