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| - At Jellyfish you see and are seen. Food and drinks are optional.
Every care and precaution has been taken to stimulate your "How do I look?" gland. The street facing walls, composed of unobstructed glass sliding doors sitting beneath large french windows, invites unlimited ogling next to the opaque stone facades of its Old Port neighbourhood. To reach the entrance you'll be watched striding down a long stone walkway where a lush red carpet ought to be installed in perpetuity. Once inside, there's almost no way to reach your seat without crossing at least one side length of the prodigious centrepiece bar, facilitating up-down eyeballing between guests and waitstaff alike. And, so you don't forget how trendy this place is, your bill is delivered to you paper-clipped to a unique and somewhat kitsch souvenir postcard, the current hallmark of all great on-trend restaurants. If anything, the point of Jellyfish is maximizing your excitement about telling your friends you ate at Jellyfish.
Full disclosure: trying to impress was at least a 60% factor in inviting my out of town friend for dinner there. Also I'm a total sucker for the postcard as souvenir thing.
If status signalling isn't your thing, the food might be worth all the peacock-ing. The menu reflects the large playground provided by the raw/grilled thematic, which is to say it eschews any standard style or ingredient pairings in favour of whatever is striking chef Mathieu Masson Duceppe's imagination this season. Much of the effort seems to have been spent on small "look how clever we are" flourishes, e.g., scallops with popcorn béchamel, or "Reese's Pieces" duck tataki with peanut and dark chocolate sauce. Are we extras on a audition reel for Chef's Table? Still there's a certain thoughtfulness at work I think justifies the braggadocio. Our oysters, for example, were served with fresh sea beans (picture baby asparagus) as a crunchy, salty alternative to a boring old salt shaker. These are the small details where a memorable meal starts.
If everything begs for your attention, the desserts stand up to scrutiny and then some. Decadent, tart, and full-bodied, our lime/white chocolate pie had us sucking on our spoons and rolling our eyes over until the bowl was scrapped clean. We exchanged "can you believe how good this is!?" glances with a couple seated next to us frozen in a similar ecstatic stupor by their dessert. I'd be fond of Jellyfish as a place to end long conversations over wine and sugar but any intimacy here is checked at the door.
Of all the sights, sounds, and tastes, it's unfortunate I can't blank out our lackadaisical waiter, who seemed to want to be anywhere but at our table. Every question was met with a nearly audible sigh in body and expression. I'm sure our waiter gets asked for wine recommendations all day but here at Jellyfish asking "What should we drink?" seems to be the entire point. I don't think we were supposed to order our drinks feeling like we told a teenager he couldn't watch TV until after he finished all his homework. He didn't even even mention the bespoke salty sea beans, earning us more silent groaning when we asked him to find a boring old salt shaker for us. Part of offering an eclectic menu is taking us beyond our culinary comfort zone. The waitstaff's enthusiasm and knowledge is crucial in selling that experience. At a place where a 3 digit bill is unavoidable, I can't forgive bad service. I start chopping stars. But as I said food and drink might be besides the point; I'm still happy to tell anyone who'll listen I've been to Jellyfish.
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