I found myself in Montreal at our head office for meetings with the Cambridge Audio people just before Christmas this past December. It was a short trip to Montreal - I was in and out of there in less than 48 hours - but it's always a treat to go there. After a long day of meetings on products and marketing, we retired to a small European-style restaurant near our offices in northeast suburban Le Gardeur - Le Fin Farfadet. My French is not good, but I'm learning as I go along and I believe Le Fin Farfadet translates loosely into "The Last Elf" or "The Last Leprechaun". Either way, that's why there's a little gnome on the logo for the restaurant.
Le Fin Farfadet specializes in "farm to table" cuisine using naturally raised products found in Quebec. The menu will feature a revolving selection of wild game such as elk, deer and even kangaroo that are raised on farms. The restaurant also features naturally raised, near-Kobe grade beef, as well as fresh seafood brought into Montreal's ports on a daily basis. Owner/Chef Michel Mendes will only use the freshest foods available to him that day, hence the ever changing menu.
Le Fin Farfadet is located along Rue Notre-Dame, a main thoroughfare in Le Gardeur. (See map) It's housed in a beautiful little stone house with an addition off to the north side of the building. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the front of the building, but it was night and I couldn't get a good shot of the structure.
Inside, the stone walls of the main dining area as you first walk into the restaurant transports you to rural France where you might find one of hundreds of auberge restaurants that specialize in serving locally grown foods. It was like walking into a restaurant that had been around since the 18th century.
The dining room off to the side is obviously an addition with wooden walls and a more modern feel. We were lucky in that Michel Mendes set us up at a long table in the main dining room surrounded by the stone walls. The lighting was subdued and the atmosphere was very pleasant.
Our server that evening, Jonathon, had a pretty good grasp of the English language, but started off explaining the menu in French. My Canadian colleagues had to do some quick translating what he was saying. It turns out that each dining experience at Le Fin Farfadet is a five course meal - six courses if you wish to get an appetizer. It starts off with a small "chef's choice" appetizer, followed by soup or salad, the electable appetizer, then a sorbet palate cleanser before the main course. The main course is followed by a house-made dessert. This sounded like it was going to be a great dining experience.
The menu for the evening hung on a chalkboard on a wall near our table. It featured the five appetizers they had that evening and seven main courses. I could figure a lot of it out, but thanks to my colleagues Simon and Todd, they helped me on the ones that I couldn't get. One of the appetizers that I couldn't get was a smoked Kangaroo Tataki (more on that later). I figured out foie gras - foie gras is foie gras wherever you go - as well as the shrimp cocktail. They also had escargot au gratin - steamed snails topped with bread crumbs and garlic (that got my attention!), and caviar soaked in vodka.
The main entrees that evening consisted of ravioli with cheddar and goat cheese, a basa filet (basa is a type of catfish that is found primarily in SE Asia, but the basa on the menu was farm raised in Quebec), deer spare ribs (Oh, yeah - barbecued deer ribs. We could smell the smoke from the pit when we walked in.), a duck breast, lamb shanks, the near-Kobe grade beef filet, a lobster tail served with a tomato-based sauce (French cooks call it an "Americain" sauce - or sowse, as my colleague Simon playfully pronounces it), and a pork chop with a dagano cheese sauce. Michel Mendes announced before we ordered that he only had three of the pork dishes left that evening. I seriously thought about getting one of them.
The only drawback to the menu was that the prices were, I thought, rather exorbitant. $60 bucks (Canadian) for the filet and $52 for the pork chops was an eye-opener. It sort of made me shudder when I began to think about what I really wanted for dinner.
While we decided on what to get for dinner, the first course came to the table. It consisted of a small toasted round bread topped with cheese, bacon bits and chopped tomatoes with fresh oregano. The bread was very thin, almost like a miniature thin-crust pizza. And it was very, very delicious.
As my boss, Daniel, was perusing through the wine list, we decided to get a drink to start off the evening. They had Boreale Blonde on tap, a very pleasant and light tasting beer that is brewed in the small Quebec town of Blainville, just north of the Montreal metro area. It was a very good tasting beer - one that I had never tried on previous visits to Montreal. I immediately liked it.
When it came time to order, I was still waffling back and forth between the beef filet and the pork chop. I don't know what kept me from telling Jonathon that I wanted the pork chop, but I heard myself tell him that I'd take the filet - rare. I had my choice between the soup and salad and I got the salad. And for funsies, I got the escargot au gratin.
Seated around me, my colleagues Simon and Ian both got the deer ribs, while my colleague, Matt, got the lamb shanks. My colleagues Chris and Todd got the filet. Ian and Simon also got the smoked Kangaroo Tataki - once again, more on that later.
The wine that Daniel picked out that evening was a 2005 Cotes Rocheuses, port of the Saint Emilion co-op of wineries from the Bordeaux region of France. It's a blend of 60% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Franc and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon. It had a nice body to the wine and had a very flavorful fruity taste to it. It was a wonderful wine for a wonderful dining experience.
The salads and soups were brought to the table as the second course kicked in. Simon had gotten the soup (above left) and I want to say it was a cauliflower and celery root soup. I had never heard of celery root and Simon explained to me that they take the ball of the celery root, shave off the outer ball and puree that into a soup. Simon categorized his soup as "pretty good".
The salad (above right) was a nice mixture of greens and vegetables with a housemade oil and vinegar combination. It was good, but nothing that was outstanding.
Next was the appetizers for those who ordered. My escargot was served on a sizzling hot holder, six little snails covered in bread crumbs and garlic. A small digging device was provided to get the meat out. I was cheated on one of the snails - I didn't get any meat out of it. However, the other five were absolutely delicious. The combination of the garlic and the escargot sent my head spinning. I was tremendously happy I decided to order those.
