I'm not big on the celebrity chef thing, I don't own a lot of "chef" cookbooks or make efforts to eat at the latest "chef" restaurant. I wouldn't turn down a free meal at any Thomas Keller establishment, mind you; I enjoyed Charlie Palmer's Aureole, Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill does a lovely lunch, I went to a taping of Emeril Live when opportunity knocked, I think Mario Batali's food is pretty good, and if someone offered me a table at Red Cat, Grayz, Le Bernadin or BLT Prime and picked up the tab I'd dimple with glee. But effort? I'd just as soon hit our neighborhood French bistro for steak frites, with a morning-of reservation, and be happy.
So when our friends in Montreal suggested Au Pied De Cochon for a special dinner together during our recent visit, we looked at the pdf menu and I said YES! HELL YES! MAKE A RESERVATION! The unhealthiest restaurant in the Western Hemisphere? AWESOME!
See, I grew up with Northern European peasant food: pork shoulder stewed in onions and sauerkraut, pig trotters cooked in their own aspic, lamb shanks, smoked tongue, oxtails, blutwurst, liverwurst...I happily eat calf liver, chicken liver, calf brains, veal kidneys, pork intestine, beef heart, pig jowls, chicken's tails...I learned early on not to be all skeered of the quivery bits inside an animal. If I'm willing to eat the steak, I'll eat the tripe too. It's less wasteful overall. Delicate sensibilities need not apply at my dinner table.
PDC is everything advertised and more. On a chilly Saturday night, the atmosphere is warm and relaxed, the noise level far less obnoxious than most restaurants its size. The chef was spotted in the open kitchen, looking just as muss-haired and unshaven as in his "album" and DVD. The aroma, the deeply delicious smell of many pots bubbling, made us eager as we waited for our seats and sipped St-Ambroise beers. Our waiter's close resemblance to a 20-years younger Neil Gaiman, including being dressed all in black, added greatly to the joys of the female members of our party...elegant technique handling the wine bottles, monsieur! *sigh*
We HAD to order the Foie-Gras Poutine. We did. It came...we stared...we dove in...I sliced the slab of foie-gras into four quarters...we ate...we wiped the plate clean with bread. It might have been the most delicious gravy I've ever eaten. I swear I detected porcini mushroom notes. It made this humble dish of french fries, cheese curds and gravy an Experience far beyond the usual Canadian bar food.
The rest of the meal was nearly overwhelming. The dishes ordered were Cassoulet (superb, rich, perfectly tender meat and beans), Duck in a Can (more foie gras, also lovely red cabbage and rare chewy maigret), Boudin Tart (slices of blood sausage and sauteed onions strewn over delicate buttery puff pastry OMG I'm drooling again), and, of course, my own choice, the Pied de Cochon! Which was enormous. I was actually expecting trotter, but I got an enormous pork shank/hock, the delicious stewed meat nestled in a lake of melted onions, cabbage and pork fat lapping against a firm shoreline of mashed potatoes. A square deep-fried "crouton" of pork fat, marrow and knuckle topped things off. The potatoes were the only disappointment: they were heavy and gluey as if made in a food processor, and resisted soaking up the juices. Boo. But the pork was delicious, reminding me of my mom's cooking as I chewed shreds of meat and fat together...pork fat rules. Yes it does.
We ate, and ate, and ate, and drank beer, and ate. We stared at each other in the glow of contentment and camaraderie. We sighed and ate more. And more. Our eyes began to bulge. We ate some more. At last we could not eat more, or else plates were empty. And then two of us split a dessert, an almond-cranberry tart, because we desperately wanted something tart and refreshing but non-alcoholic to help our groaning stomachs, and everything else on the dessert menu looked just as rich as the entrees. So that would be my only suggestion for change...add some fruitier desserts please! Cranberry sorbet, something like that!
I look forward to return trips next year, to try the bison & venison and other pork offerings, to have the boudin tart again, to perhaps have a green salad with the lot...and yeah, that foie-gras poutine. Maybe each of us our own helping.
2 comments:
Great post! Sorry you didn't like the potatoes. Like you, I was thrown by them the first time I had them. Later I learned that PDC potatoes are actually Aligot, a French dish of garlic mashed potatoes with so much cheese melted into them, they can be stretched and twirled around a fork. Good on their own perhaps, but useless as a sop for gravy.
Interesting! I didn't actually taste the cheese, possibly the taste was overwhelmed by the sea of melted pork fat...mmm, pork fat. Yeah, on their own they would've been nommy, but in the context they were stodgy. Not that I had any room for them anyway...all that pork to eat...mmm, pork fat...
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