Brad's Montreal Odyssey -- Day 5

The fifth of the daily blogs, stressing food and drink, from Montreal!

Sunday was tourist day. I had an extensive self-guided walking tour of Old Montreal from a guidebook lined up. That required a real lunch.
So after cafe au lait at Brulerie St. Denis, I returned to L'Express - mainly because it's right down the street from the Brulerie - for a lunch of oeufs mayonnaise, soupe de poisson and a Lyonnaise salad.
The oeufs, hard-boiled, came in a tarragon-scented mayo and were luscious; I sopped up the mayo with some bread. The soupe de poisson had an intense fish flavor, with really good crackers that you cover with a garlic aioli and float in the soup; as the cracker absorbs the soup, its flavor becomes distinct from any of the three ingredients by themselves. The salad was typical of its kind, though the lardons weren't overly bacon-y. Good light dressing though and a perfect poached egg.
Wine was a lovely half-bottle of 2010 Jurancon Sec 'Cuvee Marie' made by Charles and Marie Hours, the kind of white wine that rarely makes it out of France and hardly ever to North America; what a treat that a bistro would have it but as I have said L'Express' wine list boggles the mind. Gorgeous golden color, honeysuckle noise, minerals and a light touch of sweet fruit on the palate and a refreshing finish with a tart acidity right at the end. 14 percent alcohol, but incredibly well-balanced. It's mostly Gros Manseng with a touch of a rare, Southwest France-only grape called Petit Courbu that adds sweetness and body to the Manseng. If you see it, drink it with fruit, fish, chicken, pork, cheeses and finfish or shrimp.
The walking tour was thorough, quite enjoyable and rather exhausting. I took 4 1/2 hours on it, stopping for a rest now and then, once for espresso and once for some yummy cider dosed with maple syrup - a big thing here - from a stand in Place Jacques Cartier. The tour took me past a legendary French restaurant, Chez Queux, that every foodie reference in Montreal raves about but was totally out of my price range ... but in the window they had posted a three-course menu that would, even with wine, be in my budget with a tweak or two. And since I wear a coat and tie every day when I am on vacation, I was already dressed for dinner, which at this place seemed necessary.
So I made a reservarion and hopped a bus after the walking tour ended - at a 106-year-old tugboat, would you believe - and, well, wow.
Chez Queux is precisely the kind of white-tablecloth, elegant, classy, completely and unreservedly and proudly French cathedral of dining that used to define fine food and is now seemingly going extinct because, we are told, people want "casual dining" and "small plates" and dislike formality and having to dress up beyond sneakers and jeans.
That may all be, but I have never lost my love for such places and the way they can make you feel as if you are the most important person in the world for two hours. It's not every-day dining for any number of reasons, but when you want a Chez Queux you hope they are still around.
What followed was one of the great dining experiences of my life.
For a cocktail, I enjoyed a Beefeater and tonic served with a lemon, and with little pitchers of extra tonic if I wanted. Those are the kind of little touches that make Chez Queux so much fun.
I sat with a view of the St. Lawrence River. An amuse-bouche of lusciously intense salmon mousse was followed by the menu and wine list. The menu offered five or six choices for each course and was not merely the soup/salad, chicken or cheap fish and ice cream or sorbet selection bargain menus can be in some joints, as you will see.
I selected an appetizer of duck foie gras served in 'creme brulee' style and deer steak with foie gras in a pepper sauce.
The wine list was mostly French and quite thorough and impressive. I chose a glass of Chateau Raymond-Lafon Sauternes 2004 for the duck foie and a half-bottle of La Terrasse de La Garde 2010, the second wine of Chateau La Garde, a solid Pessac-Leognan producer in the Graves region south of Bordeaux.
My waiter, Leon, 60-ish, whose English had a pleasant Quebecois French accent, had been the classy and elegant but formally distant waiter that these kind of places have employed for decades. But when I ordered my wine, he asked, politely, 'You like French wine?.
Yes, very much so, I replied.
"Let me get you the other wine list, you might like to see it,' he said.
What arrived was a book of some of the world's finest wines at fair prices. Multiple vintages of all the Bordeaux first growths including Petrus. Classed growths from every Bordeaux commune. White Bordeaux, sweet and dry, of the highest quality. Champagne of the highest class from the best vintages. Alsace Grand Cru, Loire Valley gems, a complete sweep through the Rhone and the greatest collection of white and especially red Burgundy I had ever seen from all the best houses, DRC, Rousseau, Ravenau, Leflaive, Roumier, Jayer, you name it, from all the Grand Crus from Chambetin to Chassange.
