Restaurant: L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon Montreal

If you want to see last year’s L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon recap HERE.

Located in the Casino de Montreal, L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon is tucked in a little downstairs corner accessible by elevators at one end of the casino. Different from last year is how it was bustling and full of action this time with tons of customers there. After last year’s experience, I was a little more knowledgeable about how to approach this year’s dinner so was a little less ambitious. If you had seen last year’s dinner, it took well over 3 hours, this wasn’t really that much more different.

In terms of decor, there wasn’t much change. I’m back at the same time after all so I do wonder if the decor changes especially in the display case with the seasons. Maybe one day, I’ll go not in autumn.

Green Tea

Due to the rainy weather outside and a rather under the weather feeling like a cold was creeping in, I ended up vouching to get a green tea. This is a Japanese green tea recommended by the waitress for us. It tasted great. I don’t usually drink Japanese green tea but this one definitely was a treat.

Bread

The breads here are also quite good. This time, we had the baguette one the left and the bacon and mustard braid on the right. Not shown here but my friend got two other ones which had dairy products in it. One was a flaky cheese one I believe and I can’t remember the other one right now.

Amuse Bouche

A refreshing starter amuse-bouche to kick things off. Tonight’s starter, the dairy free option, I assume since my friend got something different but he also had the 7 or 9 course seasonal discovery tasting menu. This amuse-bouche is a eggplant topped on one side with a red pepper and the other one is topped with a zucchini (or maybe eggplant) chip? I can’t remember anymore. But I can tell you that it tasted really good. I’m not much of an eggplant fan. I really just eat it for its health benefits on a daily basis but this was really lovely.

Tasting Portion Dishes

Like I said in the beginning, last year’s tasting menu traumatized me to my core. Not that the food wasn’t good but the duration and the sheer amount was just way over what I could handle. So this year, I went a different route. I asked the suggestion of the waitress to tell me what would be a good approach and she gave me a very accurate one of taking 3 tasting portion which should be enough and went along with her knowledge and suggested the ones that she knew could be modified to be dairy-free or already was dairy-free. With that I chose three (with her help):

Le Homard

Le Homard – Lobster over mashed avocado tart  and pomegranate arils

My first choice when I first saw my choices was this one. Avocado tart and pomegranate and lobster all sounds so fresh and delicious. From the presentation to the delicious balance of flavors to just the crispy different texture of the pomegranate seeds and little bits and the crunchy fresh vegetables and the lobster was such a delight. Not to mention of course the creamy avocado tart base.

La Morue Noire

La Morue Noire – Stewed Black Cod with “Malabar” peppercorn, baby spinach

The star of the show, my friends. I picked this one because the waitress highly recommended it. Normally, this one would have a frothy creamy coconut foam. Mine is just coconut sans the cream for the obvious lactose intolerance issue. With that said, this dish is absolutely heavenly. I kid you not, the cod is done so perfectly.

L’Agneau

L’Agneau – Quebec lamb ribs with eggplant and lemon pulp confit caviar

Talking about the final dish in my selection is the lamb. I’m starting to realize that I have a tendency to get lamb whenever I go out, mostly because I wouldn’t eat it at home. This was done the perfect doneness. The eggplant caviar as they call it is really delicious along with the eggplant chips which are both very good. Paired up with the lemon pulp, it worked so well together. The only thing I wasn’t a big fan of based on personal preference is the date puree thing. I’m personally not a fan of dates so it didn’t quite appeal to me. Overall, the whole dish worked together really well.

Dessert

La Bulle – Blown sugar ball with coconut cream, fresh coriander sorbet

The original La Bulle is made with yuzu lemon in the menu. However, this version is dairy-free version so its made with coconut cream. I have to say that the coriander sorbet is somewhat of an acquired taste that took a moment to get used to but it cuts through the sweetness from the coconut so it works out well.

Overall, L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon Montreal is a great dining experience. It offers fantastic cuisine, comfortable ambiance, flexible with their dishes to accommodate allergens as well as great service. Its honestly one of the restaurants that I love going to. It is quite pricey but worth every penny.

Sherbrooke Met La Table: Restaurant Persepolis

Another Sherbrooke Met La Table is upon us. As I’m writing this up, it is in the last few days of this restaurant week set in the Eastern Townships in Sherbrooke. This year’s menus were quite cool and we had a few choices that we had to decide upon, but we’re in an experimental mode and we always like to be adventurous when we head to this restaurant festival. Our final choice ended up being dinner at Restaurant Persepolis, which is Iranian cuisine. We’ve never had Iranian cuisine but only have heard about it here and there when watching food shows and such.

Restaurant Persepolis

Persepolis is a beautiful restaurant. It keeps its decoration on theme with what its serving to give you something of a feeling of where you are as you dine. The decoration is lovely, the ambiance is fantastic. Its a comfortable feeling to sit in there and eat.

For the menu, there were two options. A $25 and $35 options which changes in the main menu choices. The menu here has a lot of choices in general which is nice. The appetizers had 4 choices, the main menu had multiple choices, not only for the two different valued options but also in the fact that their menu changed from week 1 and 2. Something to note is that this is a bring your own wine restaurant. We didn’t know about that plus it is an almost 2 hour drive home so we decided to have some tea. Its a Persian tea which is perfumed and spiced with cardamom. I’ve never had this before but it is really good. I would gather that its a black tea variety which I don’t drink often as it keeps me super alive and a little too caffeinated. However, this one had this floral taste and it just tasted fantastic. I’m going to be looking for some of this somewhere.

