The Incredible Shrinking Dinner Gets a Break

Amuse-Bouche – a palate teaser.
When I heard of a restaurant actually called Amuse-Bouche, I shuddered. So it’s happened. The three course dinner is dead, supplanted by luxurious, exotic foodbites. For a while now, people have been reporting second course ennui because the amuse-bouche, a freebie, and the hors’ d’oeuvre, is too often the best food of the evening. What wouldn’t be disappointing after you’ve been dazzled by a disc of foie gras which when sliced leaks bloodlike beet juice on to green peas processed to the texture of soil, or tiny pink melon balls masquerading as caviare?

Such ingenuity promotes eating a la carte (cherry picking the menu) which plays right into gastronomic ADD, attention deficit disorder. And chefs have followed right along. The tasting menu, tiny multicourse promos for the chef, has proliferated. Once only star chefs put out tasting menus but now everyone’s doing it - this is haute fast food with all the immediate sensation implied.
 
What’s vanishing is a leisurely savouring of a dinner with complementary courses. Multisensory is gastrophysicist Heston Blumenthal’s buzzword for his newfangled food. Well a good dinner is multisensory in a good oldfashioned way.

 
I googled Amuse-Bouche to find out how far the rot’s gone. Sure enough, three tasting menus. But wait, I also find an inspiriting lineup of second courses which is how the menu refers to the main course (I’ve never liked “mains” which in England means electric power and suggests food has to be plugged in). My eye alights hungrily on Fig and Tarragon stuffed Quebec rabbit loin, confit leg, French beans, marsala and smoked bacon emulsion, and how about  veal three ways: roasted tenderloin, cheek ravioli, sweetbread pudding, kaffir and coconut jus. Promisingly complex mouthfuls.

Amuse-Bouche is just off Toronto’s restaurant row, King Street West, a formal little box of orange and chocolate with little chi, vital energy, flowing freely. I was momentarily unnerved. Was this the right place for my experiment? Three friends were joining me, all pledged enthusiastically to eat a second course. But that was yesterday.

I couldn’t order anyone to eat what I wanted them to, and as soon as they flipped open the menus, I saw their attention straying treacherously to the stars of the first course… Pan-seared Quebec Foie gras, sticky dulce de leche pudding, cranberry and orange blossom reduction, Kobe Beef Carpaccio and Tongue terrine, tete-de-moine (a strong Swiss cheese), Cognac Crème Fraiche and Butter poached Maritime Lobster, Scallop “en chemise” and Vanilla-Licorice Emulsion. However, a bribe of Champagne cocktails helped focus them on the job and after the amuse-bouche, a shrimp dumpling with ginger mayonnaise, a freebie we couldn’t refuse, we were comparing notes on how best to combine the courses.

The herbivore had no trouble: “I love beets” he said and ordered a Rainbow of Beets garnished with organic seedlings and white Balsamic candied capers, and then he succumbed to the three-way veal. His wife, a wonderful cook, went for balance, Traditional Fish soup with rouille, garlic croutons and shaved grated emmental cheese, followed by Tamarind Marinated Duck Breast which came with spaetzle as well as rhubarb coulis and a cocoa reduction. The editor was traditional, foie gras followed by Grilled Alberta Beef Tenderloin (dry aged – we checked) with herbed potato gnocchi and sauce marchand de vin (beef stock and ham).. . I had Snail Ravioli maitre’d’hotel (herbed butter) with braised pork belly and pearl onion bourguignonne and Roasted Alaskan Black Cod with chorizo, yam puree and almond milk foam.

Now how do you order wine for such an eclectic meal? I like the custom of pairing wines with dishes so we asked Sarah Lyons, the maitre d’, to help us out with excellent results.

Ok here’s how it played out. We ate the whole thing with increasing gusto. No problem cleaning the plates of both courses. The chefs, Jason Inniss and Bertrand Alepee are gifted cooks of the Rococo school. Toronto has a small but rich tradition of Rococo cooking, flirtatious, imaginative,  and feminine – I think of Barbara Gordon of Boba who used to put initials on pie pastry and who made a marvelous hors d’ouvre plates that anticipated tapas, and Renee Foote, now a caterer (gingerisland.com) who invented chocolate sushi.

Not everything worked 100 percent. What’s with all the foams, jus and emulsions? Sometimes you hardly taste them, other times, they’re too much. The black cod with spicy chorizo spread over the skin was terrific, but why the bath of almond milk foam? The foie gras-beef and the soup and duck were the the most seamless pairings. The beets were an alluring purple still life on a little round plate, a perfect set up for the long dish of three-ways veal.The tenderloin was pinkly pleasing, the cheek ravioli audacious. Nice try with sweetbread pudding but the only reason to eat sweetbreads is their spongy consistency.

But I’ll forgive anything for the sublime taste of the bronze chunk of velvety braised pork belly, so good that I hardly noticed the failure of snail ravioli-a snail is just an eraser unless drowned in garlicky butter. Welcome back pig from the dark ages of fatless,tasteless meat -  an era when fallible food science condemned animal fats and boosted deadly transfats.

Desserts were the coup de grace. We skipped house crème brulee – what more can be done to corrupt a once perfect dessert? I wish there was a food moment in The Queen to show HM is no food slouch.I saw a doc where she okayed crème brulee for a state banquet but struck off the redundant garnish. But I think my fave Gianduja (chocolate and hazelnut) Mousse with saffron ice cream, and the Chestnut and Praline Millefeuille with truffled ice cream  merit a couple of gongs.

Amuse-Bouche, 96 Tecumseth Street. 416.913.5830 Dinner Tues-Sat 6-10.30 pm.Dinner for two with wine, taxes, tip: $210. BYOB corkage $30.No wheelchair access.