3487 Avenue du Parc, Montreal | Tel. (514) 845-2992
t least ten business lunches Chez Gautier have left me with fond memories of its early days when I felt transported to a sidewalk café on Saint Germain des Prés: the loud chatter of happy patrons, wallfuls of art nouveau mirrors, Parisian decorations, a permanent cigarette fog, and decadent French food.
I was in the company of my 240-pound American friend and three others. He is the only guy I know who is married to a Transylvanian woman – I guess there must be many others, but they probably do not venture outside before midnight. She is in fact from a place not far from Bran Castle, which was featured in multiple film adaptations of Dracula. And then I realized that I was not Chez Gautier. Chez Gautier died many years ago. This restaurant has all the warmth of the damp cellars of Bran Castle.
With one exception, we ordered the lunch menu of the day, which had a soup or salad, a main dish choice between hamburger in a devil's sauce ($12.50), veal kidney in a Madeira sauce ($16.50) or cod filet ($16.25). Coffee and dessert are also included in those prices. This is what one could call functional dining: fill your tummy, talk business, and out of there for the next meeting at 2pm. A la carte items include all those French things such as rémoulade, boudin noir (black sausage), rillettes (meat loaf), and veal liver, proving once and for all that the French will help themselves to any part of the animal.
Boudin noir is made from pig's blood. It should be eaten within a day or two of preparation. Traditional boudin de Paris has about equal amounts of blood, fat, and cooked onions. Some restaurants add fruit and various aromatics to the mix. It is often served with an apple sauce. Top chefs in France all have their own boudin secrets and secret boudins. In hindsight, I should have gone for Gautier's boudin.
On the menu, Crudités du jour was translated as Plate of crudenesses of the day. It should have tipped us off. The waiter, nicknamed Vlad, his eyes way too deep in his sockets, his last red blood cell drained from his veins (probably in Gautier's boudin), saw to it that our table had plenty of crudenesses of the day.
My friend had only half finished his broccoli soup, when Vlad returned to collect the plates. He grabbed the collar of his soup plate, but my friend resisted and grabbed the opposite collar. A tug-of-soupplate broke out. Luckily, my friend won, and Vlad retreated to his oubliette.
I had a fine mesclun salad with pieces of confit of duck. My companions reported that the hamburger and the fish were good. All dishes were accompanied by generous helpings of mashed potatoes or French fries. Afraid to go to the toilet and leave a half full plate on the table after the soup incident, they all finished their meals in record time.
In an unforgivable mental lapse, probably stressed out by the waiter, I ordered a spaghetti carbonara. In Montreal, in a city with 300,000 Italians, in a town ruled by the Rizzuto family, I actually ordered a carbonara chez Gautier! And I got what I deserved, a pasta made without love in an eggless carbonara sauce that was confused about its identity and drowning in butter and fat.
It was close to 2 o'clock, so my friend asked Vlad for a coffee and the bill. Revengefully, Vlad canceled all desserts. Even though he is not Belgian, Gautier also runs the Patisserie Belge next door. So I was looking forward to a yummy pastry or pie. I asked for my dessert but was told that since my friend had asked for the bill, I was not following the protocol. He relented, not without checking the veins in my neck, and brought my "dessert".
I am sure there is a dungeon in the back where Gautier keeps cakes to torture selected diners: mine was a soggy corpse with a cellulite layer of tired buttercream and lifeless pink icing. -- Reviewed by RestoSpy (March/07)
