Easy to like
THOUGH IT’S A LITTLE UNEVEN AT TIMES, Le Chien Rose is the kind of place where an off dish doesn’t ruin the night
Le Chien Rose Good bet Le Chien Rose is an Ahunstic story. To put your finger on the pulse of the neighbourhood, go to Fleury ST.W. Among the new, or newish, businesses, there’s Le St. Urbain restaurant and its bakery La Bête à Pain, chef Mario Navarrete Jr.’s À Table, and more recently, Chocolaterie Bonneau, artisanal coffee roaster Le Bruloir, and La Consigne, which bills itself as a “beer chope” specializing in local microbrews. Add to this, as of Valentine’s Day, a new BYOB place that flies its funky flag by featuring a big pink dog’s head on its sign. Let’s just say Fleury ST.W., also known as FLO, wants its Bixis now.
Le Chien Rose’s chef-owner, Michèle “Mitche” Des Rosiers, an IHTQ graduate who grew up in the area, is a modern Ahuntsicoise with some real smarts. There are lots of plusses here: the open kitchen with bar seating, and the many windows in the space, even wrapping around the rear of the room so that no one’s left out of the light. The bleached decor has cute accents like the many picture frames (and, yes, there are some portraits of dogs). And, of course, there’s a bring your own wine policy (La Consigne will suggest beer pairings for Chien menus, brilliant).
The room was jumping on a Wednesday night, with a sense of mutual appreciation between customers and creators, happy to have this spot around.
The blackboard menu is crowdpleasing with a personalized touch – much like the squeeze of lemon in water that was poured as we sat down. The theme changes monthly – cabane à sucre in March, and tapas in April, when I visited – which keeps it interesting for kitchen and clients. The new menu, which starts this week, is seafood-themed, and you can read about it, and an unedited commentary on the resto business, on Mitche’s tell-it-like-it-is blog.
There are a couple of items that are always on offer, and these were definitely the best of the dishes we sampled. The first was fish and chips: salmon in a pogo batter that was better than that sounded. Shaped like little balls and speared with wooden sticks, the morsels were cute to the eye, the fish inside flavourful and moist, and the coating relatively grease-free but still with a boardwalk sort of taste. The accompanying sauces scored one for two. One made with grilled red peppers suggested the Spanish cuisine theme but tasted American retro, like a combo of French and Thousand Island dressing; the other sauce was wonderful, creamy and punchy with herbs and citrus. Overall, this was a really fun and friendly version of a standard, reflecting the spirit of the place.
The other winner was pulled pork. There’s a lot of it in town these days, not all of it good. Le Chien Rose’s pulled pork sliders, listed as Sloppy Joes, were a treat. They’re offered with a choice of sauces, and the waiter warned us the BBQ was so hot we might not be able to handle it: no more encouragement needed. Served on adorable buns (from La Bête à Pain), the meat was luscious, and that sauce superb, with ginger and smoky chipotle, rich yogourt and the citrus of cilantro gremolata. The whole was remarkable for being so bold and so balanced.
It wasn’t all oohs and aahs. A trio of tomatoes with salad was confusing. The fruits did fine under different treatments: fresh, sun-dried, confit and a lovely one stuffed with three kinds of cheese (Parmesan, cheddar and feta, better than billed). But the plate wasn’t integrated: leathery leaves of lettuce required cutting, the balsamic dressing was heavy and the capper of lemon sorbet was strange. Another salad worked much better, this one with shredded beets, crisped balls of goat cheese (more frying, but hey), pesto and preserved lemon.
Beef tataki wasn’t convincing, either, although prettily plated in curls around crunchy sliced vegetables. There was a surfeit of Asianish mango-ginger sauce, and the seared meat demanded energetic sawingand chewing. it needed more TLC, with an emphasis on the T.
With desserts, things were easygoing again. There was a jar of vanilla-flecked cheese-andyogourt mousse with pineapple, runny but light. And there were delicious made-to-order churros, the extruded dough piping hot out of the fryer, covered in sugar, with caramel for dipping.
Le Chien Rose is easy to like. If the meal was uneven at times, including a waiter who never fully locked in to serving our table, this is the kind of place where an off dish doesn’t ruin the night. No one else seemed too fazed, and if this restaurant were around the corner from where I lived, I’d give it a long leash, too.
Would I make a special trip to dine here? It’s not quite destination material – yet. It’s notable that the dishes that had time to be perfected were the best, so there should be more bests as the restaurant develops.
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