Restaurant review | Mature kids

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, a cuisine to make your wines shine: Les Mômes.

Why talk about it?

“Bring your own wine” restaurants of this caliber don’t open every week, unlike the refreshment bars and other pretty bistronomic restaurants which are plentiful these days. It’s now been a little over a year since Les Mômes replaced Tandem, rue Villeray. Despite a few adaptations, the house has found its cruising speed.

Who are they ?

Chef Yoann Van Den Berg, originally from the southwest of France, arrived in Quebec eight years ago to work (briefly) at Europea, after spending time in beautiful Swiss and French kitchens, including the Maison de the famous Anne-Sophie Pic. He then worked his way to the top position in the kitchen under the direction of Jason Morris, at the now-closed Fantôme and then Pastel restaurants. His wife Marie Voyer, an award-winning hotel concierge in a “first life”, was part of the Mômes adventure at the start. She now monitors a little more from a distance while the couple’s little flesh-and-blood kids develop! In the kitchen, Yoann can count on the solid Tien Nguyen and Clémentine Gueroult who, on the evening of my visit, were alone to prepare an almost perfect dinner. The room is managed by our attentive waitress Lisa Squercia and her colleague Johann Malescot. In short, the team is small, but it is golden.

Our experience

I cook, but not like a chef! So, when it comes time to open wines that have been maturing in my cellar for a number of years, I’m happy to entrust the nourishment to professionals.

So it’s armed with several bottles – to have choice! – that two oenophile friends and I arrived at the restaurant whose motto is “They lived as children and made many people happy”.

Starting with almost all black furniture inherited from the Tandem, including the tablecloths, the Mômes’ playground was brightened up with benches, bar stools and orange ceiling lights, as well as colorful works on the wall and other accessories. playful. It’s a somewhat disparate decor, in which also resonates a more or less appropriate musical selection – when it stands out too much, it means that it doesn’t blend in well with the whole -, but we’re here above all to drink and eat.

The menu is presented in four sections: snacks, starters, main courses, desserts. All guests can choose the three-course table d’hôte formula for $80. There is even, at the six-seat counter, a six-course menu – all off the menu – for $95.

We choose to eat à la carte after having made the following reflection: the main dishes are, for a rare time, more tempting than the starters. Certainly, we are at the height of the root season, but we would have started the meal with a little more freshness.

Three out of four starter options are protein: confit salmon – I will taste it after the photo shoot and we have to admit that with its green apple and lemon juice, it is still very fresh –, octopus and hearts duck. So it will be fried cauliflower on Grenobloise sauce (butter, lemon and capers). The florets have the good taste of caramelized cabbage and are trapped in a beautiful golden breading. The marinated white anchovies which top them bring a very welcome acidity.

Polenta gnocchi are normally offered as a second or third course, but we make it a starter. It’s one of the chef’s specialties, which changes garnishes depending on the season. When we visit, the little clouds of corn merge with a Basquaise-style chicken seasoned with yuzu kosho, chili paste and Japanese citrus fruits. This tasty dish well represents the Basque origins of the chef and his time in the Japanese cuisine of the late Pastel.

The delicate steamed gold on its rich white butter is the dream companion of a white Burgundy Les Grandes Goutes 2018 (vines in Meursault), by Marthe Henry Boillot. The very tender saddle of lamb prefers the rich Assyrtiko old vines 2013 from the late Haridimos Hatzidakis, in Santorini, to the Les Riaux Deviant red burgundy from Domaine Derain.

If we hadn’t eaten it as soon as we arrived, we could have saved the foie gras sandwich from the “snack foods” section for dessert. This little marvel, which caused a sensation when it was invented in 2015, is a tribute to the restaurant Fantôme and its chef Jason Morris, today at the head of Marcus at the Four Seasons. A generous slice of foie gras torchon is inserted into a peanut butter and jam sandwich on slightly burnt brioche. Surprising and very delicious.

The chocolate fondant, with a hazelnut center, is a lovely, classic way to end a meal at Les Mômes. It’s another permanent fixture in the house. Its particularity is to be served with cardamom milk that you pour yourself over the cake. So, once the flowing center is released, it mixes with the liquid that you will want to drink until the last drop. The Jerusalem artichoke dessert is original without being shocking, despite its main ingredient and a density more reminiscent of English pastry than French.

“I would come back here,” my Burgundy wine-collecting dining companion said several times. The feeling is shared. When we also consider that the chef was not present that evening, having entrusted his cooking to his assistants, we conclude that the house is very well kept.

Price

As is often the case in gourmet “Bring your own wine” restaurants, the dishes are a little more expensive than elsewhere, to compensate for the lack of margin made on the sale of alcohol, perhaps. At Les Mômes, starters cost around twenty dollars, main courses around forty and desserts at $14. There is (almost) always a dish to share, in the tradition of the great, generous French classics (around $80).

Good to know

The menu changes very regularly, to the delight of restaurant regulars, but certain classics remain. Question of configuration: there are two steps in front of the entrance and the restaurant does not define itself as adapted, but has already welcomed people with reduced mobility.

Open every day from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.

586, rue Villeray, Montreal

Visit the Mômes website