Libertine Bakehouse

Sometimes, you just gots to treat yoself. Am I right? Oh, I am! Libertine Bakehouse is the new kid on the block when it comes to pastries so I just HAD to go. Plus, luckily (AND unluckily) for me, they are located only a hop and a skip away from my place. I HATE having great desserts at such close proximity. So after lunch one day, Em and I went to dessert heaven.

Ah, dessert heaven, a place where you want to go all the time and where everything smells and tastes so good you want to lick the counters. And the walls. And maybe the employees? I mean, they must have chocolate dust SOMEWHERE on them, no? The answer is yes.

This place is supa cute: white on white, a big table in the middle (for those big studying days that necessitate sugar) and a big skull with a cherry on top; their mascot, if you will.

We were there to eat dessert but FYI, they also serve up some salty treats/meals! Yaassss! Their display just looks freaking AMAZING. It took us a whhhhile to choose what we were going to eat (aka pig out on) SO we ended up having half of their inventory. I'm only slightly kidding: we chose two desserts each. What? I needed to review more than one dessert! Imma blame it on the review.

Le brownie. Also known as the least good lookin' dessert. But that dson't mean it wasn't good! Fleur de sel was concentrated mainly in the middle which was a hella nice surprise. Biting into it, it was crunchy and then soft and then, well, it gets... personal :p

The chocolate mousse. I'm a big chocolate mousse lovah. Like a big one. My fave used to be Juliette et Chocolat's but since our fall out many years ago (leaving that job after having the worst training and working with the worst bosses), I hadn't found a good replacement. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the replacement has been found. This mousse was, let me find the perfect adjectives here... heavenly, uber soft, heavenly. Wait, did I write that twice? Yes, I believe I did. The biscuit that was right under was just as perfect: crunchy and not stale at all. A fresh cookie if you will. I'm actually on my way there right now to eat one again. Of course I'm kidding, f*ck. I wish I could go right now/be able to eat as much sugar as I want to without gaining 100 pounds.

The chocolate/miso éclair. What? I'm sorry, what? Excuse me, whaaaaat? Ya, that was my reaction. It wasn't a miso explosion, which was great because that would've been whhheird. The filling tasted of chocolate and hazelnut with a hint of miso. The contrast between the crunch of the hazelnuts and the smoothness of the cream was great! Oh AND there was f*cking caramel in there. Whaaaaat! Caramel and I: a love story. Fo serious yo!

The St-Honoré: I present to you the most good looking dessert I've ever dared to eat. It was hard to ruin this beautiful, complex looking, great smelling, golden leafed pastry. DANG. Wow! It literally took us 4 minutes trying to see how we could eat it without f*cking it all up. Sh*t I'm swearing a lot today. The level of swearing is proportional to the deliciousness of these desserts. This is the pineapple, white chocolate, coconut and passion fruit. Argh, I just HATE all these flavors. Just nasty. Said NO ONE ever. I hear someone say that, I keeeel them. This was like a magical dessert. Straight out of dessert heaven. The bottom was perfectly flaky, yet not dry at all. Little pieces of pineapple here and there just exploded in my mouth like a burst of flavor. The little circles you see there? Pure effin white chocolate. The cream was just so soft and WOW and I WANT MORE PLEASE. I didn't taste the passion fruit as much but who cares? Hahaha. The coconut did what coconut does: make everything yummy. And we all know how coconut and pineapple go well together: like chips and salsa or yogourt and fruit or movies and popcorn or coffee and newspaper! This was, in all seriousness, one of the best fruity dessert I've ever had, if not THE best.

Service was very nice and full of smiles. You just know it when peeps like working! And who wouldn't like working there? Surrounded by yummy desserts, gaining 8 pounds daily just by smelling them. We sat down and got our desserts quite quickly, by 2 people holding 2 desserts each. I kind of felt like the queen at that moment. I am SO important.

And now, the scores!

Food: 9
Service: 9

Don't even ask: yes, I'll be back.
 

MTL Bakeoff!!!

I was once AGAIN not able to attend an event. Grrrr. J-A was kind enough to go in my stead and as a dessert lovin' girl, she was pretty diddly damn happy to replace me. Plus, she is pretty much the person that runs the food part of the COOP HEC (where I did my management internship for ITHQ) so, mmmyyaaaa, I can say that I trust her with food. 