What was striking was that almost all of the bottles had years of age on them, and at prices that, while way too high for me, were exceedingly fair. Assuming you can find any Rousseau 2002 Ruchottes-Chambertin around, and good luck with that, you're going to pay a lot more than the $220 Chez Queux was getting.
I was speechless. I pored over the list for a long time.
Then the food. The duck was a silky mousse under a salt/sweet crust of butter and sugar with a velvety texture, a hint of liver, and all that
foie richness that got better with every taste. It came with light, airy crisps of good bread, housemade port jelly and a few eggs of caviar, all of which, especially the jelly, complemented the foie.
The wine did too; with nine years of age the sweetness had become complex, with a classic Sauternes nose, caramel and roasted honey on the palate, even more complex fruit later and then a firm finish with plenty of acidity to support the sweetness. Raymond-Lafon has always been a favorite of mine and this was terrific, I drank half and set it aside to finish with dessert.
The Bordeaux had been decanted and was served with my main, a hefty slab of grilled Bambi cooked to precisely my order - as rare as the Chef thinks it should be - and covered with two huge slabs of duck foie gras. A nice vegetable array, including roasted baby bok choy, and a square of pommes dauphinoise too.
At this point I noticed the assistant filling my water glass with Canadian bottled Eska and I said to him I hadn't ordered bottled water. Leon, nearby, said, "Monsieur, we serve only bottled water; it is like your bread, it comes with your dinner.' Well then.
The main was perfection all around. The potatoes, rich and amazingly tasty yet light and tender on the tongue. The veggies, cooked as well as my friend Bernard used to do in Chicago at the much-lamented Chez Bernard, a very high compliment from me. The foie, lightly seared and rich and gamey. The sauce, again rich but light, adding flavor but not smothering the meat, which came with a firm crust, tender, spicy, rich and flavor that lingered after each bite.
The Bordeaux was young and tender too, full of fruit and Graves earth and cassis and leather at the finish. It went splendidly with the meal and was ready to drink, thought it has a few more years left; say 2016?
With my plate cleared, Leon said more asked, 'You want some cheese, I give you some cheese,' and almost before I could say yes slabs of three Quebecois cheeses - a Comte-like cheese, a Brie sort of thing that was as good as any Brie I have ever had and fresh, rolled in ash goat cheese - arrived with walnuts and a fruit compote. Leon then said, 'Something to drink with the cheese,' and appeared with a bottle of Sandeman Vintage Port 1997 and poured me a hefty slug of this racy, fruity, intensely sweet and alcoholic Port, a pleasure if not quite my preferred style.
I went to the men's room, and returned to find my Sauternes glass topped off, indeed completely refilled and then some - "I gave you a little more,' Leon said with a wicked smile - and an orange-flavored creme brulee, not too sweet, with candied orange peel and a grown-up vanilla wafer that melted in your mouth. Sheer elegance.
Then came perfect espresso, which was included in the meal, and a glass of Boulard's wonderfully appley, not hot at all, why-don't-we-drink-more-of-this Calvados to finish. I should note that in Montreal Calva is tossed back by bar workers and the like the way Jameson is in Philadelphia. I know which I prefer.
The bill came, and while not small, it was affordable - and the cheese, Port, extra Sauternes and Calvados did not appear on it.
I expressed my deepest thanks to Leon, left a huge tip, and departed enriched in body and soul.
Unreservedly recommended for those who can manage to eat with a tie on and love the old style. Ask for Leon.
I then went to a string quartet concert that was intense and heavenly and stopped by L'Express for a nightcap of Poire Williams des Monts de Cote d'Or eau de vie from Joseph Cartron, a Burgundian spirit of 49 percent alcohol with an intense pear flavor and a searing finish, but balance and class all the way; one of the best of its type I have ever had, and I didn't know they grew pears on the Cote d'Or. Now I do.
As a fine a day as I have in a long time. How do people not take vacations?

L'Express, 3929 Rue Saint-Denis, Montreal H2W 2M4; 514-845-5333. Open from 8 a.m. until at least 2 a.m.

Chez Queux, 158 Rue St. Paul Est, Montreal H2Y 1G6; 514-866-5194; open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner at 5 p.m.