| rev:text
| - More than perhaps any restaurant in North America, L'Express simulates what it's like to dine in a Parisian bistro. It's got the real-deal French menu, and the Old World ambience is urbane and cosmopolitan, but also verging on the comfortably timeworn. And, on weeknights at least, it seems to have regular clientele and staff who speak almost exclusively French and who seem like they've been dining here and working here for two or three decades.
If that's the experience you're looking for, I can't recommend it more highly.
But L'Express comes with so much hype from Yelp, Zagat, Urbanspoon, travel guides, etc., that I don't see how you can't be a bit disappointed by an actual experience here. Ultimately, L'Express is a very nice restaurant and makes for a pleasant evening, but I don't think it really raises the bar that high when it comes to food, service, atmosphere, and so on. It serves mostly French standards. (If you've been to Paris, you've probably had a better experience of this sort there in the same price range or even lower. Or hell, you've probably had better French dining experiences in other North American cities.) In other words, I think L'express earns B+ and A- grades all down the line, which is quite good, but hardly mind-blowing. (Except for the authentic-bistro atmosphere, which is pretty close to an A+.)
Bread and butter are good but not great, and we did like the jar of gherkins (with mustard) that the waiter brings to your table. Sorrel soup was bold and almost perfect in its simplicity and balance. But that bowl of soup was probably the highlight of the night. I ordered sauteed duck confit which supposedly came "with" a salad, but this was more of like a big green salad, and not a particularly noteworthy one, with duck confit in it. (I'm a dolt with the French language, so maybe the French on the menu accurately described this dish, but the English didn't quite do so.) And the duck confit itself was flavorful enough but a little dried out. The wife reported that her warm goat cheese salad was pretty underwhelming, and it sure looked like it, at least for a $12 salad. She said pretty much the same about her sea bass, which was plenty good but well short of the best piece of fish or three she'd ever had.
Obviously, it's possible we didn't order well and that we missed out on the items that best represent L'Express.
A wine list that is largely French, with some reasonably priced bottles and a good number of selections by the glass.
Four stars, yes: L'Express is good. But I bet you can do a bit better in Montreal. In fact, I suspect you can do a bit better just in this neighborhood.
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