Appetizers

Between a choice of the Ash Reshteh soup, Reshteh soup, broccoli salad and Shirazi Salad, we both vouched for the Reshteh soup. Its a chicken noodle soup with carrots, potatoes, onions, chopped parsley and green peas. It tasted a lot like minestrone soup but with some different spices in Iranian cuisine (I would assume). The pita bread that was served with the dish was delicious also.

Main Course

Baghali Polo with Lamb ($35 menu)

I had the lamb mostly because I don’t get to eat lamb much. I don’t remember where I watched it on which show but I had read about Iran and lamb in their food. Maybe I’m confused. Either way, I ended up choosing this dish and it was so good. The spices in particular and mixing the sauce and lamb with the rice tasted so delicious.

Chicken Barg ($25 menu)

My husband took the chicken kebabs. I had a taste of it and it also was very good. He liked it a lot as well. It was flavorful and very tender.

Dessert

For dessert, we got Baghlava. The other was an Iranian vanilla ice cream, which being both lactose intolerant was out of the question. This one was an Iranian honey baklava with rose water garnished with pistachios. I’ve only had baklava once before and this one actually tastes a lot better. I think its the portion and also the fact that it had this smooth honey taste. The rose water was enough and didn’t feel like it was overpowering which is usually an issue with anything infused with rose water. I like this one a lot. Actually thinking about it now, I want to eat another one.

Before we leave, lets take a look at this lovely dessert display case. I almost brought home more dessert. Starting to have regrets to not have done that. It looks so beautiful and delicious.

Overall, I’d have to say that our first experience with Iranian cuisine is a success. I’d totally be glad to go for another round of this. Maybe I’ll see if Montreal has any and check it out.

If you want to check out Sherbrooke Met La Table and the last few days, you can check it out HERE. It runs until October 25th.
And for this restaurant in particular, check out the site HERE.

Battle of Ingredients #7: Easter/Spring Edition

Welcome to the next Battle of Ingredients. My co-host Starry Traveler Phoebe and I gathered this time with friends for a little Easter/Spring celebration.

Heres what we did!

Wine

Tonight’s wine from our friends is the Barefoot Bubbly Pink Moscato. It was light and sweet. A more in depth talk will be in the wine recap next month.

Main Meals

Lamb Chops – Phoebe

Phoebe gets the big task of taking care of the meat dish this time around. We did research and realized that Easter usually revolves around ham or lamb and after some talk, she decided to take on making lamb chops. They were marinated and topped with salt and various herbs. It took about 2 hours to cook in the oven.

This one turned out pretty good. It wasn’t cooked through but I’ve had chops before and they usually aren’t plus it was marinated and seasoned just enough to have a lovely taste.

Ratatouille – Kim

Recipe via Pinterest: https://www.ricardocuisine.com/en/recipes/5312-ratatouille?epik=0DYovE_IWH0tx

Trying out a quick one pot ratatouille this time as our primary vegetable dish. I followed the recipe above fairly closely. Eggplants aren’t in season right now so they were hard to find good ones. So the portion for that was a little less. However, this ratatouille was both easy to make and tasted pretty good. I may have overcooked it a little and it would have benefited from having some pasta or something to serve with. In comparison to the original, I think I skimped out on diced tomatoes a little. Everything’s a learning curve and I certainly had fun making this one and would try it again particularly using a pot this time instead of a pan since there is a lot of vegetables to add in so it started getting a little crowded and that affected the cooking time.

The better version would be to slice everything thinly and then organize it and pop it into the oven to cook. Perhaps a future trial.

Dairy-free Scalloped Potatoes – Kim

Recipe: https://veganinthefreezer.com/dairy-free-herbed-scalloped-potatoes/

Next up is something of a side thing which was the scalloped potatoes. I recently made scalloped potatoes for a Goodfoods box and thought about it for this meal as a dairy-free style and found the recipe above on Pinterest. Scalloped Potatoes were done in the afternoon in advance as to free up the oven space and then reheated. We used a mandoline to quicken the process. We used some unsweetened almond milk (unfortunately, I only had the vanilla flavor) and we took a chance with it to see if it would affect the taste. It did still have a slight vanilla flavor which felt a little weird but overall, the texture is still there. I’d redo this one with the herbs (as the recipe above indicated but I didn’t have any this time around) and also with some unflavored and unsweetened almond milk. We only ended up with one portion left over so I’d say it had a decent result.

Dessert

Marshmallow Wands – Kim

Recipe: http://www.twosisterscrafting.com/springtime-marshmallow-wands/

The ideas I went through for the dessert was numerous but with the two dishes above, I wanted to go for something a little simpler so I went with these springtime marshmallow wands which is basically skewering three marshmallows and then coating them with dark chocolate and adding sprinkles then letting the chocolate harden. Its times like these that I wish I knew how to temper chocolate before coating it so that it would have that lovely crunch when you bit into it. Anyways, I am still learning and these did turn out really great. I know that the coating could have been better but I learned a lot from this recipe as simple as it may seem. Marshmallows and dark chocolate is just yummy! It is a little on the sweet side so I only made enough so everyone had one.

This wraps up this Easter/Spring edition of Battle of Ingredients!
Not quite sure what is next one but might be a spring Farmer’s Market edition for 2018.
Its still in discussion right now 😉

Do you celebrate Easter and what foods do you make?