Fishy French decadence

Euro-fish in fine form at Le Poisson Rouge

by SPANKY HOROWITZ

French food can be a difficult cuisine to gauge. You've got your trad French, your tall food, don't forget fusion, there's nouveau cuisine--and then consider regional cooking like Lyonnais, Provencal etc. and you can get confused pretty darn fast.

When chef Pascal Gellé opened up Le Poisson Rouge on the edge of Lafontaine Park, he knew what he was getting into, which is why you may have some trouble getting into this 35-seat BYOB bistro without a reservation.

The décor is sketchy, but if M. Gellé had his way, I'd wager that the walls would be completely bare. Yellow and orange sponge-painted walls (circa early '90s Plateau) are accentuated by unpainted, unvarnished wooden tables. But don't fret--your money is well spent on the food, not the furniture.

The menu is a single page of foolscap, but what a page! Appetizers are $9, the soup is $4 and main courses are $19. That comes to $32 à la carte, but for $29 you can select your starter, enjoy the daily soup, pick any main course and then enjoy dessert and coffee.

I sampled two starters: an eggplant parmigiana-type dish and lobster sausage. The eggplant was served in a pool of cream sauce and was baked with coulommiers, which is a mini brie-like cheese. It tasted like eggplant, but was all in all not that impressive. The lobster roll was an impressive sight, but once again a slight culinary disappointment. We fretted not, because this left us all the more room in our bellies for the main courses, which were to be grilled marlin and poached red snapper.

The soup of the day fared much better than our appetizers. It was a fish soup, no doubt made from yesterday's unsold fish--but that's a good thing in my book. A rich brown broth, aromatically seasoned, was well-peppered with chunks of at least three kinds of fish, one of which was salmon. We mopped clean our bowls with three different types of baguette swathed in butter that was served in chilled ramekins. Very classy. It seems our meals were to be an uphill battle, with no losers except the poor fish who sacrificed their lives for my own decadent pleasure. The snapper was perfectly poached, probably in a white wine, and was served with Lyonnaise-like potatoes, braised fennel (in season) and two kinds of sauce: a divine cream sauce and a rhubarb sauce that provided a tangy contrast.

The marlin was even better. Two pieces of firm fish were masterfully grilled--seared on the outside, almost raw on the inside--and served with a fantastic beet/sweet potato purée, lentils, fennel and once again two sauces, but completely different ones from those served with the snapper.

This Pascal Gellé is one hell of a cook. He uses fresh and in-season ingredients, and creates (mostly) flawless culinary masterpieces that look and taste good--each dish completely unique from the next. To prove this point: our desserts. Most table d'hôtes feature mass-manufactured, bland versions of crème caramel and rice pudding, but not Le Poisson Rouge. We had a choice of three knock-'em-dead closers: crèpe-cake, fresh fruit in English cream and Ile flottante. Using the "you don't make friends with salad" theory, we passed on the fruit and ordered the other two. The dynamite cake was made from layers of crèpes and chocolate mousse, only to be overshadowed by the Ile flottante. This creation was a mound of soft meringue floating in a sea of hazelnut cream, streaked with raspberry coulis.

All in all, I'd skip the starters--unless I've sampled the wrong ones--and stick to anything else on the menu for a meal that you will not soon forget. And don't forget to bring a bottle of vino!

Le Poisson Rouge

Address: 1201 Rachel e.

Phone: 522-4876

Hours: 5:30-11pm, seven days, reservation recommended

Best features: innovative French food

Vegetarian friendly: not really

Wheelchair access: street level

Alcohol: BYOB

Price: $29 per person, before drinks, taxes and tip

Rating: HHH out of HHHH