Dimanche dernier, alors que les pauvres cyclistes du tour de l’île maudissaient mère nature, j’étais bien au chaud à noter des desserts (poor me…). La première édition du Mtl Bakeoff, organisé par The Lincoln Apartment Bakery, se tenait au local Air de Tango au 4324 Boul St-Laurent. L’événement, avait pour objectif d’élire le meilleur pâtissier de Montréal et une partie des profits ont été versés à la Mission Old Brewery.
 

Le principe était simple : j’avais 3 coupons de dégustation avec mon billet régulier. Les billets VIP donnaient droit à 5 coupons et d’autres coupons à 3$ l’unité étaient disponibles. Je devais ensuite noter mes 3 desserts sur 10 pour chacun de ces aspects : originalité / apparence / goût. Les pâtissiers étaient divisés en 2 : les «amateurs» et les «semi pro». Un total de 11 semi-pro étaient présents et 8 amateurs. Donc, 19 desserts à goûter, mais seulement 3 coupons. Le choix était difficile!! Les vainqueurs ont été nommés par cinq juges du domaine de la pâtisserie et par l’audience. Trois vainqueurs au total : vote du public pour le meilleur dessert / vote des juges pour le meilleur dessert amateur / vote des juges pour le meilleur dessert semi pro.

En arrivant, j’ai reçu un dépliant (en anglais seulement) décrivant les juges et les différents items à déguster. J’aurais bien aimé une description des pâtissiers (par exemple, est-ce que les semi pro ont des boutiques? Si oui, où? Des spécialités? Les amateurs sont présents pour quelle raison? Est-ce qu’ils ont créés leurs desserts?...). Juste avant le go pour aller se servir, on nous a offert une sympathique démonstration de décoration de biscuit. Dommage que l’aménagement de la salle ne permettait pas à tous d’en profiter; seuls les 15 personnes très rapprochées de la démonstration pouvaient tout voir et entendre.

 

Ensuite, le temps de goûter!! J’ai attendu un peu pour aller me servir parce que tout le monde s’est lancé sur la longue table en même temps. Ça aurait été judicieux de séparer la table en 4 sections, réparties dans la salle. Par exemple, utiliser les 4 murs de la salle pour diviser l’amas d’affamés qui se jette un peu partout en même temps, devant les desserts qu’ils trouvent les plus appétissants.

J’ai choisi 2 desserts chez les semi pro : un «brownie-cheesecake- toffee butter cake with salted caramel and buttercream filling» (Chrissy Ross) et un «chocolate cupcake with dulce de leche filling, topped with vanilla buttercream and bacon» (Kathleen Orellana). Chez les amateurs, j’ai choisi le «chocolate and raspberry cake with whipped vanilla filling, raspberry compote and fresh raspberries» (Lauren Galerio). Bon, dans un sens 3 dégustations c’est en masse lorsqu’on regarde ces descriptions, mais je dois avouer que j’ai sélectionné mes options par la grosseur de la portion servie et le degré de «ça a l’air solide cochon!!» J’aurais pu choisir un petit macaron, un cake pop ou un sablé, mais bon, dans ce contexte, size matters… Dans le futur, peut-être suggérer un format de dégustation standard pour l’ensemble des pâtissiers. Je n’étais clairement pas la seule à faire mes choix selon ces critères et donc de très beaux produits ont été peu populaires car moins «gargantuesques».
 

La salle était pleine; c’était sold out! Est-ce que c’est dû au grand nombre de participants qu’il faisait aussi chaud à l’intérieur? Je ne me plains pas de la température; mais les desserts oui! Avec l’effet de la chaleur, la crème au beurre perd sa texture agréable. Sachant cela, j’ai décidé de garder une partie de mes desserts pour les réfrigérer à la maison et les essayer plus frais. La différence est énorme… Mes 3 desserts étaient nettement meilleurs au frais.

Au niveau de l’originalité, le gâteau brownie m’a impressionné par le mix de tous ces ingrédients! Ça prend du talent pour assembler tout ça (et le couper…). Le cup-cake, je crois que le bacon et chocolat, ce n’est plus trop «in», mais je n’avais jamais gouté! Je confirme; ce n’est pas trop mon style. Mais tout le reste (dont le dulce de leche filling évidemment) était très bon. Finalement, le gâteau aux framboises (dessert d’une «amateur») était vraiment l’ultime mariage entre la fraîcheur de la framboise et la richesse du chocolat. Mon coup de cœur! C’est d’ailleurs pourquoi j’aurais aimé avec la description des participants. Est-ce que c’est la recette de la pâtissière-to-be ou c’est du Ricardo vraiment bien interprété?? Si elle a vraiment créé ce gâteau, il faut la financer pour qu’elle parte sa propre pâtisserie!!

