Sugar shack attack!

Pigging out at Au Pied de
Cochon’s haute cabane à sucre

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

Our reservation was at noon so we skipped breakfast and left the afternoon free to spend on the couch, digesting. It was opening weekend at Au Pied de Cochon’s new Cabane à Sucre and we knew exactly what we were getting into: a maple-soaked, pork-filled pig-out session of Nouvelle France proportions.

Chef Martin Picard, with his proclivity for elevating fatty, populist fare to luxurious heights (witness his infamous foie gras poutine), continues with this winning formula at this new venture, where modern culinary techniques meet old timey Québécois peasant fare. A 45-minute drive from the city into Mirabel, where sugar shacks seem as common as dépanneurs on the Plateau, the building and decor are standard-issue cabane à sucre, from the long main hall of unfinished wood and communal tables to the tractor parked out front.

But there are clues that this is not your average maple-themed tourist trap. Like the gleaming espresso machine behind the bar, and the fact that there’s a wine list (featuring two kinds of champagne, no less). A large window gives onto a cold room full of meat, displayed in all its raw, fleshy glory—rabbits, pig heads, slabs of beef. And there is the cost: at $45 a head, it’s about double that of the average sugar shack, pushing it into splurge territory, but of good value considering a similar feast at the PDC resto might set you back a cool $100 or more.

Against a soundtrack of Cowboys Fringants-style alt-country de chez nous, we watched the room fill up with groups and toddler-toting 30-somethings. Then a smiling young woman sidled up to us with a dim sum cart and the gorging commenced. To begin with, there were saucer-sized buckwheat pancakes with maple syrup, thick, glassy ribbons of cured salmon, an ice cream scoop of addictive cretons, with a delicate pork flavour that didn’t overpower the toasted breadcrumbs, and a mackeral omelette in a cast-iron pan (the fish is maple-smoked on-site) dotted with soft chunks of potato and soufflé-like in texture.

The mellow, complex flavours and surprising lightness of the pea soup with lard contrasted sharply with the intensely salty soupe aux pois of childhood memories, and our single slice of tourtiere (artfully displayed on a thick slice of log) was a revelation: flakey, buttery pastry hugged chunks of aromatic roast and ground meats which married perfectly with its accompanying tangy, chunky, house-made ketchup. The oreilles de criss salad, another star, was a tantalizing assembly of mixed greens, flat leaf parsley, cress, chives, walnuts and intensely crunchy little curly-cues of its namesake pork rinds.

“Voila votre maki!” a waiter shouted over the din of the full house. “This ain’t your grand papa’s cabane à sucre,” joked my dining pal in response. Sugar shack sushi, really? Stuffed with rabbit, lobster and foie gras, it came with a reduced lobster stock dipping sauce and wrapped in a crispy tempura coating. One bite in, you stop asking questions and just get it. Anyway, there’s no time to think. Another waitress materialized. “Voila la famille royale!” she intoned. The royal trio, a wildly rich and comforting hodge-podge: roast Cornish game hen, magret de canard and quail shared space with parsnip, cheese polenta (extra creamy and grits-like in consistency) and baked beans, the lot covered in an intensely reduced, maple-y sauce.

Dessert was a playful, maple-tastic version of a banana split, where a scoop of vanilla ice cream came buttressed by banana slices and sported a mohawk-like tuft of maple cotton candy, clusters of maple sponge candy and crunchy maple-candied peanuts.

My two minor gripes about the experience: disjointed service (it took 20 minutes to flag someone down to place our drink order, despite there being plenty of servers zipping about), and the lack of explanation about the dishes from staff.

With aching bellies—but without regrets—we headed home to convalesce on the couch, secure in the knowledge that we had indulged in more than enough sugar shack gluttony to last until next season.