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| - The short version: This is a very sober, competent, reliable old school eatery for grownups.
I've been in for supper a few times, always as part of a company group of about 50 sitting down to a very limited table d'hôte, and it still impresses under these logistically-trying wedding conditions. As others have said, main course portions are generous. Our party has always been sufficiently staffed with busboys and waiters, and plates appear and disappear with alacrity. Bread barges are constantly renewed. Only service complaint last night was that the water glasses at our table were never topped-off, though the wineglasses were being kept up. But otherwise, the service is reliably quiet, observant, courteous, and professional.
As for the food, be prepared for very dense, intensely-flavored, richly-sauced fare. The house palate has the tone and heft of a cognac ad in a 1970s Playboy magazine. Nouvelle cuisine, it ain't. But the soups I've tried have been quite lovely, their Caesar salad is the best-seasoned and tastiest I've eaten in the city, and the kitchen clearly knows its way around a lamb shank.
They also make a very credible gin martini- hard to find in Montreal.
I will gladly continue to eat here on the company's tab, but it's also on my short list of places in Montreal I'd take an intelligent, hungry friend for a few hours of serious conversation in a quiet corner. The service here seems particularly adept at enabling that.
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