AN ISSUE OF IDENTITY
Joséphine has a name from history, future potential, and a present needing some focus
For the past few years, the most-discussed topic regarding Montreal restaurants has been the possibility that there are too many of them. I have heard chefs complain about this, as well as restaurateurs. The more-the-merrier types are all for it, while those of us who see restaurants shuttering at the same rate as video-rental stores are not.
I’ve heard people dismiss the argument by saying it doesn’t matter because the survival-ofthe-fittest market decides, but I have long disagreed with the take that there aren’t too many restaurants, there are just too many bad restaurants. Truth is, there are too many bad restaurants the world over. But in our city, there are too many restaurants to support our relatively small dining public, so many of the good ones are running at half capacity. This week’s review made me ponder those debates once again.
Joséphine is the latest restaurant to occupy a building at the busy corner of St-Denis St. and Duluth Ave. that last housed the short-lived L’Escoffier and longlived Le Continental. Opened in May, the restaurant is operated by four partners: Jason-Neil Tremblay-Leblanc, his wife Cathy Deschambault, Tim Auger and chef Simon Leblanc, a graduate of the ITHQ just down the street.
Other key players include sommelier Sophie Allaire and designer Amlyne Phillips, known for her plant-heavy decor at such restaurants as Jatoba, Kampai Garden and Café Bazin.
And who is Joséphine? I was told the resto is named after Napoleon’s wife, as Napoleon invented the celebratory act of opening a Champagne bottle with a sabre, and one of the restaurant’s missions is to encourage people to drink sparkling wines. It’s sort of a stretch, but hey, whatever.
Once seated, I saw their sparkling wine intentions on display: every place setting includes a Champagne flute. Allaire arrived holding a bottle of bubbly from
the Jura and told us their intention is to “offer every diner a glass of sparkling upon arrival.” I started doing the math, wondering how much that generous offer is going to cost them, when she added: “… for $13 a glass.” OK, bit of a pressure tactic there, but you can always refuse, which I did, while the other two at my table sipped away at the Jura bubbly. I’ve never seen this done before and, frankly, I’m not a fan.
Right off the bat, I was uneasy at this restaurant, and I wasn’t sure why. The room is large, with some 80 seats, and includes an appealing central bar, giving it a sort of bistro/ brasserie ambience. And yet the menu is fussy and short — too short for a room that feels more like a heaping-bowl-of-mussels-and-steak-frites-brasserie kind of place. Though the room skews casual, there is a sommelier on the floor. And then there’s the vintage French soundtrack (think Dutronc and Aznavour), but the menu isn’t particularly French. Rarely have I dined at a restaurant that’s so unfocused.
Same goes for the wine list, which includes interesting bottles that aren’t listed by price (always my preference) or even alphabetically (odd but OK), but all mixed together under main categories of red or white, by region. Wines really should be listed by price, because there are a lot of us (hand raised) who don’t care to go beyond the $70 mark, and reading through the entire list to find one in your price range is tedious.
OK, restaurant identity crisis rant over. How was the food? Well, I’m scratching my head over that, too. First off, it’s expensive: main courses hover around $30. Fish and seafood don’t come cheap, but the surrounding ingredients didn’t contribute to the cause.
Second, the portion size of the appetizers is alarmingly small, whereas those of the main courses are overly generous. Take for example our first appetizer, a sort of surf-and-turf situation with mussels, clams and pork belly in a coconut curry sauce. When the plate arrived, I counted two mussels and one clam. The dish sells for $15, but the food cost is less than a dollar, especially as they forgot the pork belly.
A second version arrived with a small strip of pork, but though the sauce was delicious and the seafood was succulent, it was more of a glorified amuse-bouche than an appetizer. Also, suggestion to the kitchen: why not serve a main course dish of mussels with that nice curry sauce?
The next appetizer was a filet of “mi-cuit” trout served on a mousse of potatoes and smoked herring, and garnished with celery curls and leaves, as well as trout roe and crispy fish skin. Lots going on here, but in the end, the flavours were subtle, and instead of “mi-cuit,” the flaky trout seemed to be “trop cuit.”
I wasn’t much more enthusiastic about the sweetbreads with escargots. Arranged on a thin strip of head cheese, the nugget of sweetbread was paired with whelks and sliced mushrooms. I liked that head cheese, but the rest was entirely forgettable — and dry, despite the leek and bacon vinaigrette.
My spirits brightened with the mains, starting with a large skate wing surrounded by vegetables including brussels sprouts, fennel, caramelized cauliflower and cauliflower purée, as well as a Grenobloise sauce working overtime to tie all those flavours together. The skate was beautifully cooked, as were the vegetables. It was all a tad greasy, but otherwise very good.
Same goes for a dish of John Dory. Served whole with ratte potatoes, roasted cauliflower, fennel confit and a bagna cauda vinaigrette, the fish was perfectly cooked, coming away from the bone in large chunks as it should. No complaints.
I did have one complaint with the final main, a filet of sirloin served atop a smoked marrow bone with mashed potatoes and a wine sauce. The meat was ideally medium-rare, the potatoes were silky and the bone was filled with luscious marrow. But why was it all served warm?
Before dessert, we shared a cheese plate featuring three local specimens that were scarfed back in minutes. Excellent, and highly recommended over the average churros with coffee caramel sauce, and a buckwheat financier with a yogurt mousse, meringue and rhubarb compote hardly worth the calories.
Service, alas, was as uneven as the food, with a wait staff as nervous as cooking-school students. A high point was Allaire, whose recommendations were excellent and who let me taste a few different wines before settling on a glass. But that wine list needs a rethink, and how about upping the by-the-glass options?
I exited, reflecting upon that too-many-restaurants topic. There are, indeed, too many when you see one like this that’s trying out so many angles but ultimately failing to offer anything you can’t find done better elsewhere. Joséphine shows potential, but by mid-meal I wanted to stand up like a Broadway director, clap my hands and shout out: “Focus, people, focus!” Until they do, Joséphine remains a restaurant in search of its raison d’être.