Deep dish dining

>> La Casserole serves high-class comfort
food from the south of France

by MARK SLUTSKY

What could be more welcome, as winter draws in and the days get shorter, than a restaurant dedicated to serving high-class comfort food in a friendly environment? That’s the idea, at least, behind la Casserole, a new restaurant on St-Denis above Mont-Royal. With exposed brick walls and a room of plain tables, the restaurant is unadorned, but still adheres to a minimum level of coziness.

The food they serve isn’t entirely cooked in casseroles, but you get the idea. The focus is on Southwestern French cooking—we’re talking cassoulets, confit de canard, etc.—with a few detours into Basque and Italian territory. The restaurant’s atmosphere is definitely enhanced by the service, which is cheerful and unfailingly polite (in a party of three men and one woman, the lady was always attended to first). It’s also bring your own wine, or beer, as the case may be.

Most everything is organized on a table d’hôte basis. The basic prix fixe will run you $14.95–$24.95, with an appetizer, choice from about a dozen mains, and after-dinner coffee. The tasting menu ($34) is the same, only you get an extra entrée and dessert thrown in. On their own, entrées run pretty much in the sub-$10 range.

We started out by sharing one of those à la carte starters—couldn’t resist the escargot ($8.95). They were served with mushrooms in a red wine sauce, along with crispy triangular feuillantines. The snails weren’t exactly exploding with flavour, but the dish on a whole was a nice mix of textures and tastes.

There’s three choices of appetizers with the table d’hôte—soup of the day, a celery remoulade and a salad. The night we visited, they offered a simple fish soup, which was smooth and pleasant, though not wildly memorable. A green salad with heaps of shaved carrot was adorned with a snappy vinaigrette and was refreshing and crisp.

I had to try the cassoulet, the perfect autumn or winter filler-upper; I can’t imagine eating it when the weather is hot but when you need a little insulation, nothing sounds better. It’s a hearty stew made with white beans, chunks of ham, Toulouse sausage and a preserved duck leg. That’s a lot of meat and a lot of bean. The tastes were as heterogeneous as the dish’s many textures. The sausage was a rich, smoky delight, and I could have easily eaten another plate of them. The duck was just absurdly tender, oozing off the bone and deliciously fatty. The cubes of pork were ho-hum, though, as was the sauce; all in all, the dish could have used a lot more seasoning.

The poulet à la basquaise was a simple stewed poultry dish, made with tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. The veggies provided some welcome flavour but the chicken itself could have used a little more spark. A little somethin’ somethin’. It tasted fine, but it didn’t quite sing. It was served with what seemed to be a sampling of veggies: a couple of scalloped potatoes, some julienned carrots, celery and summer squash. Everything we tried, save for the cassoulet, got the same sides, and while they were very tasty, the lack of variety was a little disappointing.

Okay, not everything—the osso bucco alla milanese also featured a handful of penne on the side. The veal shanks themselves were a little on the tough side, though they were otherwise satisfying. Finally, we had a sort of confit double-header, a dish featuring a leg of duck and a leg of pheasant, both à l’orange. Like the bird in the cassoulet, both were satisfyingly tender and the hint of fruity flavour was appreciated.

Everything we had at la Casserole was filling, reasonably satisfying and perfect cold-weather food. But there was something missing. On the whole, the food was just a little on the bland side; it simply needed more seasoning. You couldn’t help but think how much more vivid the flavours would be if you were actually eating in a kitchen in the southwest of France. That said, with reasonable prices and friendly service, this wouldn’t be at all a bad place to duck into on a frosty fall night.