La Gargote lives up to its name

Old Montreal restaurant serves hearty, inexpensive fare

Saturday March 9th, 1996
Helen Rochester

Youth hostelling does not have as much of a tradition here in Canada as it does in Europe but it does seem to be catching up and catching up in style.

Mind you, I haven't come across many old castles or château’s in this country that have been turned over to that purpose, nor did I ever get to sleep in one during my youthful travels abroad. The hostels I did see were pretty rough and ready if one could find a cheap inn or pension one grabbed it in preference.

That was a long time ago and I’m sure things have changed, but I have no urge to go hostelling ever again. It is as the name implies for the young. Right now, firm beds, private bathrooms and room service are basic requirements.

Nevertheless, the other night in Old Montréal, we stood in Place d'Youville in front of an old building that had been meticulously restored, and wished we were 20 again. Come spring, its three top floors will become a youth hostel, run by the city, which also restored the building. The ground floor has been rented and is now a cute little restaurant called La Gargote (The Diner).

The building is on the north corner of St. Pierre St. and Place D'Youville, very near the famous old firehouse with a view of the Old Port. What a location for a newly arrived young person to explore the Old City and take part in all the summer fun! I'm sure the smell of coffee rising from La Gargote beneath them will substitute well for any alarm clock.

The restaurant itself is quite tiny but very nicely designed to give the illusion of space and height. For the first third of the dinning room, ceiling has been removed, leaving only the heavy pine stringers, stretching across the entire room and two support pillars. Thus the windows from the second floor light up the dining room as do all its own windows.

Cozy little bar

While the front of the building has been given a new façade of brick the three-foot-thick graystone walls beneath remain and are exposed inside. Gyproc panels of claret alternate with the graystone and the floors are covered in matching linoleum.

There was also a blazing fireplace on one wall, rather too modern but welcome nevertheless. Tablecloths are oilcloth alternating dark floral patterns and solids. There's also a cute little bar tucked into the rear corner. All in all, cozy and practical.

The menu was a bit of a surprise; one small handwritten sheet with four table d'hôte meals listed at prices between $8.95 (a pasta) and $12.95 (for pheasant, to be described later). There is one à la carte dish of course, usually something special, which my friend chose of course. That night it was mignons de boeuf à la béarnaise ($13.95).

The wine list is small but there is a wine of the week featured for a decent price. We went via the glass route at $4.35 a glass. The same menu incidentally runs all day - the same prices at noon as at night.

It wasn't too difficult to choose our meals; I was struck immediately by the paupiettes of pheasant with raisins and wild mushrooms ($12.95) and my friend by the aforementioned mignons of beef. One couldn't blame him really.

French is definitely the language of food and cooking; everything sounds so much better in that language; even the simplest dish takes on airs. Well almost everything. The French habit of describing anything less than the very best cut of beef, as a "pièce de boeuf" is somehow very off-putting to the English ear. Even rump roast sounds somehow better than a piece of beef.

For starters, there was an excellent garbure with coriander, a thick winter vegetable soup made all the more interesting by the strong presence of coriander, had it been served hot instead of lukewarm it would have deserved a 10.

My friend chose the melon soup with port, which sounded quite unusual. A cold soup, it was served in a cantaloupe half. It was certainly refreshing just the juice of the same melon it seemed with no taste of port or anything else. Maybe the third choice of two pastas with blue-cheese dressing might have been better.

Pheasant was a treat

The pheasant was really a treat - two large plump rolls of tender, thin pheasant breast rolled with minced veal, fine herbs and seasonings, marinated with vermouth and held together with a fine film of caul. They were pan-browned and finished in the oven. The sauce was made from pan juices, more vermouth a touch of honey and the mushrooms - in this case slivered Chinese mushrooms.

The little mignons of beef - perfectly medium-rare, tender and juicy - were simply pan-fried and lightly topped with a reasonably good béarnaise sauce. Most enjoyable. Both our plates were filled with excellent mashed potatoes (amazing how difficult it is to find these) and braised carrots, green beans and celery all good.

My friend enjoyed the dessert included on my menu, a simple fruit tart of orange segments and grapes in puff pastry all drizzled with chocolate. Coffee ($1.10) was par for the course. Service is pretty good but here as in so many other places one may have to wait forever for the bill.

Overall the food in this enchanting little place veers toward very good home cooking rather than slick and highly professional. But when one considers the prices it deserves very high marks indeed. And judging from its name it has no pretensions of being anything other than it is.

 
Publication: Montreal Gazette; Date:2006 Sep 02; Section:Weekend Life  
DINING OUT

A straight-shooting bistro

A WARM WELCOME. Solicitous service. Nice fish soup. Excellent desserts and coffee. For a tourist – or local – wandering Old Montreal, La Gargote is just the place to stumble upon
Lesley Chesterman
 
La Gargote
Open: Lunch Monday to Friday noon to 2:30 p.m.; dinner daily (until late fall, when they close on Sundays) from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Licensed: Yes Credit cards: All major cards Wheelchair access: No Parking: Street with meters as well as a public parking lot near McGill St. Reservations: Essential

