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| - We decided to try Maison Boulud for their Menu Table d'Hôte, which is available as 2 or 3 courses during weekday lunch hours. The 2-course menu is $38, and 3-course menu $45. We reserved for a table of 2 at 1pm through Opentable.
Even before ordering, our waiter brought out house bread and warm butter to enjoy. There was classic French baguette and house focaccia that was really yummy.
As for our menu, we chose to have the 3-course (appetizer, main, dessert):
Me - petit pea soup, trout, chocolate and salted caramel (I forgot the names of the dishes.. :()
Hubby - salmon tartare, beef bourguignon, and raspberry mousse cake with pistachios.
There are 3 options for each course you can choose from.
I actually only ordered the soup because I was cold from walking outside and because I didn't want to order the same salmon tartare as my hubby. The only other option was to get their salad which I wasn't really for. The soup was rather large in portion, as it was served in a very deep soup bowl, and the colour of the soup was very pretty. It was refreshing to see the colour green, as I wasn't able to see much of it outside in Montreal yet! If you don't like peas, this won't be for you, as you can really taste the natural flavours of the peas very strongly. Inside the soup were small crouton? like bits that kept its crisp until the very last moment in where it entered my mouth. I was very surprised to see that they were not soggy at all while they swam around in my soup. Overall, the soup was well enjoyed and I wouldn't mind reordering it again.
Hubby's salmon tartare was also quite large in portion as well, which was quite surprising because we were more used to smaller portions of tartare. For what you pay ($38 or $45), the portions were generous. It made me wonder how their dinner portions are: are they similar? Or larger? The soft salmon was balanced out by the thin crisp on the top along with leafy greens, and the roasted beets brought out more of the chewing texture of the dish. Underneath the salmon tartare was the sauce that brought the appetizer all together; the savoury sauce had sharp tanginess to it that aimed to balance out the blandness of the salmon. Although the textures were well balanced, the flavours, on the other hand, weren't and the ingredients didn't come together in synchrony unless the hidden sauce was well mixed into the tartare; we were able to taste each ingredient on its own, individually, even though there were other factors eaten together.
My seafood dish looked very appealing at first glance, and I was delighted that they had seafood on their lunch menu. The main trout was cooked very well, not overdone, soft and delicate in texture. Underlying all the ingredients was the main sauce that was generally too overpowering.
For dessert, I chose the most chocolate-y one; I love salted caramel and vanilla bean anything, so this dessert was a must order for me. The dessert intrigued my fascination about chocolate; I had never tried chocolate that had texture like this before! It was more like soft fudge, but not too soft that it doesn't keep its shape or melt. If there was one thing that I didn't like about the dessert was that it was dark chocolate. Now, the dark chocolate went very well with salted caramel, and even my hubby, who doesn't like very sweet things, actually really enjoyed my dessert and preferred it over his!
Overall, our first visit to Maison Boulud was enjoyable. The service was great: all of our orders were correct, on time, and warm. Our waiter kept our glasses full, and he was polite and quick. The atmosphere of the restaurant divides into two, as you could be seated in the veranda or the main dining hall which is more formal. We sat in the veranda which was very nice because it had lots of natural sunlight coming in which I really liked. As many hotel restaurants are, the washrooms are not within the restaurant but in the hotel lobby. The food was okay, as there were dishes that we really liked, and some that we didn't as much. Generally, Maison Boulud is a place we would personally come with family for brunch, but I don't think we will be back anytime soon because it didn't really give us the WOW factor that we expect for a fine dining experience. Perhaps our lunch experience was an outlier, as Maison Boulud was picked #27 in Canada's Top 100 Best Restaurants! Maybe dinner is a better time to go.
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