Still hungry

La Montée is the downtown
reincarnation of a Plateau favourite

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

From the get-go, the unofficial motto of the restaurant formerly known as la Montée de Lait has been “onward and upward.” Opened under the LMDL moniker in 2004 in a small space on Villeneuve in the Plateau, all blonde wood and cream coloured walls, the overarching theme of the menu was cheese and dairy. There were promising sparks, but the concept seemed forced and the kitchen’s efforts uneven.

In 2005, after renovating and ditching the milk products theme, LMDL’s food was suddenly much better, with inventive riffs on Québécois-inflected French dishes like seared scallops with blood pudding purée or smoked deer with mustard seed ice cream. Now comes the abbreviated name and sleek new Bishop Street digs, where the purple walls match the waiters’ neckties. But diehard LMDL fans need not worry: owner Hugo Duchesne and chef-co-owner Martin Juneau have not lost their mojo and that wonderful menu hasn’t changed so radically.

I mostly prefer the traditional entrée-main-dessert narrative arc at dinner, but each of la Montée’s small-ish plates is well-balanced and interesting enough to stand on its own. Peckish? Get two. Looking to feast like a Viking? Have the chef’s six-course menu, with wines to match. Dinner here is a drawn out process, good for food nerds and/or special occasion dates, not so good for folks in a hurry.

My lady friend and I both went for the four-course option ($55), choosing seven savoury, one sweet, all to share. This friend, who works in the food biz and has a sommelier course under her belt, gave full marks to the 20-page wine list; “sophisticated, eclectic—one of the best in the city.” We let our waiter, clearly knowledgeable and passionate about wine, choose a bottle for us from the beautiful glass cellar at the entrance: a fabulous Vincent Pinard red sancerre.

An amuse-bouche of Raspberry Point oysters in jelly with mignonette was terrific, and due to my friend’s shellfish allergy, both bivalves were mine. Then the chef’s sent out a non-shellfish consolation amuse (a tomato tart that was pronounced “Okay”). A three-pronged ode to celery—mostly root and leaf—included a tasty disc of celery root in a kind of gravy, a gratinee of thinly sliced celery root and a shot glass of celery leaf and granny smith apple liquid (translated in the English menu as “foot juice”).

On our first plate, delicate squares of rare swordfish topped a rectangle of flaky puff pastry a shade of deep golden brown. Next to this sat a singular, silky caramelized cipollini onion, a shot glass of dark and lovely black olive broth, and a thick line of garlicky anchoïade sauce.

Then a deconstructed carbonara: a slab of bacon, thick as steak and melt-in-your-mouth tender, was paired with a single Grana Padano-filled mezzaluna, a scoop of parsley jelly and a glistening egg yolk (a bite combining the latter two items with the bacon was magic). In the chèvre chaud (an old LMDL fave), a square of creamy goat’s cheese lay across a velvety eggplant pancake, which hid a thin layer of onion marmalade.

Veal loin cooked in the sous-vide style (vacuum-packed in plastic and slow-poached at a low temperature) was accompanied by a square of seared yellow fin tuna and some lovely house-made mayo in an ode to vitello tonato. The crispy, molasses-glazed suckling pig’s belly (another hit from the old menu) was an enthralling medley of fall-apart supple meat and crispy bits deserving of a standing ovation.

Too bad the braised organic beef with shallot and red wine puree and the cutest little nub of marrow arrived on the heels of that spectacular performance. It was very good, but: that pork! What could possibly compete? We ended with a superb, satisfyingly creamy Arborio rice pudding, a chic spin on a childhood fave, with a subtle salty caramel taste and some highly addictive, crunchy crumble bits on top.

So has La Montée reached its zenith? Not likely. Duchesne and Juneau seem more focused on the proverbial journey than reaching some kind of pinnacle. Which is exactly what keeps things so exciting.