Getting back to French basics
La Banane K (out of 4) GOOD Address: 227 Ossington Ave. (at Dundas St. W.), 416-551-6263, labanane.ca Chef: Brandon Olsen Hours: Daily, 6 p.m. to midnight Reservations: Yes Wheelchair access: No Price: Dinner for two with cocktails, tax and tip: $200
Brandon Olsen has gone old school.
Known for innovative pairings such as foie gras with Nutella, Olsen now mines classic French cuisine at La Banane, his pricey new Ossington Ave. restaurant.
“I’ve evolved into a more mature chef. I don’t want to throw something crazy on a plate and make it work,” says Olsen, 33.
His commitment to tradition is admirable, even if his claim of being the only one in the city to channel Auguste Escoffier is overstated. But Olsen has yet to perfect the homage two months after opening, turning out uneven dishes from a menu of $95 caviar omelettes and $190 seafood towers.
La Banane is a well-run restaurant with good energy and some quirks, such as the piping hot pretzels with ballpark mustard the kitchen sends out instead of baguette and butter.
Olsen’s love of disco comes through in the soundtrack and on the restaurant’s website, where there is a twirling mirrored ball, a reservations button and little else. (Fear not: you can find the menu online at Open Table.)
With backing from King Street Food Company, Olsen turned the former Saint Tavern into a threepart room decorated with banana leaf murals that play on the restaurant’s name (“to be smiling,” in idiomatic French), as does the bright yellow front door.
Up front is a garden-like area, which segues into a marble raw bar, then an intimate back room, draped in velvet.
Olsen and chef de cuisine Basilio Pesce (ex-Porzia) don’t entirely go back to basics. They marinate raw scallops in garlicky buttermilk that bites the back of the tongue ($22 for two). Ile flottante ($11) now points toward the Mideast with orange blossom water and candied pistachios.
Sweetbreads are delicately smoked ($23) and covered in wild Oregon hedgehog mushrooms.
Capers and brown butter, a classic pairing with skate, here blanket raw tuna ($16). (Olsen fused those last two dishes into one while at Bar Isabel but says the combo “has run its course.”)
Still, they beat comté and gruyère into mashed potatoes to make rich and stringy pommes aligot ($12) straight out of Larousse Gastronomique.
Plates are minimalist. Duck breast ($28) comes with the sweet tease of a single poached prune. A pink slab of foie gras ($21) has just two small slices of spiced apple.
The cheese plate ($20) is completely unadorned: No fruit, jellies, bread or crackers.
At odds with the stripped-down food is the theatricality of a whole deboned sea bass baked in pastry ($32). Once it’s presented at the table, the top crust is replaced with hand-turned zucchini, part of a culinary tradition Olsen says he wants to preserve by teaching staff.
But the fish isn’t cooked through one night. It’s better the next time, no longer sashimi.
Olsen, a pastry chef and chocolatier, says he now expresses his “weirdness” through his signature dessert: A $50 chocolate egg filled with truffles and seemingly made for Instagram.
“There’s nothing wrong with basics,” Olsen says of his love for French culinary tradition.
Agreed. La Banane just needs to get them right. apataki@thestar.ca, @amypataki