National Post
Saturday, August 04, 2007

Canadian cuisine's tipping point

by Gina Mallet

Our critic believes chef David Lee will make the word Canadian as glamorous as his restaurant.

Splendido is the train bleu of restaurants, a chic time capsule disinterred from the 1930s, the most darkly glamorous decade of the 20th century, symbolized by the sleek blue express that sped from Paris to the jewel-encrusted Cote d'Azur, where the debris of the lost generation danced on the edge of the end of the world.

I'm seamlessly absorbed into the time warp. The decor is like the stage set for a period comedy. I swear I hear a phrase from It Had To Be You, and isn't that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor sitting in that corner?

No surprise when the Man about Town snaps his fingers and calls for rose. Two flutes of pink Champagne arrive with Jason the bartender, who merges with the discreetly lit decor. The service is so good here that it's invisible. This is an ideal restaurant for anything illicit. The 16 tables are so well spaced, the lights so low, that there's no fear of hearing secrets exchanged over the Exotica Canadiana.

Yes, we're here to eat the tasting menu -- the high hurdle of the eating elite -- devoted this month to Canadian food. Generally speaking, I don't think it's necessary to underline the excellence of Canadian food. As far as farmers' markets are concerned, Toronto has been way ahead of the New York I came from. Now farmers' markets have sprung up all over the city, but when I arrived only the St. Lawrence farmers' market was open. I loved it then and I love it more since Robert Chorney founded Farmers' Markets Ontario. For the past 20 years, Chorney has energized farmers' markets not only in Ontario but across North America, taking the movement back to its roots, banning middlemen and dictating that only growers should participate. Today, I can buy ramps and nettles, fresh local goat cheese and organic meat from the Saturday market at the St. Lawrence. I am particularly fond of the fresh-laid eggs the Clarks have been bringing to market for more than 55 years.

Local food has never been inferior, but restaurants have had to struggle to establish their identity in the city. The obstacles: high taxes (25% combined food and wine) and the LCBO, the province's liquor monopoly. Restaurants get no price breaks, and until they were given the right to order their own wine choices on consignment, the consumers were stuck with LCBO taste. Twenty years ago, moreover, Ontario wines were still something of a joke.

So, when I see that Splendido isn't offering just Canadian produce but paired with Ontario wines, I know Canadian food has reached a tipping point. We have the food, now we have the wine and we have a chef, David Lee, who's going to make the word Canadian as glamorous as his restaurant.

A cake stand of amuses-bouche arrives and I am scribbling uselessly. I know the shot glass contains zucchini soup and a hazelnut is poised on Champagne foam but the waiter speaks so quickly and the morsels slip down so fast. Every single one is a treat. The courses unfold with authority, sweet and sour, acid and salty. The sweetness of B.C.'s Dungeness crab is crisply countered by the spurt of acid in the juicy heirloom tomatoes from Ontario's Cookstown Greens, and there's not too much! Whew. The tasting menu is now often the obesity menu. Once a tasting menu meant just that, a mouthful of amazing taste, and you rose from the table feeling pleased but not stuffed. But, apparently, some consumers complained at having to pay premium prices ($100 plus) for so little food. Now some menus present mouthfuls almost as large as a course. Sometimes, I feel I'm trapped in La Grande Bouffe, enduring a blowout.

The next plate holds a little square of pickerel fillet garnished with littleneck clams and coriander vinaigrette, a tingling mouthful. The Man about Town loves it and exults: "Lake Erie pickerel with Niagara Pinot Gris. You can't get much more local than that."

Then one of the dinner's peaks: delicate slices of poached lobster with Peaches 'n' Cream Corn Cobb salad, a take on a classic California salad, which is spiked with bacon. Here Lee has made a fresh corn coulis combined with Niagara pancetta as a creamy sweet complement to the lobster.

And then he tops himself -- a chunk of beef brisket, a pool of beef consomme and a marrow bone that gushes like an oil well. I've been enjoying the matching wines but now I have my aha moment: Norman Hardie's 2005 Pinot Noir from Prince Edward County, Ontario's new wine country. The wine is a gastronomical animateur --it is so cool, so lucid, so balanced that it pulls together all the tastes and gives this wonderful rich beefy course a character beyond earthiness.

I'm emotionally exhausted and I know I can't do justice to the dinner's climax -- a slice of naturally raised and perfectly pink beef ribeye with a taste-bud teaser -- pea and goat cheese raviolo and some musky morel sauce. Alone, it would have been wonderful. Now it verges on too much. Call it greed or persistence, I manage a taste of Bouton d'Or, raw milk semi-soft cheese from Quebec, and washed rind Comfort Cream from Niagara, and end with some crunchy berries.

The Man about Town raises his glass of Inniskillin icewine and burbles happily: "If there was any doubt of this country's world-class talent with our own animals, vegetables and grape, let there be none after this dinner." And I agree.

-Dinner only. Exotica Canadiana tasting menu for two plus cheese with tax $315; paired wines, $75 per person. For comments and more, go to blog.ginamallet.com.