Vegetarian-friendly: No Price range: Starters $3.75-$16; main courses $14.50-$28.50; desserts $5.75.  Table d'hôte, lunch $16.50-$19;   dinner $19.50-$25.50.
   Vacations are great, travel is even better, but I loathe the tourist thing. I won't carry a longlensed camera, I won't take a guided tour, and heaven help anyone who suggests I wear a fanny pack. Heck, I would rather get lost than consult a map on a street corner. Instead I try to do my research in advance, and stride around new cities as if I were any regular Joe (or make that Joanne) headed to the museum on my lunch break.
   Sometimes my blend-into-the-scenery approach works. Sometimes it does not – especially when it comes to restaurants. In search of the city's best, I comb the streets for hours (with exasperated family members trailing behind) scanning menus and peering through windows. But to no avail, as I usually end up in some hole-in-the-wall eating poorly prepared local dishes like stuffed peppers and lamb testicles, which happen to be a specialty of Nice, a city I actually explored for two hours before ending up in a dumpy café.
   Thank God, I thought, while munching on an odious salade Niçoise, that this never happens to me in Montreal, a city whose restaurant scene I know like the back of my hand.
   Or so I thought. Truth is there are more than a few neighbourhoods whose restaurants I have yet to fully explore, chief among them Old Montreal, an area with a ton of touristy eateries that fall in that gray zone between fine and casual dining. I'm not talking about restaurants like The Keg or Le Vieux Port here, but all those little bistros that churn out dishes like snail cassoulet, duck magret and profiteroles.
   When a restaurant reservation went sideways recently, I spent close to an hour – with two exasperated dining companions trailing behind – trawling "Le Vieux" for a restaurant to review. After passing on several establishments, I came upon a bistro on St. Paul St. that simply screamed tourist trap. Yet for some strange reason I was drawn to the place. It's as if my trust in the city's food scene was so great that I couldn't imagine eating badly even in a restaurant like this, despite its overly long, clichéd menu, unsmiling customers and rough-and-tumble waitress.
   Yet one sip of putrid fish soup later, I knew this was Nice all over again.
   After watching my dining companion's face contort after tasting what looked like a petrified frog's leg, I cut my losses, paid the bill, and with visions of food poisoning dancing through my head, hit the Old Montreal cobblestone streets yet again in search of a less deadly bistro.
   Then one of the dining companions made the bold suggestion that we head to La Gargote, a decade-old Place d'Youville resto that I had earmarked long ago as tourist central.
   Yet my friends were enthusiastic – and hungry – so we made a beeline for the place, straight past the outdoor terrasse and into a warm room with beamed ceilings, stone walls and paper-topped tables.
   No wonder owner Jean-Pierre Ousset, a 17-year veteran of the now-defunct Bistro St. Denis, fell in love with the building back in 1996. I, too, immediately warmed to the room, not only because of the decor but because the surrounding tables were filled with Montrealers, including two large groups of families with toddlers in tow.
   To my surprise, the wait staff seemed genuinely pleased to see us, and considering the time, 9:45 p.m., they had every right not to be.
   After the fiasco of the last restaurant, I was eager for some no-nonsense bistro fare. And with its endive salad, herbed lamb loin, cheese plate and crème brûlée, that's just how I'd describe La Gargote's menu.
   There's also a table d'hôte with dishes like vegetable soup and tomato/bocconcini for starters and pheasant sausages and veal bavette as mains, as well as a bare-bones wine list that features about a dozen French and fairly priced bottles, such as the $46 Lirac Côte-du-Rhône we savoured with our meal.
   Though the appetizers didn't wow, they certainly satisfied. To help forget that horrible fish soup, I sampled La Gargote's, which wasn't quite as intensely flavoured as I would have wished, but still offered flavours of saffron and pastis that worked well with the garlic croutons, rouille and cheese. A light fish soup, yes, but a good one that I would gladly enjoy again.
   Less successful was a plate of sautéed chanterelle mushrooms, which were surprisingly lukewarm while their sauce was hot. Odd one, that.
   Not much better was a salmon tartare that consisted of a small timbale of salmon cubes that were heavy on the onion and poorly mixed: some bites were too salty, others weren't salty enough.
   Main courses fared better. The best was my osso bucco. Served French-style with buttered noodles instead of the Italian classic risotto Milanese, the thin-sliced shanks were meltingly tender, blanketed in a full-flavoured brown veal sauce and included a lovely chunk of marrow.
   Equally toothsome was the veal bavette, which was served with a similar sauce as the osso bucco and offered a pleasant chewy texture one relishes in this semi-tough cut.
   But by the third entrée – filet mignon au poivre – my enthusiasm for the brown sauce (this time strewn with green peppercorns) was starting to wane. But what really failed here was the cooking of the filet, which had been seared beyond the requested medium-rare – a fiddly detail, I admit, but when you get past medium-rare with less marbled cuts like this, you end up with dry steak.
   Accompaniments made up for a lot. Not so much the stiff and underseasoned mashed potatoes, but the colourful assortment of al-dente vegetables served on all three plates.
   Desserts ended the meal on a high. I could have done without the cold and clammy tarte Tatin, but I would gladly gobble the blueberry-studded crème brûlée and the oh-so-chocolately profiteroles again and again. Coffee was so good that I downed it in two gulps.
   Service continued on the same solicitous note on which it began. Despite a few times having to pour our own wine (life is tough isn't it?), I really have no complaints.
   In fact, I was happy with my meal at La Gargote. What I expected to be a dudly dinner turned out to be very pleasant indeed.
   The next time I want to play tourist in my – or any other – city, here's hoping I run into a place this good. For a solid bistro meal isn't so much about the colour of the sauce and the texture of the mashed potatoes as a welcoming waiter and a warm atmosphere.
   Of course, a winning fish soup doesn't hurt, either.