Raza is a true rarity in Montreal
COLOURFUL PERUVIAN CUISINE at this unique restaurant is full of diverse textures and novel flavours
RAZA $$$ 114 Laurier Ave. W. (near St.
Urbain St.) Phone: 514-227-8712 Website: www.groupemnjr.com Open: Wednesday to Saturday
5:30 to 10 p.m. Wheelchair access: No Reservations: Essential
Licensed: No, BYOB Price range: Five-course tasting
menu $59 The surefire, excellent and exciting bring-your-own-wine restaurant is a rare find in Montreal. Notice I didn’t say that BYOW restaurants are rare in Montreal. No, there are plenty of those. But only about a dozen are better than good, and only a handful feature cuisines worthy of an extraordinary bottle of wine. I’ve reviewed several BYOW restaurants this year, but have enjoyed few. Yet to that short list I gleefully add this week’s restaurant, Raza, one that I will even be so bold as to place at the top of the heap.
No doubt Raza is already familiar to Montreal gourmets. Opened in 2005 to rave reviews, this narrow little 24-seat restaurant wowed with the vibrant nuevo latino cuisine of its chef-owner, Mario Navarrete Jr.
A native of Peru, Navarrete emigrated to Montreal in the mid-’90s. His background is Latin American, yet his cooking career was shaped in Montreal, therefore his base was continental. But then came the urge to switch his focus to his roots. So he headed to Philadelphia to work with Argentine chef and ceviche specialist Guillermo Pernot at Pasion!, and nuevo Latino master chef Douglas Rodriguez at the modern Cuban restaurant Alma de Cuba.
After a stage of French finetuning with Daniel Boulud in New York, Navarrete returned to Montreal to open a restaurant that represented his race, or more precisely, in Spanish, his Raza.
Peruvian cuisine is often touted as the next big thing, yet it’s hard to imagine food this foreign making an impact so far from its homeland, especially when you consider that lama meat and grilled guinea pigs are delicacies in Peru.
Exotic meats aside, Peruvian cuisine counts a panoply of ingredients, including fish, potatoes, peppers, tubers, quinoa and corn, corn, corn.
I recently swooned over the excellent new Peruvian-influenced restaurant Mezcla, which plays with these ingredients masterfully. But it was at Navarrete’s table that I first discovered them, right here at Raza, and then at his other two restaurants: Madre in Rosemont, and A Table in Ahuntsic.
Despite Raza’s initial success, the restaurant had a habit of sputtering on and off the gourmet radar. Navarrete is a chef with plans, ideas, ambitions. So just when his first restaurant took off, he opened a second across town. And then when that got going, he opened another restaurant far from the others. He gave cooking classes, invited chefs for the Highlights Festival, shot videos, travelled. The guy seemed unstoppable!
But sometimes at night, when I’d pass by Raza, I’d see few tables occupied, or even lights out. What was going on? And why was Navarrete so compelled to open new restaurants when his first appeared to be struggling?
I reviewed Raza again in 2009, and exited impressed. The cooking — elegant, colourful, innovative — remained strong. But I sensed a shift from the last visit. Prices had increased, yet the menu selections had decreased. Few tables were occupied. Had Raza lost its mojo?
When I heard the resto went BYOW this year, my spirits sunk further as one of the draws at Raza had been their South Americaninspired wine list. And who could forget their killer pisco sours!
I returned last week with a few foodie friends (and six bottles of wine) eager to experience Raza for the third time. Again the restaurant, on a Friday night even, wasn’t full, but I was happy to see a new five-course tasting menu set at a reasonable $59.
Everyone thinks BYOW restaurants are a steal, yet what these restaurants lose on booze sales they make up on inflated menu prices, which often enter that wallet- crunching $30-main-course zone. Here you’re getting five plates for under $60, not cheap, mind you, but when the plates hit the table, you realize you’re miles from an Avenue Duluth brochetterie here. Navarrete’s cuisine is colourful, full of diverse textures, novel flavours, and there’s an haute-cuisine feel to most everything that crosses your lips.
We began with a delectable black bean soup. The dish started off with a bowl garnished with fresh coriander, radish slices, avocado puree, black bean puree and crumbled queso blanco cheese. The waitress then arrived to pour the soup from a pitcher. I loved the earthy flavour of it all and the way the cheese gradually melted/melded into the soup. Yes, the soup could have been hotter, but otherwise, yum.
Next came the fish course: a curled filet of abadèche (cusk eel), served atop a sort of porridge made of quinoa cooked with pumpkin puree and amarillo peppers. The waitress described it as a risotto, but Navarrete uses the Peruvian term “quinotto.” Descriptor debate aside, it was very nice, mildly spiced and unctuous. Though low on flavour and hardly a glamorous specimen, the fish was perfectly cooked, and I enjoyed the little rolled cucumber ribbon filled with caviar garnish served alongside.
There’s a nice elegance to this food that carried through to the duck dish. Served on a vegetable purée spiked with serraño peppers and decorated with dabs of beet puree, the thick slice of orange-glazed duck magret was further enhanced with lemon-flavoured dry meringue buds. Though the meringue added an odd hint of sweetness, it worked because duck can handle sweet, fruity flavours. Again everything here was a fine, yet I cannot deny three purees like this in a row were making me feel like either and invalid or an infant.
The next dish, a braised beef short rib, also arrived with a puree, this one cauliflower. But it was so gorgeously silky smooth that I didn’t mind one bit. Paired with the melting short rib, enhanced with smoky panca peppers and a few of those alien-like enoki mushrooms, this final plate maintained the high level of the meal.
And finally, Navarrete’s house classic, foie gras taco. Assembled on a soft corn tortilla, the taco was filled with avocado, salsa, red onions, pureed black beans, peppers and cilantro. Now that’s my idea of a taco!
Then … dessert! There is only one, and it’s described on the menu as “Le Sucre.” Yet I would — kindly — rename it “Le Mess.” And what a delicious mess it was, not to mention a nice bit of performance food art.
First, the tables were cleared, then the waiters placed thick plastic boards on each table to cover the entire surface. Navarrete arrived tableside and began to smear swirls of caramelized banana cream right on the plastic. He then spooned on piles of hazelnut powder, coffee “dirt,” dabs of caramel sauce and ganache, as well as blobs of meringue, and arrived with a siphon to top the whole thing off with mounds of strawberry mousse. And finally, just when you thought you could dig in, along came the chef with a blowtorch to toast the meringue. Fun!
Now foodies can sit there, roll their eyes and say the dessert-onthe-table idea was ripped off from the wildly innovative Alinea restaurant in Chicago. True. But Navarrete openly admits it, and quite frankly, he’s not the only chef in town offering this sort of JacksonPollack-style, eat-off-the-table presentation. As weird as it was, I also had a blast eating it. Watching one of my friends scoop up her portion with her fingers, there was no denying the entertainment factor. And the mix of textures and flavours was just great. Only cynics need not apply.
So my night at Raza was a winner, save for perhaps a noisy group sitting next to me, a situation aggravated by the loud background music, which they lowered the second I made the request. Service, if a tad slow at times, was otherwise excellent. Yet considering the room was only half full, I wonder how they would handle a full house.
However, this restaurant merits one because it’s not only very good, but different. And now with this set menu and the BYOW format, it’s accessible to gourmets on a budget. I cannot end this review, though, without airing one major complaint: Chef Navarrete, I miss those pisco sours! For more food and wine talk, tune in to Dinner Rush with Lesley Chesterman on Saturdays from 4 to 5 p.m. on News Talk Radio CJAD 800.