Restaurant review | Ăn Chơi Plaza: two worlds, a mixed result

Through the good times and, sometimes, the not so good, our restaurant critics tell you about their experience, present the team in the dining room and in the kitchen, while explaining what motivated their choice of restaurant. This week: Ăn Chơi Plaza, which attempts to combine two worlds, that of Vietnamese cuisine and the natural wine bar.

Why talk about it?

As soon as this new project on the Plaza was announced, the concept intrigued me: a “street food”-inspired Vietnamese cuisine restaurant that meets the natural wine bar. There are many refreshment bars in Montreal; natural wine too! As for Vietnamese cuisine, it is well represented, think of all these little bouis-bouis where you can enjoy a steaming phở soup, to the counters where you can sink your teeth into a delicious bánh mì (I admit to being addicted to those of Sue) and to all the others who put forward its perfumes in a more current, sometimes fragmented setting – Le Red Tiger, Cafeden, La Belle Tonki, Tran Cantine, Le Petit Sao… There is no shortage of addresses , but I’m always curious to discover new things, when I’m promised a nice natural wine list to boot!

Who are they ?

Behind Ăn Chơi Plaza, there is Michelle Vo, the idea behind this project, known for her Instagram account @pasthyme, where she presents her love for Vietnamese street food. This is his first foray into catering. His partners, on the other hand, have experience in this area: Douglas Tan (La Bêtise) and Vien Man Cao-Tran (Bar Otto, Otto Ramen). The latter signs the menu in collaboration with chef Galaxy Duong. The wine list is the work of Daphné Blondin and the cocktails, of mixologist Thomas Gauthier.

Our experience

I’m not going to beat around the bush any longer: my experience at Ăn Chơi was mixed, not to say disappointing.

I was expecting fragrant, tasty dishes, paying homage to the richness of Vietnamese cuisine. What I tasted there was generally okay; nothing transcendent. I noted a general lack of depth in flavors and a certain gap in execution.

It was a quiet, chilly Tuesday evening in October, the kind that doesn’t make you want to go outside. The restaurant was therefore particularly empty. Our two waitresses seemed very bored, but they were very nice to us, the only customers seated at the bar.

I will come back later to the liquid card, which has very good qualities. As for food, the short menu of around ten items is made up of small and larger plates, and avoids certain beaten paths: no vermicelli noodle dish, phở soup or bánh mì, in short!

The best dish of the evening was the Bò tái chanh, a carpaccio-style beef salad, very fresh and spicy, thanks to a generous quantity of herbs and its thin slices of bird’s eye peppers. The fried shallots and roasted peanuts added a touch of crunch, as did the shrimp chips. The flavors were quite simple, nothing very complex.

This impression continued for the rest of the dishes. The Goi We’re looking for umami.

For the main course, the Cơm cua, a fried rice, was the disappointment of the evening. Topped with a cloud of salted and grated egg yolk, the whole thing was dry, without much staying power, bland; the soft-shell crab, presented whole and fried, was rather uninspiring. We didn’t finish the plate. As for the Rau xào, a dish of Chinese oyster mushrooms and broccoli, they were correctly prepared, but in no way memorable.

The premises of Ăn Chơi Plaza are welcoming, with their green plants and decorations of all kinds. The idea of ​​a Vietnamese refreshment bar with simple dishes and good wines, for a relaxed experience, is a good one. But simplicity can rhyme with well-executed dishes and crafted flavors. Perhaps we were unlucky and other dishes, like the marrow and bourgots bones or the clear broth soup with crab meat balls, would have charmed us. Perhaps another visit will convince me, but for now there is room for improvement.

In our glass

There were still positives in this evening, especially in terms of the drinks menu. The place offers classic cocktails with a “twist”; understand the integration of Asian ingredients such as coconut milk, pandan leaves or Thai basil, which flavors my Basic Basilic cocktail, made with Quebec Aupale vodka and St-Germain, wonderfully. The lover, for his part, is pleasantly surprised by his Nekokaburi beer, a wild ale which is based on blaufränkisch marcs from Maison Agricole Joy, by the very interesting Ippon microbrewery, whose most famous beer (also offered at Ăn Chơi) is flavored with ginger and Japanese pepper. The place also stocks Avant-Garde beers, Fleuris ciders and offers very good non-alcoholic drinks from Fin Soda.

As for wine, the menu offers a nice variety, at fairly reasonable prices – several options at $50 and $60, which is becoming increasingly rare. You will find there the wines of Grape Republic, a Japanese house. I tasted a surprisingly good wine from… Manitoba (a first, I think), the Rise white by Low Life Barell House, offering beautiful acidity with petroleum notes, thanks to its blend of Riesling, Geisenheim and Vida grapes.

Price

Entrees range from $8 to $19; main dishes, more substantial, approach $30. Cocktails are around $15 and beers are just over $10.

Good to know

Besides the side vegetables, there are no vegetarian dishes on the menu. Pescetarians will largely find what they need there. Open from Tuesday to Saturday evening, the place is accessible to people with reduced mobility.

6553, rue Saint-Hubert, Montreal