DINING OUT IN MECHANICSVILLE
Young chef serves fine food at Grunt
At first, when we learned of the memorably named new restaurant Grunt and its pig-themed logos, we wondered if we should brace ourselves for a celebration of swine.
It turned out that Grunt, which opened in late April in Mechanicsville, was not really a place for pigging out, literally or figuratively.
At my three lunch visits, Grunt’s chef and co-owner, Jason McLelland, served finely crafted dishes that were new takes on the familiar and likable. Pork and pig-based products figure in the food, but not overwhelmingly so, and a vegetarian could dine happily here.
Portioned somewhere between small plates and main courses, Grunt’s dishes also come with wallet-friendly prices of $15 each, more or less, taxes in. Basically, the prices are in keeping with Grunt’s location, tucked away on a residential side street in the historically blue-collar neighbourhood north of Scott Street and east of Tunney’s Pasture.
Formerly a corner-lot pizzeria, Grunt now seats about 20 at blocky wooden tables and at the counters of its open kitchen where McLelland and his souschef toil. Its walls are white, the art is funky and local, the seating is hard, the vintage plates don’t match, and old-time jazz or Billy Idol can take turns on the sound system.
In all, few extravagances distract from Grunt’s pretty, tasty dishes when they quickly land in front of you. There may not be a more relaxed, human-scale, dining-out experience in Ottawa, especially if McLelland’s wife, Marie, is serving. Once, after she brought us our lunch, she gave her young daughter, Maisie, a ride on her shoulders.
McLelland, 31, most recently worked at the somewhat fancier Town on Elgin Street. Before coming to Ottawa, McLelland worked in fine-dining brigades in London, Paris, Australia and his homeland, Scotland. He even did stints in such Michelin-starred kitchens as Le Gavroche in London, and Le Jules Verne, on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower.
In Mechanicsville, McLelland still makes food for discriminating palates, even if he prioritizes, as he says, “honest and wholesome food” over haute cuisine.
The to-the-point, all-day menu — typically a one-page list of three or four savoury dishes and a dessert or two — changes every two weeks at Grunt. I spread out my visits accordingly for a longer view of McLelland’s fare.
If there’s a signature dish at Grunt, it’s McLelland’s porchetta sandwich ($14.50). The versions that I tried never followed the usual Italian preparation. McLelland preferred to dress up a slab of nicely roasted pork belly like an English Sunday dinner, with Yorkshire pudding, a mushroom demi-glace, crushed root vegetables and apple sauce.
“It needs an extra napkin,” Marie said when she dropped off a sandwich.
“Oh, that’s promising,” my dining companion said. After polishing off most of it, she said the sandwich justified a return visit to Grunt. That said, the latest menu’s version takes the sandwich in a South Asian direction, swapping in mango chutney and a spicier treatment.
We’ve equally enjoyed other savoury and starchier dishes. Butternut squash risotto ($16) was beautifully balanced and complex, with the indulgences of mascarpone and pancetta and the accents of sage and spiced almonds enlivening the dish’s on-point base of rice and veg.
Grunt’s “gnocchi” made with pâte à choux ($15.50, also known as gnocchi Parisienne) featured tender, pillowy dumplings in a pleasing carbonara sauce, garnished with egg yolk, bacon, goat cheese and green onions. Bread made with bacon fat completed the dish, which despite the richness of its elements left us feeling invigorated rather than weighed down.
A kale Caesar salad topped with a fried egg ($13.50) was a more simple win, zinging with the big flavours of its creamy, anchovy-powered dressing. More novel and bracing was a salad of charred grapefruit and orange with spiced shallots, greens and pumpkin seeds ($14.50), although the intensity of its bed of turmeric yogurt could have been dialed down.
A plate of bison kofta ($15) was a little muddled visually, and the
lean, tasty meat was also a touch dry. Raising the dish up was the focused pop of its sweet semidried tomatoes, toasted almonds, crisp onions and shavings of pig fat that McLelland dispensed tableside.
Desserts at Grunt have been more expensive than many in town, just a little cheaper than the savoury dishes. But don’t let that dissuade you — you’ll likely miss out on a treat.
In June, a strawberry shortcake ($12.50) knocked me out, even if its crumb could have been a bit more tender. Nonetheless, its fruit, cream and sauce were good enough to almost set me cussing in appreciation.
With its tableside splash of fizzing Prosecco, lemon sorbet ($13.50) with torched melon, olive oil, lemon balm, zippy pink pepper and some confit lime felt like a celebration.
While the semifreddo ($14) that came with roasted strawberries, raspberry coulis and cracked black pepper had set too hard, this was one more dish whose strong points and thoughtfulness made its lapse forgivable.
Grunt is licensed, with a dozen wines mostly from the Old World priced between $40 and $65 a bottle, with five-ounce glasses also available. Beers by Beau’s Brewing Co., its offshoot Halcyon Barrel House and Stalwart Brewing Co. are available, as is coffee from a fine espresso machine that shares counter space with a miniature garden of microgreens and a trusty immersion circulator.
If Grunt wasn’t special enough already, it is also becoming a booster for Mechanicsville, which McLelland calls “beautiful” but also “rough around the edges,” not unlike the part of Scotland where he grew up.
After a fire down the street left a family homeless last month, Grunt gave over its walls to paintings by Andrea Stokes, all of which were sold to raise money to help the family. In June, Grunt hosted a 90th birthday party for Keith Brown, the lifelong neighbourhood resident and volunteer who has been dubbed “the mayor of Mechanicsville.”
McLelland has begun giving free monthly cooking classes. He says if there are families who can’t afford a night out at a restaurant, he’s not opposed to feeding them for free if they make reservations.
McLelland, who lives in Gloucester with his in-laws, says he was happy to open Grunt in Mechanicsville. Elgin Street and Wellington Street West have enough restaurants, he says.
“I could use this as a platform to do some good,” McLelland says of his business. That’s what he’s doing, and deliciously so. phum@postmedia.com twitter.com/peterhum