 

Le pointage: Brownie-7  Bacon-7 Framboise-9
 

Mention spéciale à l’assiette de dégustation qui était très éco-friendly en bambou biodégradable. L’organisatrice principale, Jess, était super sympathique comme tous les compétiteurs et le personnel sur place (pour la plupart des bénévoles / commanditaires). Bref, un événement qui a besoin de quelques ajustements, mais qui était somme toute très agréable et m’a permis de faire de belles découvertes!
 

Pour votre info,
Audience Choice Winner: Melissa Di Peco (Smores macarons)
Amateur Runner-Up: Lauren Galerio (Chocolate Raspberry Cake)
Amateur Winner: Genevieve Vielleux (Key Lime Cupcakes)
Semi-Pro Runner-Up: Eva Bendayan (Lemon Cake, choco bark)
Semi-Pro Winner: Sapna Patel (Mini Eclairs)

Le Smoking BBQ

I was invited (yes, yes, I'm THAT special) to try a new-ish restaurant recently. Le Smoking BBQ. BBQ? Fo free? Hallo! Actually, it was a food truck first and now they've opened a place on Ste-Catherine right in front of the Forum. I invited my friend Bridgert, who had been to a previous restaurant invite that had turned out to be God awful. This was gonna have to be good.

 

The place is huge: many big tv's (which I'm not too fond of, but I guess it was OK in this case), two dining rooms, a bar, a huge open kitchen. Country music was playing and I thought that was very fitting for a BBQ joint! The floors were half cement, half wood and the tables were made of somewhat used up wood, which gave a nice style to the restaurant. Oh, and I absolutely loved the light fixtures! SO cuate!

Our plad wearing waiter (seemed to be the theme-and it was oh-so-cute) came and introduced himself and told me that usually you order at the cash and get your own food (and then you place your tray on a garbage...) but that tonight we were going to get served. What up! My guest was late (hum hum) so I looked at the cocktail menu. The 'menu' was barely three drinks, which was quite disappointing. I mean, why do you have an actual bar if you only serve up three kinds of drinks? Anyhoot. I ordered a Bourbon Caesar. What! I thought 'hey, this will be awesome and different AND awesome'.

Well.... you guessed it: it wasn't different nor awesome. Grrrr. It actually barely tasted like anything. When I have a drink--and these days they are few and far between--I want it to taste like alcohol damn it! Although I did detect a hint of cinnamon and a tad bit of spice, it was unfortunately quite bland. Like something was missing. I dunno, maybe someone had replaced the alcohol tap with WATER. Ha ha ha. No, but seriously.

So, we pretty much ordered everything on the menu. Cause, well, we be pigs like that. And we just HAD to taste a variety of dishes. For the blog, you know!?!

Yep, this was THE plate. Ugh, I'm getting a stomach ache and gas just looking at it. Ha. Haha. But really. Let's start at the beginning: potato salad. I don't even feel like talking about this salad: it tasted like water. Like nothing. I literally felt nada on my taste buds. Tomato salad was a bit tastier but could have been better seasoned. The Mac n' Cheese waffle was very heavy, very cheesy (which is the number one thing that you look for in a mac n' cheese) but burnt at some spots and the taste wasn't particularly there either.  The corn bread was dry and very greasy and barely passed the corn bread test. The poutine was good and well seasoned and I think it might be the only thing on that huge plate that I would order again (and as you may know, I am not usually a poutine fan). The pulled pork was good but was half fat sooooo... Oh and everything, yes, EVERYTHING, was on the cold side. Bah. What a nice way to ruin my dinner! The sauces on the table were really nice though: the coffee sauce I actually really dug, the spicy sauce was the least appreciated by me cause I'm a spicy kinda girl and it wasn't nearly as spicy as I would have liked it to be, the mustard sauce had a nice kick to it and the sweet BBQ sauce was a tad tangy and went well with everything. I also just want to mention that eating on (read: cutting into) a piece of paper is not the best. There, I've said it.

This was one of two desserts on the menu. We both preferred the brownie over le pouding chômeur. As you can see this is brown on brown ON brown. It's very sexy; the new 'in' thing if you like. Juuuust kidding. It had a crispy, perfect crust, and inside it was a surprisingly great mix of hot and cold. But it was a simple brownie that I could have made at home. Nothing special. 

