How a French café got its groove back
CAFÉ BOULUD
(out of 4) VERY GOOD
Address: 60 Yorkville Ave. (in the Four Seasons Hotel) Chef: Sylvain Assié Hours: Seven days, 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Reservations: Yes Wheelchair access: Yes Price: Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip: $160 It was three years ago that celebrity chef Daniel Boulud opened a Toronto outpost of his restaurant empire.
He signed a multi-year management contract with the Four Seasons Hotel and installed his own chef, Tyler Shedden, to replicate Manhattan’s Café Boulud.
But diners weren’t returning often enough. So the restaurant shut down this past summer for an 11-week, $2.3-million renovation, becoming a less formal — and relatively cheaper — French restaurant with simpler plating and marvellous steak frites. The vibe Thanks to designer Martin Brudnizki (Drake One Fifty), the renovated second-floor room no longer resembles a ’70s airport lounge. (Original designer Rosalie Wise Sharp is married to Four Seasons founder Isadore Sharp.) Now it is a warm brasserie with more than a whiff of luxury in the herringbone Hermès wallpaper and leggy mid-century chairs. Framed wooden spoons add a populist touch, as does the Homer Simpson quote — “To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems” — printed on the bar coasters.
The room is loud with conversation and Joe Jackson tunes. I overhear one diner brag about his upcoming lunch with George Bush Sr. A businessman taps away on two cellphones, largely ignoring his beautiful date. She seems mollified when he specially orders madeleines ($9) from D Bar downstairs.
Such vaunted service isn’t my lot. Twice, I sit on my coat while the neighbours get theirs checked. The new menu “At the opening we tried to do it New York style. Now we followed the guests and are doing simpler food,” says new chef de cuisine Sylvain Assié, 36, a Four Seasons veteran.
I see it more as a roundup of the French empire’s — and Daniel Boulud’s — greatest hits. Fresh red chilies cut through the welcome fattiness of Vietnamese pho ($16). Grilled kale ($16) arrives via the Kasbah with a heavy dusting of cumin balanced by yogurt and golden raisins. Anchovy and red pepper toasts ($9) are pure Provençal pleasure.
Many initial menu items remain, such as the still-excellent sea bass fillet ($38). But newer dishes prevail, like the improbably tender flatiron steak ($29) and the exceptionally juicy and comforting rotisserie chicken ($28). Too bad the chicken skin, as bronzed as a Donatello statue, is flabby. The flaws
While the reborn restaurant merits a higher star rating than my original review, it could do better. A side of spinach ($9), for one, doubles as a salt lick.
Service still needs work. “Who’s having the kale salad?” asks the food runner as though we’re in a pub, not the realm of a notorious perfectionist like Boulud.
New York import the Frenchie burger ($24) is a disappointment. We expect much from the chef whose short rib-stuffed burger launched a thousand buns. This version has a chewy patty and too much Dijon mustard. The Big Mac-like “special sauce” is better suited to a slacker snack bar. Et tu, Daniel? The desserts New pastry chef Joyce Wong makes fluffy îles flottantes ($9) and the show-stopping grapefruit givré ($12) they can’t take off the menu. As in 2012, the sorbet is served in a hollowed-out grapefruit with Middle Eastern embellishments like rose petals and wisps of sesame halvah.
“We have guests that come every afternoon just for the givré and a glass of champagne,” says Assié.
Humble profiteroles ($11) are also a little bit magnificent. When it arrives, all we see is a solid chocolate dome. Then the food runner pours hypnotic circles of steaming hot chocolate from a small pitcher onto the dome; it slowly melts, revealing the trio of ice cream-filled puffs underneath. The roof is now a chocolate-flooded basement. It’s the kind of showmanship every celebrity chef should offer.
Consider the Café Boulud 2.0 reboot complete.