But the interesting appetizer was the one that Ian and Simon got - the smoked Kangaroo Tataki. Tataki is the Japanese cooking method of pounding meat or seafood, then searing it rare. After it the Kangaroo meat was seared, it was brought out to the table covered in a glass top with a hose attached to it that went back to this sort of Hookah-looking device that featured a burning chamber on the top. A small piece of blackened wood was placed into the chamber and it was set on fire. The smoke was sent through the hose and into the glass lid. The smoke lingered in the dish for about a minute, giving the Kangaroo meat a little wood flavoring to it.
Here's a short 10 second video that Ian shot of the process of smoking the Kangaroo Tataki - Click Here (After you've finished watching the video, be sure to hit your "return" arrow to return to the article. If you click the "off" or "X" on the video, you'll go back to your home page.)
Ian offered me a bite of his smoked Kangaroo Tataki. Well, this was certainly a first for me. It didn't taste like beef, but it wasn't gamey in taste, either. It had a smooth texture to the meat, somewhat chewy, but wasn't unpleasant in the least. I still don't know if I'd order that at some point, but it was interesting to try.
After those of us who had appetizers finished those, we were then brought the sorbet palate cleanser. It was a combination of apple and calvados - an apple based brandy from France. I normally don't like the taste of apples, but it was a refreshing mid-point in the dinner and a nice way to get the palate ready for the main course.
Just before the main entrees were brought out, Jonathon and another person came out with wooden boxes containing large French-made Laguiole steak knives. It was quite the presentation. Possibly a little over the top, but still a nice touch in my book.
Those of whom ordered the steaks got their meals first. My filet was resting upon a salt block, topped with a brown sauce that had a good taste (below left). Assorted vegetables sat with it. The steak was cooked a little more rare-plus than rare, but that was fine with me. My colleagues were still buzzing about my little episode at Uncle Jack's Steakhouse in New York City a couple months prior and wondered if I'd have to be sending this steak back. Nope, it was fine and dandy with me.
The two interesting plates were the ones in front of Simon and Ian - the deer spare ribs. First of all, I'd never heard of deer spare ribs before. The wide bones were prominent on their plates with ample amounts of meat surrounding them. Ian says his deer ribs weren't all that tender and wasn't quite the taste like you can get from farm-raised deer. He said there was something missing in the taste for him. Plus he wasn't particulary enamored with the homemade barbecue sauce. "I was expecting more from the sauce," Ian said. "It was kind of 'eh!'."
Simon offered his opinions in writing to me about his deer ribs - "The deer spare ribs were a big disappointment. Seems like the chef thought, 'It doesn’t matter too much how we season the meat, we’ll put some sauce on it after' – so the meat itself was rather dry and had no particular ‘deer’ taste to it. The sauce was obviously slathered on the meat at the moment of service, simply didn’t adhere to the meat and was a simple sweet bbq sauce with no spice to it. I miss the One Star Ranch in Atlanta. Certainly not worth the $52 they were asking for."
To my right, my colleague, Matt, showed off his lamb chops. I'm not big on lamb, but I'll have to say that these looked delicious. They seemed to be topped with the same brown sauce that was on my filet. The meat was so tender that he didn't have much trouble getting his knife through the meat. Matt said the lamb chops were "wonderful".
After dinner was finished, our final course was brought to the table. It was actually a two-part dessert. The first part was a cream parfait topped with wild berries and housed in an edible white and dark chocolate tulip-shaped cup. The berries were fresh, considering it was the middle of December, and it was a nice little after dinner treat. After the desserts were finished, out came an dessert drink - a strawberry/tequila concoction (above right) that was in an edible white chocolate thimble cup. I found out the hard way that it was edible in that I raised the drink to my mouth and pursed my lips around it. When I did that, the cup broke and the remnants of the drink dribbled onto my black shirt. That's what I get for showing off.
After dinner, we were the final group in the place - dinner had started at 6 p.m. and it was close to 9 p.m. Jonathon showed me around the wine cellars they had in the place. They actually had three - a white wine cellar in the main dining area that was chilled to 3.5 degrees centigrade (38.4 degrees F). The reason I knew that is that they had it printed on the glass door. The red wine was housed in the addition to Le Fin Farfadet and Jonathon invited me into that small wine room. Here's a picture I took of him. He had sort of a Vince Vaughan look to him, I thought.
There was another wine room back in the corner of the addition dining room and I asked Jonathon what was in there. "That's our expensive wine room," he said. "Bottles of wine start at around $500 and go up from there. We've got a number of bottles of wine that are over $1000 dollars."
I have to tell you, I'm blessed to be working for a company that allows us to have overly memorable meals from time to time. My experience at Le Fin Farfadet will be one that I'll remember for quite sometime. Getting together with my colleagues and people from our manufacturers is always a great time. When we get to experience a wonderful meal like the one we had at Le Fin Farfadet, it makes it even more special. Even though I liked it, my colleague Simon wasn't overly impressed with Le Fin Farfadet. "I think ‘Le Fin Farfadet’ is vastly overpriced and they pride themselves on a lot of ‘tricks’ (smoked kangaroo at the table, big Laguiole steak knifes in wood boxes – etc)," he writes. "But they simply don’t compete with the restaurants you can find a mere 20 minute drive away."
Montreal certainly does have some excellent restaurants. I'd like to try one those restaurants Simon is talking about at some point. But for me, Le Fin Farfadet was a wonderful dining experience.
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