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| - I've been to Cluny several times, twice for brunch and once for dinner. It's in a lovely location, set in the beautiful distillery district. The decor is nice and welcoming, I especially like the faux ceiling they have. I'm pulled between rating Cluny as a 3 star or a 4 star. The 4 star is really for the pastries and the poutine they serve. I'm from Montreal, so I have a certain expectation when it comes to croissants and poutines, but both of those were amazing and delicious. The juices for brunch are also good. But the rest of the menu has been a bit of a miss. Not that it's not delicious, but it's almost like they're trying too hard and missing the spot in the end. The croque Madame for brunch was yummy, but it was insanely heavy. I could barely finish half of it. My boyfriend had the portobello Benedict (I think it's portobello... It was a large mushroom of sorts). It also tasted really good, but it just wasn't quite satisfying. The mushroom basically replaced the bread/english muffin that is usually in a Benedict and I feel like it kind of took away from it.
For dinner I had the frenchy. I was tempted by all the amazing ingredients in the dish. It came as a huge 2 patty burger. It looked amazing. And it tasted really good too! Several cheeses, seared foie gras, bone marrow aioli etc the problem however was that it was way too big. I could not eat it as a burger no matter how hard I tried. I eventually gave in, and used a fork and knife to cut up the burger and eat it in pieces. I know. Shame on me. There was so much going on in the burger that I could barely taste the foie gras.
My boyfriend got the truffled local chicken, also tasted good, but it was pretty much half a chicken, some rice, and that's about it. It became a bit monotonous after the first few bites. The same goes with the octopus. It's not that it's not good, but the problem was the monotony of the dish. The octopus was practically a whole octopus (mind you, a small one), but by the time you've eaten two or three tentacles it is just the same thing bite after bite.
In the end, the taste of the food is great, the price is on the higher end, but it falls short in the satisfactory level, and it does feel a bit monotonous, could use some variety on the dish.
If I could, I'd give it a 3.5, but there's no .5, so 3 will have to do.
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