Pop! Bar à Vin opened a few years back with a contemporary tapas (God, I hate that word) style menu and a teak-heavy decor that looks like a Swedish living room. While the olive oil tasting was interesting and the food pretty good (as it should be–sharing a kitchen with Laloux) this wasn’t the kind of place that commended your attention. Enter Patrice Demers, who has earned his reputation as one of Montreal’s top pastry chefs, and a complete overhaul of the menu later Pop! warrants another look.

And it seems that Demers has brought both direction and his playful approach to food to the menu. From the bar list featuring a selection of awkwardly named but interesting fresh cocktails called Poptails to a menu focused on Flammekuche inspired crisp tarts, foie gras and gold medal desserts, Pop! is looks a lot more interesting today. First the Poptails. Home made ginger beer, paired with dark rum, lime juice and cushed mint, gives a rough edge to the High Wind in Jamaica. Or how about the Brazilian Bubble Tea, in which the tapioca pearls are replaced with passionfruit seeds paired with cachaça, passionfruit juice and basil. Perhaps these drinks sound better than they taste (to be fair they sound pretty amazing), but its a little more interesting to start the night off than a vodka tonic.

A good menu should make you want to try everything and Pop! delivers on this count. Preserved lemon and asparagus arancini are intriguing. Instead of the usual tennis-ball sized offering stuffed with cheese or ragu, we are brought an escargot plate with six little arancini. I was worried that they were so small that they would be overcooked but they were perfectly crisp on the outside and featured a tasty preserved lemon and asparagfus rissotto inside omitting the usual stuffed center. Excellent.

The next course upped the ante even more and demonstrated Demers’ ability to combine seemingly divergent flavors into strong, coherent dishes. The bitterness of Brussel sprouts in a frisee salad is alleviated by cutting the leaves off the stem and pairing with rosette de lyon and fried onionsas well as slivers of apple and a light goat cheese to add a little acidic bite and tang. Sounds weird but tastes like a dream. Whitefish tartar is also given the royal treatment at Pop!, paired with fennel bulb and frond, toasted pine nuts and a fresh yogurt ratcheted up with piment d’espellete. Two more winners.

We ignore the foe gras section and the daily special to focus on the list of crisp savory tarts that dominate the selection of mains on the Pop! menu. I have to try the Alsatian original, Flammekuche, a delightful combination of creme fraiche, lardons and onion with a thin crust that is flash baked to crispy perfection. The tart comes out perfectly crispy but is my only (mild) disappointment of the evening as it isn’t quite as porky as I like it. The JJ’s tart, a simple combination of fresh tomato, fennel and goat cheese, was much better, proving that a few simple ingredients treated just right often make the best dishes.

Desserts include the Patrice Demers, the chocolate pot-de-creme with a crumble of chocolate cookie, caramel foam and Maldon salt. Always a delight since it was on the menu at Les Chevres, I find it hard to look past it at the other interesting offers like apricot sorbet, Candy Cap mushrom milk foam and roasted almond cake. The JJ goes for the mignardises and is treated to little homemade chocolates with coffee cream, lemon financiers, pate de fruits and homemade marshmallow.

Wine service is knowledgeable and wines are offered by the half glass, which allows you to pair with every nibble and still drive home in a pinch. The service stood out as being particularly good and our waitress, though quite young, knew her food and her wine very well.

Pop! stands out,along with Cocagne, as one of my top meals of 2008 to date. Kudos once again to Mr. Demers who I’m sure is not done impressing me.

Cost: Approximately $140 for two with coffee and a couple of glasses of wine each (it’s those damned Poptails)

Pop! Bar À Vin
250 Des Pins E.
514.287.1648
www.popbaravin.com