The hype is hard to fully understand.
The food tastes good- on par with other restaurants of this genre in Montreal. But the value for money is among the worst in the city.
The dishes are pretentiously - almost belligerently - small.
Because each dish was like less than 100g.
That sandwich might have been like 10 g or something. I'm actually serious.
The 'courses' are legit cocktail food and sometimes not even. The halibut was maybe one inch cubed, with maybe 1/6th of a portobello; one course was a salad that was maybe 1/6 of cup of marinated veg.
Please see the image of the microscopic grilled cheese, which was one 'course', with one 'sandwich' per person. Factor that into the cost of the meal.
Maybe it is worse than it used to be- the photos up there look much more reasonable than what we had.
$75 = $45 menu + 1 beer (600ml) each. We were still basically hungry.
They offered us the 'top up' menu, which is unsurprisingly rather popular. We laughed out loud.
They graciously threw us some leftover carbs at the end of the night (breadx1 plus maybe 50g of pasta) which is the only thing that prevented us from going home for late night snacks afterwards. They threw in an extra dessert too at the end of the night b/c other wise they would have to toss it.
They seemed nervous about it honestly.
Because they THEY KNOW the food is too small. It's part of the business model. The described our $45 dollar tasting menu as 'the snack'. Guys no.
No one wants to spend that much on a snack, plus wine and tax and tip. Unless there are psychoactive substances involved.