Week in Reviews

Verdun’s New Cambodian Restaurant Gets a Warm First Review

While other critic has a hot tip in Saint-Eustache

by Tim Forster@timothyjforster Oct 6, 2017, 12:31pm EDT

Le Journal de Montréal critic is the first to get to Verdun’s new Cambodian spot Les Street Monkeys, open since early summer. It’s not a rave, but Daraize suggests it’s a great bet for a relatively under-represented cuisine in the city — amok (breaded fish with a red curry sauce, peppers, and taro) is well-balanced and not too spicy. Beef skewers have a mix of galanga, lemongrass, and palm sugar that “titillates the tastebuds” (if covering up the taste of the beef somewhat), but the star is boneless chicken wings marinated in turmeric, kaffir lime, and lemongrass, stuffed with Thai sausage — crispy, juicy, earning a classic Daraize “bravo!”. Only the too-sweet cocktails are a let-down for the critic — three stars. [Le Journal de Montréal]

Over at La Presse, critic Marie-Claude Lortie drops by St-Henri’s Loïc, the two-year-old bar that has slowly evolved into more of a dining destination under chef Liam Barron. After giving props to the “modern” wine list, Lortie dives into complimenting the Goddess salad: “it’s a lot of freshness for ten dollars”, but the ricotta-rapini-garlic flower dish that follows is somewhat pedestrian. But the mains shine, with a half-Cornish hen and romesco sauce, along with the creamy bitterness of chard-ricotta ravioli. As dessert rolls around, Lortie notes that doughnuts seem to be having a little too much of a moment on sweets menus around the city, and Loïc’s are fine, but nothing special. That said, the highs are high, and she’d go back. [La Presse]

There are no English reviews this week, so Le Devoir’s Jean-Philippe Tastet wraps things up with a trip north to Saint-Eustache, returning with a hot tip — BYOB Le Geraldine, tucked in a 19th century house in the suburb. A trio of opening amuse-bouches including most notably, a French onion soup in dumpling form, is a good note to start on for Tastet; the bison tartare that follows is innovative, too. A dish like deboned quail stuffed with a pumpkin muffin mix seems to confound Tastet somewhat; it seems that he thinks it might be creativity for the sake of creativity. But lobster farfalle and a lavender-honey whipped cheesecake for dessert seal the deal — four stars. [Le Devoir]