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rysmiel and papersky had said last year. I got rysmiel to come with me for dinner, self-indulgence (and other-indulgence). We walked our feet off earlier in the day and on our way to dinner (we used a sub-optimal Metro exit and got somewhat turned around, but still arrived in plenty of time for our reservation).
The approach is several small plates; they recommend three/person, but we were indecisive and hungry and ordered seven for the two of us. They started us off with an amuse bouche, one grilled shrimp each in a fennel-and-pineapple sauce. Rysmiel isn't a pineapple fan, I'm not a fennel fan, and we both mopped up the sauce with bread.
After that (I'm working from memory, and will ask rysmiel to supplement this later): a mushroom tartare with lots of lentils and some goat cheese; duck tartare (which has rice and shiitake mushrooms); a scallop-and-monkfish dish, served over cucumber, which showed me that monkfish is much better than a previous experience had led me to believe; tuna-and-bison tataki; a snail and wild rice risotto with fois gras (I'd been wrong about risotto, too); a rabbit dish, including one raviolo, with a cream, pea, and bacon sauce (I wasn't impressed; this is the only thing we left any significant amount of, and not just because rysmiel doesn't like peas; and a poutine with rabbit, a slightly spicy barbecue sauce, and the cheese as thin, unmelted slices on top.
For dessert, I ordered the strawberries with balsamic vinegar, caramel, and watermelon sorbet. Once the server said "Quebec strawberries," she'd have had to list something I actively disliked for me to not order that, and I am also very fond of watermelon. This one worked very well; I should get some balsamic vinegar for my own local strawberries. (The other dishes, I either wouldn't know how to reproduce, or wouldn't have the time and attention for, but that bit of goodness is in my grasp.) Rysmiel got a pistachio goat cheese cheesecake, quite nice; it came with hazelnuts and some odd yellow fruit, both warm. We asked the server, and she said they were ground cherries (she gave a couple of other names I didn't catch, at least one of them French); I think this is the first time I've had those. Interesting, but I was much happier with my strawberries. (We shared tastes of the dessert as well, but mostly each ate one; with the other dishes, we mostly did half-and-half, except for the risotto, of which rysmiel got about 2/3, and the rabbit in cream sauce, which I had most of.)
cattitude, it's not actually Joseph-Robert's Maison du Fungus, we just ordered most of the mushroom-focused stuff, because we both like those and you were safely hundreds of miles away.
rysmiel and papersky had said last year. I got rysmiel to come with me for dinner, self-indulgence (and other-indulgence). We walked our feet off earlier in the day and on our way to dinner (we used a sub-optimal Metro exit and got somewhat turned around, but still arrived in plenty of time for our reservation).The approach is several small plates; they recommend three/person, but we were indecisive and hungry and ordered seven for the two of us. They started us off with an amuse bouche, one grilled shrimp each in a fennel-and-pineapple sauce. Rysmiel isn't a pineapple fan, I'm not a fennel fan, and we both mopped up the sauce with bread.
After that (I'm working from memory, and will ask rysmiel to supplement this later): a mushroom tartare with lots of lentils and some goat cheese; duck tartare (which has rice and shiitake mushrooms); a scallop-and-monkfish dish, served over cucumber, which showed me that monkfish is much better than a previous experience had led me to believe; tuna-and-bison tataki; a snail and wild rice risotto with fois gras (I'd been wrong about risotto, too); a rabbit dish, including one raviolo, with a cream, pea, and bacon sauce (I wasn't impressed; this is the only thing we left any significant amount of, and not just because rysmiel doesn't like peas; and a poutine with rabbit, a slightly spicy barbecue sauce, and the cheese as thin, unmelted slices on top.
For dessert, I ordered the strawberries with balsamic vinegar, caramel, and watermelon sorbet. Once the server said "Quebec strawberries," she'd have had to list something I actively disliked for me to not order that, and I am also very fond of watermelon. This one worked very well; I should get some balsamic vinegar for my own local strawberries. (The other dishes, I either wouldn't know how to reproduce, or wouldn't have the time and attention for, but that bit of goodness is in my grasp.) Rysmiel got a pistachio goat cheese cheesecake, quite nice; it came with hazelnuts and some odd yellow fruit, both warm. We asked the server, and she said they were ground cherries (she gave a couple of other names I didn't catch, at least one of them French); I think this is the first time I've had those. Interesting, but I was much happier with my strawberries. (We shared tastes of the dessert as well, but mostly each ate one; with the other dishes, we mostly did half-and-half, except for the risotto, of which rysmiel got about 2/3, and the rabbit in cream sauce, which I had most of.)
cattitude, it's not actually Joseph-Robert's Maison du Fungus, we just ordered most of the mushroom-focused stuff, because we both like those and you were safely hundreds of miles away.