Vivid Vietnamese

>>La Feuille de Menthe mostly hits
the mark with its flamboyant
and idiosyncratic creations

by MARK SLUTSKY

Au Cyclo was one of Montreal’s best-loved Vietnamese restaurants, and rumours of its demise were swirling for at least a year before it closed a few years ago, to the dismay of its many fans. With its emphasis on fine dining (no banh mi or pho there) and artfully prepared dishes like “shrimp soufflé on sugar cane,” it was an unusual but always satisfying dinner spot.

It seemed like post-Cyclo, a couple of restaurants came and went in that same space, but La Feuille de Menthe, which opened last year, looks like it’s settled in for the long run. The emphasis is again Vietnamese, although with some more conventional and generically Asian dishes like General Tao chicken on the menu as well, presumably to attract the lunch crowd (lunches range from $6.75–$9 and generally seem like a pretty good deal). There’s also talk of sushi, which isn’t on the menu yet, although the woman who runs the joint explained that it’s coming soon.

She also, when we ordered, emphasized that her aim was to serve authentic Vietnamese food with only the best ingredients, nothing watered down, which seemed like a fine goal to us. We’d settled in with a couple of beers from the dep (it’s BYOW) and had gone through a minor fiasco with the heated hand-washing cloths (one of them had a streak on it of something we’re going to generously assume was hot sauce that served to only make my friend’s hands dirtier) and were looking forward to a good, authentic meal.

What we ended up with was a meal that was good, mostly, and also pretty strange—some of Feuille de Menthe’s dishes are definitely as idiosyncratic as its famed predecessor. More on that later. To start, we tried the crab and tomato soup that came included with the table d’hôte. The owner, who served us, warned us that it was hot, but didn’t specify whether she meant “really piquant” or just “really warm.” But it was neither.

The other starters did better. The agedashi ($4), four cubes of lightly breaded and deep-fried tofu, was crispy and light, the sauce savoury. Very nice. The teriyaki soft-shell crab ($7) turned out to be pieces of breaded crabmeat served with a teriyaki dipping sauce. The crab, while not exactly bursting with flavour, had a satisfying crunch, and it only left me wanting more, not necessarily a bad thing. The table d’hôte also came with a pair of imperial rolls, which were peppery and better than average.

For our table d’hôte main, we went with the lemongrass beef ($17 with the soup and the rolls). Though not a feast for the eyes, this was a solid take on the dish, with a very strong (in a good way) lemongrass flavour permeating the meat.

In contrast to the beef, our other mains definitely were a visual extravaganza. I had the sautéed shrimp and chicken in pineapple shell ($20), and when they say “in pineapple shell,” they’re not kidding. The whole dish is served in a hollowed-out pineapple—chicken, shrimp and chunks of the fruit. The shrimp took to the sweet, acidic pineapple sauce well, but the chicken was overcooked and bland. All in all, it was a bit much.

What was much better, and equally festive, was the seafood-in-coconut ($23) dish, which was as you might assume, seafood in a coconut sauce, served in a coconut. This was quite nice. Once again, the shrimp took to the flavouring nicely, and when you mixed in a little rice, a little bit of coconut meat, well, it was a good time all around. And for whatever reason, the dish was served with breaded squid and teriyaki dipping sauce on the side.

We skipped the homemade sorbet ($7) and sipped on tea after the meal, musing on the flamboyant dishes we’d just dined on. La Feuille de Menthe is a mixed bag, with some standouts and some dishes that seemed to need just a little extra. Still, for lunch or a quick dinner, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it either.