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| - Dear Foodies,
We need to talk. I am fed up, really FED UP about these star chefs in Montreal getting all this glory and the royal treatment for cooking homefood. If I want to eat homefood, I'll cook at home and will probably do better work of it that these guys.
This brings me to Liverpool House. So loved and adored, even Anthony Bourdain gushes like a tingly teenage girl at a Justin Bieber concert over the chef at Liverpool House. But I have only one question about that.... WHY?
The restaurant looks pretty cool and homey, a place where you feel comfortable burning away the time, boozing and eating. There is no menu; the writing is on the wall... literally ON THE WALL. The quality of service is impeccable. The place as a whole is very welcoming, except for the noise, lotsa noise. Even if we removed the table next to us, populated by none other than Liberal MP Justin Trudeau, his lovely wife and his posse screaming and laughing like annoying 14 year olds at a McDonald's it would still be extremely noisy. But seriously this is about the food right? Yeah about that.
They have a decent menu considering the menu gets an once-over pretty regularly. As starters there was Oysters, Fried Pig Tails, Rabbit sausage and over course the ubiquitous Foie Gras plate. I had the Foie Gras of course. As a voracious Foie Gras eater, I can't resist the offering when it emerges.
Foie Gras is a complicated love affair. It can make or break the whole experience, the better the execution, the further downhill the experience can go. And this was no exception. The chef basically re-invented the Egg McMuffin with Sausage using high end ingredients. I was offered a breakfast sammich made of some bread, firm and unyielding, some aged cheddar (me thinks) and Foie Gras... a big tasty, fatty, delicious pile of Foie Gras drizzled with Maple Syrup, topped with a perfectly fried egg. Cutting through it, releasing the egg yolk, mixing with the maple syrup, the fatty goodness of the foie gras... made for what was likely the greatest execution of a foie gras dish I have ever tasted. It was close-your-eyes-tilt-your-head-back-and-going-hmmmmmm good. And once done I gave up all decorum and fingered the remaining goo of yolk, maple syrup and fat off my plate.
Then came the main. How the mighty have fallen. All the dishes ordered looked less than ordinary. The fish, the lobster spag, the ribs and even my plate of rabit and risotto. I find that rabbit is best served braised. To roast a bunny is to take many chances of it being dry... and dry it was. Dry enough for me to gulp down 4 glasses of water in a row. Was it good? Yeah but way freaking dry. I had to stop eating it. But that was just adding insult to injury. Let's talk risotto. The way I understand it, risotto is to be a creamy rich unctuous rice affair. The rice should be a starchy rice, a heavy rice, not a jasmine rice and oh did I mention creamy, rich and unctuous? This risotto was none of that. The frame of reference I'm talking here is Uncle Ben's precooked instant rice meals you get out of a plastic pouch which you nuke in the microwave. There were no ingredients that I could identify here that belonged in a risotto, I mean even the rice was wrong. I've never made a risotto myself but I bet I could have executed one with far greater success. The whole dish was an epic and massive failure.
The dessert, a sticky apple bread pudding thingie, was a thorough success in sugary goodness. But again, apples, maple syrup and some lemony sorbet... total win. But it was insufficient to buy back my good favors after the atrocious travesty of a risotto - an Italian would have screamed bloody murder and that dry choke-you preparation of the rabbit was unforgivable. This is especially egregious when a bistro like Via Crescent braises its bunny overnight in a ragout of carrots and celeries and sells it to you for half the price and yet never fails.
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