It’s not entirely clear to me when I decided I wouldn’t write any more restaurant reviews. I was at Tickets in Barcelona this summer and got seated beside the same girl  who had sat beside me the night before at Tapac 24. She explained with much enthusiasm what “everybody was saying we had to try”, took notes and pictures of her meal and generally showered me with her culinary knowledge. I won’t say I had an epiphany then but, in retrospect, the fear that people might not be able to distinguish between the two of us definitely helped me decide to stop writing. I started this site almost five years ago partly as a writing project, partly because at the time there wasn’t much in the way of independent restaurant reviews online, partly because I like to eat and partly because of potential tax advantages which have long since been proven illusory. All good things (and most average ones) must come to an end, but before I go, a few thoughts on this whole restaurant reviewing thing.

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They were giving out ” I Love Offal” stickers for the Chris Cosentino head to tail dinner at DNA. Apparently, he loves offal. So do I, but I didn’t love this meal. We got started off on the wrong foot with a horse and horse heart tartar with an oyster folded into it. The dish looked like it had been plated in the dark: a lump of meat, smear of aoili, big slices of brioche toasts and a handful of fries thrown on a plate. The horse tartar itself was complex and well seasoned, really good actually. We were instructed to make a sandwich out of it, but the brioche was rock hard like it had been toasted last week and the horse fat fries tasted like a day old offering from McDonald’s. The central piece of the dish was well done but poor execution of the peripheral items really killed it for me.

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Local blogger Alexandra Forbes reports that, on the night of her first Montreal Highlights dinner at Cocagne, chef Monica Patino skipped out mid-service to head off to dinner. Even though I only made it to Cocagne the next night, that anecdote nicely encapsulates my feelings about the meal. There was a lot of Chef Patino parading around the front of house in immaculate whites and posing for pictures but the meal itself suffered from a lack of attention.  Not to say that there weren’t any high points. The tostada was crisp and savory: topped with rounds of firm octopus, a nicely balanced pico de gallo and micro coriander. This isn’t what you expect when you think of fine dining, but it came together very well. The accompanying  amuse-sized spoonful of scallop, cucumber, onion and pepper on the other hand has a washed out flavor and an overly fishy taste. Much less interesting. The quality of the seafood is an issue again for me with the sauteed shrimp, a generous helping served on a bed of guacamole that incorporates radish and apple, together with a spicy tamarind sauce and served with a warm whole wheat tortilla. This could have been a great dish as the components were really quite good, but the shrimp had an overpowering taste of iodine. While one can understand the problem of sourcing ingredients for a meal 2,000 miles from home, there is no excuse for serving something like this.

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When Les Cavistes first opened a good year and a half ago, reviews were strong and, since I couldn’t get a reservation, I settled for take-out. While I loved the fact you could buy private import wine to take home with your meal, the cuisine itself didn’t mark me. Not that it was bad, it just seemed very expensive for what it was. The shrimp risotto was a little stiff, but the braised octopus with chorizo and boudin noir were quite good (even if served in pretty small portions).

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I am not sure how I feel about Jolifou anymore. I was a very big fan of the old Jolifou and its amalgym of Mexican and French influences. It brought something different to a town in which the same tired old themes predominate. And chef David Ferguson strikes me as a passionate and genuine guy: a welcome contrast to the plastic esthetic of new stars like Louis Francois Marcotte. I was both surprised and upset when Jolifou was turned into a “roadhouse” and its complex, adventurous cuisine abandoned in favour of burgers and barbecue. Even though chef Ferguson positioned the change as a natural progression,  I always thought part of the decision had to be that the economics of the new menu were better than those of the old one.

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The surprising thing was that the pizza was so bad. Since its opening, Pizzeria Magpie had received nothing but praise from the Montreal press  and amateur foodies alike, so I expected something that at least made sense. But it really didn’t.  Cooked in a wood burning oven, the pie has an imposing fringe of outer crust and a depressed center. The first slice has the firm pliability that is the hallmark of a good crust but try to pick it up and the toppings all slide down your shirt. Most people who don’t like Neapolitan-style pizza bitch about the scarcity of the toppings as their main complaint, but the Magpie pizza is a great example of why a thin crust pizza can’t be loaded up–it just turns into a mess you can’t pick up. And, with apologies to the relativists, you shouldn’t have to eat any pizza with a fork and knife. If you can’t pick up a piece, then its just not a well made pizza. End of story. Sure, I’m willing to admit that the firm pliability of that first slice is what a pizzamaker is looking for (if I forget the fact that you can only test the pliability once the toppings have sloshed off), but in about one minute it’s gone and you’re left with a pizza stew surrounded by a ring of overly dense crust. Not what the doctor ordered.

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