KEEPING IT SIMPLE
Classic food, good wine list will do
The best bistros are old. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. A bistro must have, as the French say so brilliantly, “du vécu,” a history. Same goes for a brasserie. Restaurateurs open bistro-style and brasserie-style establishments at an alarming rate in this city, and really any place where people are looking for wellpriced French food. Yet most are underwhelming. Rare are the Montreal bistros and brasseries that wowed in their youth and if they did, too few remained popular after the opening hype ceased. Go to L’Express, Chez Alexandre and even the wellestablished Leméac, and you see restaurants with worn edges, a cast of regulars and dishes that remain on the menu for decades because enough people are ordering them. Most of the new bistros, no matter how good, lack that personality, that ambience that makes them popular even if the food isn’t anything more than comforting.
I like my bistros a little shabby, and my brasseries a little brassy. And I like these restaurants to transport me to France because I never tire of that desire to be endlessly transported to France. That said, a lot of my worst meals on French soil have been eaten in brasseries with magnificently old and elaborate decor and food straight out of a plastic bag. Let’s not get too romantic about the superiority of the French brasserie/bistros because too many of them have become gastronomic mausoleums of sorts filled with naive tourists and indifferent waiters.
Montreal is a city where the bistro genre dominates, be it in its classic form or in the more creative, “bistronomie” style. Bistro/brasserie cuisine is to gastronomic dining as prêt à porter is to haute couture. It’s everyday food more than special occasion fare, which means all it’s really setting out to be is delicious. This week I give you two, a bistro and a brasserie.
LE GLADSTONE
The key to a great brasserie is an experienced staff, a bustling ambience and solid French food, more often classic than innovative. Located on Ste-Catherine St. next door to the new and very happening Brasserie Lucille’s and the older and wildly popular Tavern on the Square, Gladstone faces tough competition. The plan it seems, was to play it safe, with a predictable menu of both bistro faves and comfort food classics. The brightly lit, black-and-red decor reminds me of the bistros you see in French train stations, with the small terrasse out front appearing to be the first choice for many diners.
Open in late 2013, Gladstone’s owner, Yvon Creton (brother of Alain Creton, the owner of Brasserie Alexandre), has given Westmount residents an attractive restaurant, but hardly one to provide any competition in the area. Not only does the food lack spunk, but service is mediocre. And prices are sky high.
A recent dinner began with a lobster bisque, and a tomato and peach salad with burrata. The bisque was as rich and bitter as Donald Trump, and lacked anything in the way of lobster flavour. As for the salad, for starters, instead of the listed beefsteak tomatoes, the bowl was filled with standard tomatoes, chilled through, and underripe. How you can even find an underripe tomato this time of year is beyond me. The accompanying peach slices were crunchy and the smoked duck breast draped atop it all was off-puttingly smoky. And all that for $22. Not good.
For mains we started with the chicken ravioli with peppers and zucchini, which were unremarkable and greasy. Then came a bavette à l’échalotte, two small rounds of flank steak served with a dull salad, a cup of fries, and Béarnaise sauce instead of the listed shallots. The meat had good flavour and the fries were fine, but for $29, the portion of meat should have been more generous and the sides should have been perfect.
Served with fat fries, Gladstone’s hamburger is a winner. Too bad it arrived with more of that dreary salad, chock full of commercial croutons. As for the price, $22, I can think of a dozen better burgers in Montreal sold for less.
Just when my spirits seemed unraisable, along came desserts. First up, a textbook chocolate mousse, then a delectable vanilla cream, and finally a lovely blueberry tart. How great to finish with such a high! But by then the damage had been done.
Gladstone has little new to offer and frankly, not much of interest, either. The Westmount restaurant scene is far from the city’s best, but it is picking up. What a shame to see restaurants like this dragging back down again.
BISTRO ALBERT
In between the downtown core and the old city is square of streets that extends from Ste-Catherine to Réné Levesque and from University to Aylmer, which counts quite a number of restaurants eager to nab the local biz crowd. Chez Julien was long the brasserie of choice before it closed last year. Today, restaurant Jatoba is the new kid on Phillips Square, where you’ll also find the crowded bistro Le Grand Comptoir and the pizzeria, Il Focolaio. Jérôme Ferrer made the smart move years ago of opening not one but two restaurants on Beaver Hall Hill, just a few blocks away from the headquarters of Quebec’s mega companies like Québecor and Power Corporation. This is also a popular tourist spot, as the W and the Inter-Continental hotels are close at hand, as is the Palais des congrès. Albert Bistro is the latest addition to the neighbourhood. Small in scale with a large, streetside terrasse, the restaurant has captured enough early buzz to make a table here tough to garner.
Chef Jean-Philippe Desjardins’s cuisine follows the bistro cannon, but in a more “bistronomie” than “onion soup” mode — that is, French food with some inventive dishes and some reworked classics. Popular at lunch (the dinner “apéro” menu is more small plates than feasting opportunity), the restaurant also offers a good selection of cocktails, and a short but sharp wine list with a good by-the-glass selection, including La Dernière Goutte, a white wine made with cabernet sauvignon grapes. Fun! That to me, is another bistro requirement: a solid wine list. It doesn’t have to be long, but it should be fairly priced and interesting. So score one for Albert.
Score two for Albert on the plate, because the food is good to very good, starting with a hot pink, cold beet soup served simply with a swirl of balsamic vinegar and a sprinkling of chives. I liked the bright flavours on display, and how refreshing to see beets in soup form for a change instead of in that done-to-death beet and goat’s cheese salad. The balsamic swirl made a second appearance on a plate of multi-coloured, juicy heirloom tomatoes with watercress. Nothing earth-shattering, but who needs more in tomato season?
Beef tartare might just be the quintessential bistro dish and Albert’s is exemplary: just spicy enough, not too creamy, not too mushy, and served with a heap of matchstick potatoes, a tuft of greens, a couple of croutons and a dab of mayo. Very good.
Straying from the French norm, the next dish featured pasta sheets layered with pine nuts, yellow squash and zucchini, braised lamb and ricotta. I’m not sure it all came together but everything sure tasted great individually (I couldn’t stop thinking how good this topping would be on spaghetti). And I have nothing but praise for a melting piece of slow-cooked trout served with mashed potatoes enhanced with lobster and a lobster bisque sauce. Add a few tender fava beans to that combo and what’s not to like?
For dessert we enjoyed vanilla ice cream spiked with meringue shards served over blueberries, and a delicious quenelle of chocolate milk mousse set on a butter cookie surrounded by cashews and caramel sauce. Yet as much as I liked the flavours here, the desserts looked like they were assembled by my 11-year-old. I know chefs aren’t that gung-ho on having to make desserts, but does it have to be so obvious?
I liked Albert, but not as much as a few other critics. I was also irked that no one returned my calls or answered the phone when I tried to book for dinner a few days later. That said, a table of three cocktail-sipping businessmen dining next to me when I ate there sure looked happy. I walked away yearning for that little extra something.