Sample Reviews
The price rating shown in the heading above each entry indicates the average cost of dinner for two with a modest wine, tax and tip. The cost of dinner, bed and breakfast (if available) is given in parentheses. Where one, two or three stars also appear in the heading, this indicates that, in our opinion, the restaurant has something unusual or outstanding to offer. Restaurants that represent exceptional value for money are indicated by the presence of a pointer. The map number assigned to each city, town and village gives its location on one or more of the maps at the front of the book.
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This is an Italian restaurant like no other. Before he opened the place, Adam Pegg spent a year in Italian kitchens and this shows in both his menu and his cooking. His eggplant sformato is like nothing we’ve seen elsewhere. His veal marsala is a marvellous dish and his braised beef cheeks are almost better. So is his confit of duck and his ravioli, which is one of a number of daily specials. His vegetables are unusual and perfectly cooked. Only his flounder is less than it should be—and, after all, what can you do with flounder? The wine-list starts with a Masi chianti at 30.00 and ends with a Ricasoli riserva at 77.00. It’s hard to speak of La Quercia in anything but superlatives. It’s a must, especially if you’re staying nearby in Kitsilano, but it’s very small and you need a booking.
In this shabby old warehouse between Church and Jarvis cooking of unimaginable delicacy and perfection takes place five nights a week. Lorenzo Loseto has a menu of small plates, each priced at between 15.00 and 25.00 (you need three). Each dish is notable, not so much for its splendour or its cost, as for its originality (chocolate soufflé, say, with pomegranates), its colour, its texture and its amazing flavour. Prawns are wrapped in thin-sliced potato (which does wonders for the prawns). Tuna is served tempura-style, beef tenderloin is dusted with pecans. There’s John Dory, lobster-and-turnip fries, wild bass and rabbit. There’s Kobe-beef tataki. There are wines exquisitely appropriate to the food. But don’t suppose that George is cheap. He’s not, but who cares?
They say that Claudio Aprile is too clever by half, and if you think that don’t order his ice cream, which comes in a huge silver bowl filled with liquid nitrogen. It fills the room with steam, leaving a dollop of rather plain ice cream on your plate. Everything else is wonderful. Aprile offers an extraordinary bouquet of tastes and textures in an old building of distressed brick and raw timber. Innovation and refinement are everything to him. When it comes to drinking, ask for a bottle of Pellegrino—every wine we’ve tried, no matter how good, has seemed too obvious to drink with food like this. Left out of this guide initially because of slow service, Aprile now has everything brought to the table—or so it seems—in seconds. Dinner begins with a lentil soup that says it all. As you drink the soup you find yourself saying that what these lentils need is a squeeze of green grapes. Before long you discover that Aprile has thought of that himself and placed a green grape in every bowl. Of course, you can begin more extravagantly, with scallops with flecks of frozen crème fraîche, or yellowfin-tuna sashimi or lobster salad. The main dishes are brilliant too, especially the glazed black cod and the seared Arctic char. (The black cod—just imagine it—is served with sesame panna cotta and a green-onion purée.) The deconstructed lemon tart that follows is equally amazing. There are at least 30 open wines, many from the Napa Valley. We like the cabernets from Waterstone and Ray’s Station, but neither works half as well with the cooking as the Pellegrino.
We always think of the St.-Amour as Quebec’s most romantic restaurant. Recently it has passed from father to son without a hitch. Frédéric Boulay has worked beside his father, Jean-Luc, in the kitchen for some years now, taking turns at lunch and dinner. The restaurant has an extraordinary setting. It occupies a two-storey atrium with skylights, pier glasses and brilliant art-déco panels. On the second floor there’s a spectacular wine-vault. It holds 12,000 bottles and supports one of the best wine-lists in the world. Foie gras has always been a specialty of the house and foie gras de canard from the Goulu Farm appears in many of the dishes. You can sample it as a terrine with sauternes and a reduction of black currants or seared with sea-salt, Malagar peppercorns, blueberry chutney and iced cider. In the evening the à la carte is very expensive, so it’s probably better to go for what they call the inspiration menu, which changes daily. That way you’ll start with salmon tartar or snow crab on cucumber carpaccio and go on to a fillet of veal with shitake mushrooms and sautéed Italian beans, ending with the house frozen fantasy—all for just 52.00. Lunch is a fine meal that features caribou terrine, followed by filet mignon with roquefort and scallops from the Gaspé.
Ray Bear was once in charge of the kitchen at Gio. After a number of false starts, he opened his own restaurant and this is it. The interior is starkly modern and the menu is like no other. We suggest that you start your meal with sushi. There’s an exciting choice—barbecued eel with shiso and green onions, lobster with chives, wakame, sweet soy and torched hollandaise and King crab with cucumber, avocado, sesame and spiced mayonnaise. Main courses are no letdown. Our favourite is the sweet chilli chicken stuffed with pear, bok choy, edamame beans and black rice, but the scallops, paired with rabbit and served with parsnips, Israeli couscous and butternut squash, and the lamb, served with chèvre and black currants, are equally stylish. Ray Bear, who likes to end his meals with an egg-nog brûlée, is a bold and imaginative chef. His presentation is daring and spectacular. He’s doing things that no-one else in Halifax is doing or even trying to do. There are occasional disappointments—there are none of the top Bordeaux wines on the wine-list. The language of the menu is offensively cute. And the place is far, far too noisy. But Ray Bear is without doubt a two-start chef.
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