Up in Montreal earlier this year for a company meeting, our large group from across the U.S. and Canada got together for dinner at the downtown outpost of Les Enfants Terribles (The Terrible Children), a brasserie with four locations in the greater Montreal area. I was told that the food at Les Enfants Terribles was very good and I really looked forward to going to the place that evening.
One of the great things about Montreal are the number of restaurants who rely upon locally-sourced comfort foods for their menus. And that's what the food at Les Enfants Terribles is all about.
Francine Brûlé was involved in the fashion industry, but she always fancied herself as a restauranteur. In her early 50's, she decided to take a decidedly different course in life to open Les Enfants Terribles - named after the late 1920's French novel by Jean Cocteau (which, when translated to English literature, was renamed "The Holy Terrors") - in 2008 with her longtime life partner Serge Bruneau in the stately Outremont neighborhood in the heart of Montreal. The couple - with help from Francine's three sons - opened their second Les Enfants Terribles on Nun's Island five years after the opening of their first location. By 2017, the family opened their third location in the Montreal suburb of Laval and contracted with a company to open a fourth location on the top floor of Place Ville Marie - the 4th tallest building in Montreal. (see map)
There's a wonderful underground system in Montreal that comes in handy during the winter months. We were staying at the Hotel Bonaventure not far from the restaurant, but the weather was not all that conducive to walk outside that evening. A group of us took the Montreal Underground passages to the Place Ville Marie building. There was a lot of construction going on in the corridors of the building and getting up to the 44th floor of the building to the restaurant turned out to be a lot of turns and dead-ends before we found the elevator with the help of a security guard who allowed us to use a freight elevator to get to the correct place.
The restaurant's large windows gave views of Montreal to the north up to Mont Royal and beyond, to the east, and to the south looking out over the St. Lawrence River. There was a low cloud deck that evening, so the city lights helped brighten much of the scenery. I had only wished I would have been able to be up there in the daylight, but the lights of Montreal below helped cast a somewhat eerie glow on the clouds.
The restaurant was ready for our large group as we sat at four or five different tables throughout the dining area. Another large group was at a large table near the windows on the north side of the room. The dining area featured a series of four and six seat tables with accented lighting over the tables.
There was a step-up bar area in the center of the restaurant. The three-sided bar was surrounded by a number of high-top tables with 70's-era concave chairs. The bar area was pretty quiet the whole time we were there.
Because we had a large group, we weren't given the regular menu but a slimmed down version of the seasonal foods that they serve at Les Enfants Terrible. There was an appetizer course, a main course and a dessert that were available to our group that night.
For my appetizer, I chose the AAA beef tartare over the beet and goat cheese salad, and the fried calamari. In Canada, they have 13 different grades of beef with A/AA/AAA and Prime being the four highest grades. Those grades make up for about 90% of the beef processed in Canada. (I don't think I'd like to see the E grade beef - the lowest in Canada.) So, the beef tartare was using the next to the highest grade beef found in Canada. It came sprinkled with a bit of parmesan cheese and served on a pool of olive oil with three pieces of crusty bread. The tartare was absolutely delicious with a wonderful rare beef flavor.
Actually, a couple of the guys around me got the calamari and I was able to try some of that. It was lightly breaded and not over-fried or oily. But I determined after a couple bites of calamari that I was more than happy with my beef tartare choice.
The beef tartare was so good that I contemplated getting the salmon tartare entree they had on the menu that evening. But I ended up getting the flank steak - 8 ounces of tender flank steak from Sterling Silver Meats, a meat purveyor popular along the east coast of the U.S. and up into parts of Ontario and Quebec in Canada. The skirt steak was juicy and full of a great beef flavor, perfectly grilled to a medium rare. It was pared with an excellent Italian red - Le Volte dell Ornellaia - that we had at the table. A side of fries came with the steak and I asked the waiter to bring out some mayo for my favorite Montreal food combination - frites and mayo.
Other offerings on the menu that evening included a pork loin from Gaspor Farms, a local Quebec farm that is famous for raising their piglets on milk; a grilled chicken Caesar salad, and the seared salmon. One of my colleagues across from me got the salmon that came on a bed of red quinoa and kale, served with grapefruit wedges and top with a sliced cucumber and edamame. My colleague is from the Pacific Northwest and it's always fun to hear him spar with my Quebecois colleagues about the difference in Pacific and Atlantic salmon. But he seemed to be pretty happy with this chunk of North Atlantic salmon.
The evening was finished out with a creamy chocolate mousse dessert that gave a nice closure to the taste sensations I experienced that evening. Other than the calamari, I was more than happy with everything I ordered that evening.
Les Enfants Terrible turned out to be a rather pleasant experience. Excellent food, prompt and professional service, a nice and comfortable setting, and you can't beat the views from the top of the tallest building in Montreal. I'm pretty lucky to be working with a company who will treat their workers to some of the better culinary experiences from time to time and Les Enfants Terrible was one of those times.
Comments