Over the top

>>Less could be more at
Old Montreal bistro Le Local

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

Simple food is a pleasure. Take the best ingredients you can get your hands on, don’t mess around too much and you can come close to perfection. Ask any Italian.

Complicated food can be pleasurable too, of course, only you better know what you’re doing because screwing it up will not only confuse the taste buds but far worse—come off as pretentious.

During dinner at Le Local, I couldn’t help thinking that the famous caveat about too many cooks goes for ingredients as well: too many can spoil the broth. This new Old Montreal venture is the lovechild of young chefs Alexandre Gosselin (Ô Chalet) and Louis-François Marcotte (Simplechic). When I visited recently, they had been open but two weeks, but there were no signs of opening jitters.

The service was impeccable, swift, friendly and knowledgeable. I’m not a huge fan of the industrial chic look (it’s often so cold), but they’ve managed to warm up the space with lots of wood and leather. Located at the pleasantly un-buzzy end of Old Montreal (west of McGill), there’s a lovely terrasse out front and a lounge-bar at the entrance.

The night I visited the place was dotted with the kind of middle-aged office worker in the area who might find Garde Manger’s aggressive party vibe too much, but likes to go to the new hot spot.

As for the menu, there’s no lack of choice, with soups, salads, tartares (when will this trend die?), mains, desserts and cheeses. At first glance, the dishes seem a little busy, with lots of flavour combos going on. Then alarm bells went off when I saw that several of the dishes featured truffle oil and foam, two things that reached their trendiness apex in 2006. Unless you are a Ferran Adrià or Heston Blumenthal, what business do you have messing with foam?

So, of course, I start with some truffle foam. But I’m after the squash, nuts and mushrooms underneath. The seasonal mushrooms with hazelnuts come atop a puree of butternut squash and chestnuts, the lot blanketed with truffle foam and dusted with micro-chopped chives ($10).

The offending froth did have a lovely woodsy smell to it on account of the tuber, but I was happy to see it collapse and shrink to nothing within a few minutes of arriving at the table. The puree had the consistency of extra thick mashed potatoes, the hazelnut chunks provided a little crunch, while the earthiness of the mushrooms cut the natural sweetness of the squash.

The crispy, tender suckling pork belly, braised for seven hours ($9) was a small, mildly clove flavoured rectangle, indeed crispy on top and tender within, and came sitting on the tiniest hill of tender Du Puy lentils, diced carrots and onions, capped off with a dusting of finely shaved, aged mimolette cheese. I found the sharpness of the cheese overpowered what was otherwise a simple and elegant dish.

For mains, I went for the pan-fried halibut with a salad of coco beans, cipollini onions, confit tomatoes, Brussels sprouts and calamari, with a hazelnut and balsamic vinaigrette ($28). The fish was fresh and nicely seared but I could have done without the chewy fried calamari and sweetly concentrated tomatoes, which pulled the dish in too many directions.

My dining pal’s steak from Eumatimi farm ($26) was a winner, done just right (on the rarer side of medium-rare) and the miniature puck of clam butter on top was an interesting touch. It came with fries (a touch overdone), mayo and a simple green salad. The simple sides were a nice break from the sometimes awkward acrobatics of the other dishes.

For dessert, we shared the molten 70 per cent Valrona chocolate cake with nut ice cream ($9). While the cake was a little dry around the edges, and the molten bit not as intensely chocolaty as it could have been, the ice cream was gorgeously creamy with a pronounced nuttiness, and paired perfectly with the cake. Then a cloyingly sweet rhubarb compote threw the whole thing off.

Le Local looks poised to be another hot-ticket Vieux address. Too bad the kitchen is too busy piling on the ingredients to stop and ask themselves whether sometimes less just might be more.