Michelin has finally come to Canada, or at least to Ontario. To be honest, I don't know about other provinces in the country. Maybe they have had Michelin starred restaurants for some time now - Who knows? In the last few years though, some of the restaurants in my province have finally started to receive Michelin Stars, including a few near me. Some restaurants have already lost their stars as well after having them for only one year. But that's a different story. For this post I'm going to share a Michelin Star restaurant experience that we enjoyed a few weeks back. Here we go!
Pearl Morissette
The restaurant was called Pearl Morissette and it's located in the small town of Jordan Ontario. Its near the larger cities of St. Catherine's and Niagara Falls. It was already dark when we arrived so we couldn't see the property, but I hear that it's a really nice spot located on a vineyard. Inside was a small dining space with a modest amount of tables and surprisingly for a restaurant, there was no bar inside. They served international and local wines, along with some select beers and a few cocktails with fancy names. Without the bar they weren't able to do any standard cocktails though, not even a gin and tonic or an old fashion. It seemed odd but you go along with such things. I tried one of the cocktails they had and it wasn't great. It tasted amateur I'd say, like some concoction you would whip up at home as an experiment - a little whiskey and a dash of amaretto, throw in a hand carved chunck of ice, hey! you can charge $20 for that... The wine I had with dinner was very good, so that made up for it.
The restaurant philosophy:
"The European ideal of destination dining in the heart of agriculture... relying on regional ingredients that reflect the places where they were grown and the people who cultivated them.
The term "regional" is being used pretty loosly here considering that several of the course ingredients came from the East and West Coasts of the country (ocean fish and crab). Yes they come from Canada, but Canada is a very big country so is it still regional if the fish has to take a flight to get to the restaurant, or are we just throwing out buzzwords for marketing here? Would it be fair for a restaurant in the Netherlands to say that an ingredient shipped in from Greece is regional? I guess that depends on whether we are considering borderlines or geographical distance when deciding what the term truly means. All I'm saying is that a conceptualized idea can be stretched to mean just about anything you want it to, but at the end of the day its just meaningless marketing. What matters is the tangible. How did the food look and taste? How was the experience?
But enough digression. Hey, maybe they weren't including the proteins in that marketing blurb? Nonetheless, let's get to the food!
The meal consisted of a 10 course tasting menu plus bread and an amuse bouche. The menu changes periodically depending on seasonal ingredients so its a bit of a different experience if you wait a few months between visits.
At the end of the meal they gave each diner a copy of the menu as a small souvenir, which I appreciated. The waiter described each dish when it was presented to us but it can be difficult to remember what was said after you leave the restaurant, or even by the time the next course is served. It was nice to be able to look back and see what I actually ate.
First Course
The first course was a Dungeness crab cake which was a nice start to the meal. Lots of flavor and nice presentation. Overall it was a very successful dish. It was served with a carrot amuse bouche which was also a fun and tasty addition.
Second and Third Courses
I'm not including the second and third courses because the amuse bouche wasn't really a course and though the sourdough bread was excellent, I wouldn't consider it to be a course either. The restaurant didn't considered these to be courses but they listed them on the menu and I want to follow the menus formatting so I'll just skip talking about them and move onto course number four.
Fourth Course
This scallop dish was very pretty and I really wanted to like it more than I did. I found the yogurt to be slightly overpowering for something with as delicate a flavor as scallops. The yogurt hid the scallops and you couldn't really taste them. The dish tasted good but it didn't showcase the main ingredient.
Fifth Course
The lobster course was my least favorite dish of the meal, which was a little surprising given its lobster. Firstly, the temperature seemed wrong to me. It was served as a hot dish but to me it felt like it should have been served cold. It wasn't really hot though either, it was luke warm to room temperature which seems strange when eating shellfish. The main reason I didn't care for it though was because it had a fishy taste to it that seemed like it shouldn't have been there. Lobster isn't fishy so I'm not sure what that was about. The fishiness combined with the room temperature made the whole thing a bit off-putting to me and therefore I wasn't a fan at all.
Sixth Course
The sixth course was actually the highlight of the meal, which was another surprise, in a good way this time. You wouldn't think that celery root would be the best bite of a 10 course meal but it was. This felt like the chefs signature dish to me.
Seventh Course
Striped Bass from the province of New Bruswick. The fish was cooked perfectly. This one didn't stand out in memory but I would say that it was a successful dish nonetheless.
Eighth Course
Duck cooked two ways, thigh and breast. I like duck and I thought that this was delicious. Both versions were very different from each other but both worked well together.
Ninth Course
I learned something new with this one. Apparently a sheep in its second year is called a Hogget whereas a sheep in its first year is referred to as lamb. Further, it's called mutton when its in its third+ year. This dish was Hogget.
Shortly before serving the dish they came around to show us the cooked rack which was neat to see and felt like it elevated the experience.
This dish was quite good but I found the proportions to be a little off this time. The pea puree was very flavorful but that combine with the amount of greens on the plate really overwhelmed the taste of the meat. It was hard to taste the Hogget at all actually. It was a bit difficult to separate the meat from the greens as well. Overall I found the dish to be like eating a salad more so than a meat course. I was a little surprised when my wife actually agreed with me on that, but it's seems that I wasn't the only one to think it. The meat was tender and cooked nicely but I had no idea what it tasted like.
Dessert Courses
Before moving on into the desserts the server came by to let us know that we could add a cheese course to the meal for an additional $15 per person. We opted out. I'm not sure how I feel about this option. The cynical part of me thinks "Oh how truly Canadian to upsell at table side." Having lived in France we tried a lot of nice cheeses and a cheese course was often just a part of the meal - not always but at times. On the other hand maybe it's very reasonable to be given the option to add it in if you wish to. I have mixed feelings on that one. I think it's the tacky upsell and the sales tactic of putting a diner on the spot that bothers me.
Tenth
The first sweet course was an interesting one. Rice pudding with tiny kiwi's on top. This was a fun one with a lot of flavor. It was a bit unexpected too. You wouldn't expect to eat rice pudding at a fine dining restaurant. This one worked really well and was very successful in my opinion.
Eleventh
The next dessert did a really good job showcasing a very Canadian ingredient - the apple! The dish was essentially an elevated apple pie. The pictures don't do it justice but it was a stunning presentation, worthy of a Parisian bakery window.
Flavorwise it didn't offer anything new. If I closed my eyes everything was recognizable and reminiscent of subtle, good quality ingredients apple pie. Nonetheless it was a smart choice to incorporate apples in the fall when they are at their peak. It was a very successful dish and a tasty bite for sure.
Twelfth
The last course was an ice cream sandwich served on a frozen marble slab. Apologies for another blurry photo.
The cookie was made from black koji and hazelnuts. The dish was meant to be the chocolate course. Chocolate isn't regional but there is an experimental rice patty in the province so I guess Koji is regional. The koji and hazelnuts gave it that roasted chocolate-like flavor. This was probably the least interesting of the three desserts but it was quite good and a decent way to end the meal.
Conclusion
All in all the dinner was excellent and a great experience of fine dining in Canada. I had some subjective criticisms of a few of the dishes but I feel like it's warranted to be more critical when the price of the meal is expensive and the night out is meant to be more experiential than your standard restaurant visit. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
