Bar Lupulus
1242 Wellington St. W.
It’s in the name: this restaurant is first and foremost a bar. And it lives up to its name, offering the most unbelievable beer, wine, and cocktails, with a nod to cider on the way.
At last count, there were over 200 beers on offer, 20 of them on tap. Many are local. (Where do they keep them all?) As for the wine list, it’s a dizzying read, with options from all around the world but an emphasis on Canada and Europe. There are 18 by the glass and over 130 by the bottle, with some from such surprising locales as the Czech Republic and Georgia. A couple are from the U.S., but not a single bottle from South America.
Billed as a gastropub, Bar Lupulus has a dark, clubby, pub-like atmosphere, with low lighting, dark grey panelled walls, and plenty of wood. (Thankfully, it’s missing the large-screen televisions so prevalent in the majority of pubs these days.) This is a gastropub in the British sense of the word — one designed to feel welcoming and warm and to tickle your taste buds, first through your choice of drink, then on your plate.
The food put forth by chef de cuisine Justin Champagne is ambitious, and the menu features fresh, seasonal, locally sourced fruit and vegetables. However, all the composed dishes are complicated, with many different flavours and layered ingredients — some work, some do not. A burrata salad arrives with a fat ball of creamy cheese covered with a bright orange tomato coulis sitting atop a tangle of mixed green leaves, the plate studded with heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumber ribbons, basil jelly, grilled plums, long peppers, brown-butter croutons, and mounds of aerated honey. Some elements are excellent, such as the flavourful tomatoes, the cheese, and the leaves, which have a pleasantly acidic dressing; some, such as the soggy croutons, are not. Overall, there are just too many contrasting flavours on this plate. Ostrich tartare combines a mound of raw meat with white anchovies, capers, sunflower seeds, olive-oil jam, Dijon mustard, tonka-bean-pickled blueberries, Parmesan, and a blue-algae potato puff. Once again, parts of this dish are good, such as the blue-algae potato puff and the white anchovy pieces. But the ostrich meat is under-seasoned, and the blueberries and olive-oil jam add nothing to the dish. The fish dish, a pan-seared rainbow trout fillet, comes atop a pile of lentils with watercress, pork-belly lardons, confit fennel, and rainbow carrots. This one works.
You can see the theme here: there’s something to please every palate, from the impressive drinks list to the extensive ingredients. If you like to dissect every ingredient on your plate, then you’ll find plenty to discover at Bar Lupulus while you work your way through the beer and wine list. If seasonal simplicity is more your style, then you should choose another restaurant.