Service, as I mentioned, is usually limited. We got the good stuff because I was a guest that evening. Our waiter was pretty awesome and we got everything served to our table. I felt like I was in a cafeteria when I had to bring my huge 'plate' to the garbage after we were done.

And now, the scores!

Food:5.5

Service: 8

Mmmmya, I don't think I'll go back. Even though I'd eat that brownie again right about now.

ps: I am aware that I am a tough cookie and hard to please when it comes to restaurants. Hey, that's why I'm a food blogger. If I seem extra tough, it's for the good of the restaurant :D

pps: Sorry Bridgert, you are quite the unlucky person (well, we all know that!) :p

Le Chop

Since I had to work AGAIN, I had to give up my two invites for Le Chop media event a couple weeks back. Two friends went and this is what they had to say. (note: I was personally invited to visit all of the Tomnacos group's restaurants late last year. I visited Newtown, Decca 77 and L'Atelier d'Argentine. I thought this was going to be an evening where all the restaurants would be offering their succulent creations but alas, it was only G + A)

Two thirds of the way into my meal at Guido and Angelina’s, the manager approached the table and said “What, you don’t like the food”? My friend, who is brave, said “Nah, not really”.  I am not brave and said “well it’s a lot of food and I’m not that hungry.”  Both things were technically true.   To her credit, the manager crossed her arms and suggested that the kitchen could give it another shot.   As we could see the (over salted) light at the end of the (bland, crappy tasting) tunnel, we declined to reengage.  But you have to admire the effort.  So some solid marks for managerial effort are in order, assuming that managerial effort does not involve the tasting of any of the food at any time for any reason.  

Guido and Angelina’s is a restaurant on St-Catherine’s that I had never been into before, nestled in between “super sex” and “other super sex”.  The logo features a cartoon Guido leering at a cartoon Angelina, and they are separated by a sort of bulging cartoon of the tower is pisa.  I’m not kidding. 

So it’s not the kind of place I would venture into.  I work down the street and until I was invited, this place had been essentially invisible to me because it looks like a Boston Pizza.  Yeah, I’m probably a snob.  But I’m a snob who eats at McDonalds once a month.  So I went in with a mind as open as humanly possible, and the whole thing was terrible.  A  super bland when-will-eating-ever-be-fun-again sort of terrible.  My dining companion was hungry, and she couldn’t finish more than three bites of her main.  I was hungry, and I had to fill up on dessert.  Everything tasted - and I know this is not how you can really describe a taste - watery.  As in a sensation diluted to the point of nothingness, with a dash of savoury and presumably a ton of empty calories.  

Enough preamble. Let’s get into it.  Here’s what we had, according to the menu:

Bread (with hidden surprise).

Chef Salad

All three available appetizers, including:

Fennel, mandarin and cherry tomatoe [ this is how they spell tomato]  salad

Hearts of palm and artichoke spread on garlic crostini 

Pesto and sundried tomatoe orzo salad

Veal Picatta, which was pan seared with butter, sage, cippolini onions, grainy mustard, demi-glace of madera and sundried tomatoes, served with a rice duo and roasted vegetables.

Cavatelli Classique - Saute of shrimp, merguez sausage, julliened vegetables in a garlic, white wine, fresh basil and tomatoe sauce. 

Dessert of the day - coffee cake and a brownie

We were having the table d'hote, which came with your choice of house wine, beer, or a cocktail.  The staff heartily recommended the house special, the “Angelina”, and we both ordered one.  Turns out that it was made with Tequila, Fresh Puree (no mention of what was freshly pureed) and Fresh Basil.  As far as cocktails go, it wasn’t that bad - lots of basil.  It was sugary but refreshing.  Plus it was served in a convenient plastic cup. 

The bread was white bread with a ton of flour sprinkled on the top.  After the second bite we realized we had no butter.  Now at this stage, a normal customer would ask for butter, and they would get the butter and everything would be fine.  My companion and I were trying really hard to be food writers, because we were filling in for Marie, who blogs about food often and probably adheres to a set of ethical standards common amongst the food blogging community, and this made us both feel that as food-blogger-stand-ins we could not ask for butter.   We had to take this entire meal simply as it came.  We had to evaluate it on the merits of a service unblemished by requests or questions.  I know this seems stupid, but it is honestly what we were thinking.  

After some weighing of pretty narrow pros and cons, we decided on our dishes and lodged our order with the nice waiter.  The timeline here is sketchy, but doubtless we were still sitting there dryly chewing bread because the waiter returned and indicated to us that the butter was under the cloth at the bottom of the bread basket.

