Nina Caplan
‘You can drink what you like, but Québeckers have a soft spot for France’
If QuEbEC REmAINs ‘La belle Province’ when all around her speak English, it’s because francophone Canada learned early to stand up for herself – the mother country was 5,000km away, its rulers far from supportive even before the french Revolution proved a terminal distraction. That relationship remains complicated but diners don’t suffer: quite the reverse. Chefs happily use french methods and cuts, but produce is local and nobody here has much time for the starched manners of la grande cuisine.
‘Pretension is the enemy of good food and wine,’ says David mcmillan, and he’d know. The co-owner (with frédéric morin) of Joe beef named his exceptional restaurant after an Irish-born army quartermaster turned montréal tavern-keeper whose nickname arose from his willingness to feed anyone, indigenous, Irish or french-Canadian. This dinner-table democracy also means you can drink what you like, though Québeckers retain a soft spot for france.
‘I saw New Zealand sauvignon blanc arrive, then disappear,’ says mcmillan. ‘Everybody wanted what they couldn’t have, then they drank it and realised they still wanted Chablis!’ The same, he says, happened with Australian shiraz: ‘We hear – “It’s 97 points, 100% new oak, 17.5% alcohol, it’s sunny 24 hours a day down there…” People tried a few bottles then went back to drinking regular burgundy from an okay producer.’
Certainly, there’s little Australasian wine in montréal, but nor is there much Eurocentric snobbery. ‘If you’re a sommelier you drink Domaine Roulot,’ says mcmillan. ‘but mediocre meursault producers are amazing, in my opinion. I can pair food with an Auxey-Duresses; I don’t always have to drink the top crus.’
This seems a reasonable approach from an Irish-Canadian in french Canada. Eating a meal at Joe beef is a celebration of the underdog, assuming your underdog is beautifully cooked and impeccably accessorised. I had smoked-meat croquetas with white beer; think about it: the famous cured brisket of Jewish montreal made into a spanish snack and matched with medieval German beer, all dreamed up by a local boy who only quit dealing drugs when asked by a client to help out in his restaurant.
mcmillan recalls that day several decades ago. ‘The Canadian Prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, came into the kitchen and asked who had made the best salad he’d ever eaten. When the chef pointed at me, Trudeau said: “Thanks so much, you have a great future in this”.’ Today, that Pm’s son is a chum, which is nice, since Justin Trudeau now has his father’s job.
mcmillan worked in france, where he fell in love with wine. He explains this over a glass of Cinque Campi’s Particella 128, a 2013 Emilia-Romagna spumante, accompanied by some multicultural snacks: celery-root bagna cauda; ajvar, a red pepper and aubergine dish from serbia (‘my dad’s from there’, interjects Vanya filipovic, who oversees Vin Papillon, their no-bookings wine bar next door); and sea urchin with mexican poblano chili pepper. Around us, twentysomething montréalers tuck blithely into lamb kidneys: ‘The weirdest cut of sheep that New Yorkers serve is lamb chops,’ snorts mcmillan.
We drink Riesling by Norman Hardie. The vineyard is in Prince Edward County, which has its own claim to underdog status: it was once the country’s canning capital. Canada has good dry wines, as well as plenty of mediocrities: mcmillan dismisses the Okanagan Valley in british Columbia; and certainly the best Canadian wines I’ve tried have come, like Hardie’s, from Ontario. We eat guédille, a typically Québécois lobster roll, and bellota lardo (the backfat of pampered ibérico pigs) on toast with Canadian mussels escabèche. We salute the motherland with a superb Thierry Allemand’s Cornas 2011, which the french probably wouldn’t pair with shellfish. They should.
In one sense, dining in Québec isn’t inclusive at all. The government is the province’s only public importer of alcohol, although restaurateurs can import with government oversight. La société des Alcools du Québéc is one of the world’s three biggest wine buyers, so prices are kind – one reason us sommeliers like coming north. ‘They can’t believe we have 10 back vintages of marcel Lapierre, 20 orange wines... sommeliers know montréal is the place to go to drink the weird stuff.’ so oddly, even this restriction ends up promoting inclusiveness, just as its de rigueur french outside doesn’t prevent Joe beef’s interior echoing with Italian, English, Chinese.
Like his polyglot eatery, mcmillan stands against the michelin aesthetic and its rigorous specialisation. ‘so many top chefs know nothing about wine,’ he says. ‘It’s appalling.’ Those restaurants pride themselves on exclusivity of all kinds; that’s not the Canadian way. The alternative may not always be simpler but it’s certainly easier, in every sense, on the tongue.
‘Montréal chefs use French methods and cuts, but have no time for starched manners’