A TRUE CLASSIC
French fare done right
You will probably never find Café Cherrier on any restaurant list. I can’t recall seeing it recently reviewed by any Montreal restaurant critic or blogger. In the 19 years that I have been on this beat, never once did it occur to me that I should give it a try. Why? Familiarity, I guess, that feeling that the French bistro menu would be boringly predictable. In summer, Café Cherrier is such a scene that you could almost describe it as a terrasse wrapped around a restaurant, and with a great terrasse comes less pressure to offer sharp food. And the final death knell for my interest came from a restaurantgoing friend who lives nearby. When I told him I was curious about Café Cherrier’s food, he said: “Tout le monde sait que le Cherrier … c’est pas bon.” Ouf!
Still, every time I passed this legendary restaurant, popular with Québécois literati, politicians, celebs and media types, I wondered. Opened in 1983, this Montreal institution had to have something to draw in the hordes. I booked a table and headed to St-Denis St. a block away from the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec, and kitty corner to the famous Carré St-Louis.
Unlike L’Express and Leméac that feel just that much more posh, Café Cherrier reminds me of Montreal’s other famous French brasseries: downtown’s Alexandre and Outremont’s Chez Lévêque, but even more so the sadly defunct Chez Gauthier and Julien, which also drew in their fair share of movers and shakers. Café Cherrier also recalls those brasseries you find in every mid-sized town in France, like say La Paix in Rennes or Les Deux Garçons in Aix-en-Provence. The menu is indeed predictably French, with confit and floating islands. A table d’hôte with daily specials is a staple to entice return customers and offer budget diners a deal.
However, were you to dine in such brasseries in France today, chances are the food would be mediocre, as many mid-range restaurants there are reliant on ready-made dishes. Huge catering firms like Groupe Flo have taken over some of the most famous brasseries in France, including La Coupole, Bofinger and the Brasserie Balzar. I’m not saying you will eat badly in such establishments, but it would be wrong to think that there’s a lot of soul in food coming out of such kitchens, as brasserie cuisine relies more and more on commercial terrines, bagged salads, the surgelé and the sous-vide (frozen and vacuumpacked).
So, true confession: With so much going against the brasserie style of restaurant these days, I didn’t expect much entering Café Cherrier. But how wrong I was! From my first nibble of snails to my last bite of chocolate cake, I was utterly charmed.
First of all, the room has this great retro ’80s feel, with a pink-lit coffered ceiling, a huge bar, cushy brown banquettes everywhere and black-and-white portraits of famous customers like René Lévesque and Yvon Deschamps hung around the room. The crowd is a little older, but there are also student types, munching fries, seated behind open laptops. A smell of fish soup permeates the air. The waiters are incredibly friendly, seasoned professionals who know how to crack a joke and when to laugh at yours. The menu features all the usual brasserie/bistro suspects, and prices are in the $20 range.
I was especially taken with the wine list, which isn’t huge but features rare beauties like a natural wine from Philippe Viret in the Côtes du Rhône that will knock your socks off as it’s so crazy beautiful and delicious, as well as a more generic Guigal Côtes du Rhône and a New Zealand Oyster Bay sauvignon. Not only are wine prices fair (most glasses go for under $10), there’s something here for everyone.
As for the food, save for one dish, I highly recommend everything I tasted, which was expertly cooked, seasoned and served. After every course I kept thinking, what took me so long to get here?
First off, from the table d’hôte, a casserole of escargots: Served in a shallow ramekin, the halfdozen snails were tender, fleshy and doused in a garlic cream enhanced with goat’s cheese. Once we polished off all the snails, we picked up a slice of the excellent baguette and wiped that ramekin clean.
The house-smoked salmon is also a treat. Smoked in fleur de sel over maple wood, the fish was delicate, melting and generous in portion. I would have liked a slice of rye bread to go with it, but we wolfed it down in record time nonetheless. After a few slurps of the fish soup, I understood why its odour wafted through this room. With its luxurious texture and a rich fish flavour, this soup must fly out of that kitchen, bowl after bowl. I spread the accompanying croutons thickly with the potent rouille, sprinkled over the grated Swiss cheese, and dropped them in one after another until the bowl was empty. Heaven.
For my main course, I couldn’t resist one of the house specials, the Le fameux rumsteak du Cherrier. When the dishes arrived, the waiter set down a generous plate of fries, a side green salad loaded with walnuts, and a chafing dish topped with a silver tray on which was arranged a sliced sirloin steak bathed in butter sauce. Cooked to the requested medium-rare, the steak was tender, had great flavour (boosted by the butter) and the fries were the perfect golden crisp. Sold for $30, this dish is a bargain considering that salad would make for an ideal appetizer.
As a friend at the table pointed out, salads are the bellwether of a good bistro. So true, and the one she ordered with sautéed chicken livers was exemplary. With super fresh lettuce, a well-balanced vinaigrette, and an abundance of rosy-cantered chicken livers that weren’t in any way bitter (a common downfall with liver), the salad was just tops. Yes, I would have liked that the tomato segments were that much more ripe, but it’s March, and for March tomatoes they were fine.
I also relished every bite of the famous French country dish, braised rabbit with mustard and tarragon. Again the portion was generous, and the sauce was divine, not too rich, overly mustardy or bogged down with an excess of herbs. The rabbit included the saddle and leg, and the tour de force here was that the meat from both parts of the animal were equally tender — a feat as, when overcooked, white rabbit meat is dry and cottony. And the mash of turnip and carrot alongside was simply delicious. Talk about classic French food done right.
Desserts scored two hits and one miss, but since it was the only miss of the night, it’s not such a big deal. It was a tarte Tatin, with evenly caramelized apples on top, but a crust as soggy as leftover cereal. The nougat glacé was textbook, even if it’s not exactly the most wow of desserts. If you want a winner, go for the chocolate moelleux cake. It’s served with a pretty standard scoop of vanilla ice cream, but the cake itself is swell.
After polishing off our wine and thanking all our nice waiters, we headed out into the night, all in agreement we would return for any occasion, be it a pre-theatre nibble or a special occasion. So the Café Cherrier lives up to its place as one of the city’s best brasseries.
I immediately emailed my friend to tell him he was wrong. “Le Cherrier,” I typed, “est bon. Ben bon!”