I buttered my bread but elected to just stop eating it, and mercifully our appetizers arrived.  Here are my notes that I made as we ate our way the platters:

- Doughy bread.  Undercooked.  Semi baked frozen bread freshly reheated.  No butter available [see above].

- Fennel salad.  Bit oily but refreshing. The balsamic not carefully dropped [see picture.  I think when I wrote “dropped” I meant “drizzled”].

- Crostini is best.  Orzo is pass.  Tastes like a falling apart pizza.  

So all in all, appetizers were pretty bad. The fennel salad was okay, but only marginally better than just eating fennel by itself.  The artichoke spread on the crostini was not too shabs.  It was a spread, and it’s hard to mess up a  spread. 

On to the mains -  the veal and the cavatelli.  

Let me remind you how the the menu describe the veal picatta. “Veal Picatta, pan seared with butter, sage, cippolini onions, grainy mustard, demi-glace of madera and sundried tomatoes, served with a rice duo and roasted vegetables”.  All that stuff that the veal is pan seared with sounds great, right?  Not being an onion man, I googled cippolini onions and man did they look tasty - thekitchn.com claims that  “you haven’t had caramelized onions until you’ve made them with cippolini onions”. Intriguing. Possibly delicious.  

It wasn’t delicious.  At all.  It was bad, bad news.  The sun-dried tomatoes dominated the veal and added a whole schmack of savoury to an already over-salted dish.  The veal was kind of mushy - now granted, I don’t know what great veal is really supposed to taste like, but I think that no matter what your level of veal expertise, one should enjoy the sensation of putting the veal in one’s mouth, no?  Did not enjoy. Did not enjoy.  

So the veal wasn’t great.  How was the rice?  The rice was unfinished.  I don’t mean that we didn’t finish it - which we didn’t - but that whoever was cooking the rice just hadn’t finished cooking it.  I thought my pallete was going cray-cray until my buddy confirmed that yup, the rice wasn’t done.  Blech.

At least the veal and the rice looked sort of ok.  The vegetables, however, appeared to be leathery and pretty close to expired.  A quick taste confirmed that yes, indeed, said veggies were leathery and were likely no longer “best”.  

As for the Cavatelli Classique, my buddy had about five bites and had to stop, after which I had one bite out of journalistic duty.  I’m sad to report that the trend continued.   It went into my mouth and it made this noise when it was in there - “splech”.  I don’t really remember what all the ingredients tasted like, to be honest, because I had the one bite and it was so bland that I just stopped.  I don’t think I got any of the sausage, for example.  So the sausage part of it might secretly be great. I honestly have no idea.  

There was one bright spot. The coffee cake was pretty good.  We ordered two deserts, and boy did I like that coffee cake.  The whole meal had been so bad up to this point that this statement could be relativistically skewed, but that’s a whole discussion about how taste profiles escalate throughout a meal that is beyond the scope of this review.

My companion had the brownie and remarked that the only evidence that it wasn’t store bought was that the plastic film wasn’t still on it.  And she was right, it was pretty bad.   But I would go back and eat the coffee cake.  I’m not saying that I would go back *for* the coffee cake, but if I found myself there again, I would just order the coffee cake with a side of coffee.

The service from the waiter was actually pretty good.  I’ve had much worse service basically everywhere in Montreal.  He refilled our water glass and was generally affable and smiley.  Just a nice guy, you know?  Plus he helped us with the butter.

So, the food sucks.  Sucks.  We emerged not wanting to eat again.  Not because we were satiated, but because the experience of putting all of that terrible, terrible stuff into our mouths had convinced both us of that doing it again in any way shape or form was a bad idea.  We were suffering from something like a taste hangover, I think.  

As per Marie’s scoring system, here’s how Guido + Angelina’s stacks up:

Food: 2

Service: 7

This place should appeal to broke students, because the one thing G+A’s legitimately has going for it is an absolutely kick-ass calorie-to-dollar ratio.  You get a lot of food.  Not great food, but it is a lot of food.  We couldn’t finish a single thing.  We couldn’t finish the chefs salad, or the tapenade, or the orzo salad, or the veal or the cavetelli.  Even the dessert, which I sort of liked, I couldn’t finish.  However, when I was a broke student, I was just hungry all the time and I loved feeling truly, stomach-distendingly full.  So if you want that feeling, is it available downtown on St.Catherines, a short walk from Concordia.