Restaurant Review: Les Menus Plaisirs

Les Menus Plaisirs offers fine cuisine made with regional products. Mmm yeah, if you call ostrich regional to Quebec. I guess they make some poetic license available to their menu. But trust me; this won’t matter to you, the foodie.

Les Menus Plaisirs has been open for close to twenty five years and I remember going when I was a much younger chap and enjoying the Chinese fondue and the amazing chocolate mousse cake.

Last night I returned. The place has been upgraded to an inn with some serious fine dining. The décor still has its country cottage feel to it while keeping a feel of class and distinction but this place where all the cool kids go, this is not. But then, the cool places rarely have good food. Restaurants tend to be like models. The prettier they are, the emptier they are.

Service was top of the line classy. First time I’ve had someone take my jacket off and put it on for me; not even at the Café de Paris. There were a few misses though but more on that later.

We are seated and offered some aperitifs. Time to test the bar, not on mixing skills; but on serving skills. I’m not a traditionalist on liqueur because I’m capricious when it comes to alcohol (as you’ll read later) so I order a Southern Comfort with Orange instead. I say nothing more. It comes to me served in a Sherry glass (though I would have preferred an Old Fashioned) with the chaser on the side. Score 1 for the restaurant.

Poultry Soup for the Soul

The soup of the day served was a Crème de Volaille, poultry cream soup but lets face it, food just sounds so much better in French, like just about everything else. Well this soup had me spouting a lot of French adjectives and some religious swear words. It was that good. It was, duh, creamy and had more than just chicken in there. It had Guinea-fowl, chicken and probably some other birds like pheasant. It was easily the best soup I have ever devoured in a restaurant.

Unfortunately when I queried the waitress on the content of the soup, she could not inform me on its content. This is a paucity of aptitude I despise when visiting a high-end restaurant. I tend to stand high on protocol. If the service staff is going to give my friend the eye for not having put his hand towel on his lap before being served his soup, I conversely expect the service staff to know what’s in my plate they are serving me. The chef is supposed to give a briefing to the staff on what the menu consists of. It’s not very complicated.

Since we are in the context of demonizing the service, let’s continue onto wine. I don’t like wine. I never have and probably never will. I find it to be repulsive and horrid. Sue me. But please, stop giving me this dirty look every time I don’t order a bottle of wine. I know there’s good money to make with the wine cellar and if the sommelier has issues with me I’d like to see the bottlenecked nerd come and tell me face to face and I’ll show him new ways to open bottles. I still drink from the bar and it’s not a question of money, I don’t mind paying 60$ for an 8 once piece of beef. I just don’t like wine. Waiters should respect that some people don’t drink.

Beef Drool

Next as an entrée I had the Bavette de bœuf Angus sur poêlée d’oignons au romarin, coulis marchand de vin or Angus beef flank steak over rosemary flavoured onions, wine sauce. This was the pièce de resistance. It completely ruined everything. This is the little dish on which so many others will be compared in the future. The flank, considered the cheapest cut of meat by many but is one of the tastiest parts, it’s all in the preparation and the way you cut the meat before serving it. And the chef at Les Menus Plaisirs understands this. It was tender, juicy and being almost deliquescent. The onion comfit was perfectly caramelized and browned and combined with the homemade craquelin was simply the ultimate compliment to my Bavette. And seriously it was so delectable, my eyes watered, almost shed a tear. Best dish I’ve had in years in a restaurant.

Melted Chinese

Now for the main course. After the delirious orgasmic party-in-my-mouth-wipe-out that was the Angus Beef Flank insanity, the Fondue Chinoise just wasn’t as appetizing as I remembered now. And it was a little bit of a let down. Don’t get me wrong it was delicious but perhaps the salad days of fondue have gone by. But the broth was perfect, the beef cuts were perfectly red and delicious and the dipping sauces amazing. Simply not as much of an experience as I remembered. As soon as I saw the amazing looking rack of lamb go by I regretted my decision a little but the main course was still delicious and no slice of beef was left sitting on the plate, it’s still fondue.

Grilling, the melting, now for the scorching.

Our helpful and gracious waitress comes over and recites the desert menu. It went like this: something, something, something, something, Three Part Crème Brulée, something, something. Crème Brulée was all I heard. The ramekin was split into 3 parts. One part was chocolate, the other was noisette (hazel nut), and the third was the real Crème Brulée, vanilla. Normally, being a purist, I would scoff at anything else but vanilla Crème Brulée, but this was amazing. Chocolate, excellent, noisette, amazing, vanilla, sublime.

After this meal I needed a walk. Despite the evil eye for the wine and lack of explanation on the soup, Les Menus Plaisirs gets 5 outta 5 in my book.

Les Menus Plaisirs
244 boul. Saint-Rose, Laval
(Québec) H7L 1L9
Phone (450) 625-0976