I am a proud Canadian. Put me in a room with a few Americans and it rarely takes me longer than seven minutes to break into a rhapsodic (and un-asked for) lecture about the virtues of our health-care system over theirs. And other stuff too.
But when it comes to Boralia, the new restaurant that’s a nonstop ode to Canadiana, I couldn’t care less about the historical provenance of the dishes. Which is mostly what my esteemed colleagues in the food media are focusing on. Did they not taste the food?
’Cause chef Wayne Morris could be cooking in Urdu, for all it matters. This guy (and his wife Evelyn Wu Morris, who cooked at the Fat Duck in England and has a hand in the recipes) can cook the pants off 90 per cent of the other chefs in town. He’s a very fine cook and it doesn’t matter how you label his oeuvre.
Although the Canadiana aspect is kinda fun. It’s sweet that the restaurant’s name comes from the Latin word for “northern” and stems from a name proposed for the new Canada before Confederation.
Most items have a date beside them on the menu for when they were first served in Canada, or what we were before Confederation. Like l’éclade (1605), chef’s most celebrated item: They bring the mussels to the table topped with a glass dome. The server ceremonially lifts the dome and a thick fragrant cloud of pine smoke floats up, thanks to smoke in the cooking butter and under the glass dome. But the thing here is the theatricality of it all.
Image: Jason Finestone
More genuine food thrills are to be had from fewer pyrotechnics. Chef’s stuffed onions (from 1899) are sublime: These are small onions stuffed with silken creamed carrots lightly seasoned with curry spices.
They’re sitting on a pilaf of rye berries. And to the guy who can make rye berries taste sublime, I tip my hat. The dots of uber-creamy creamed onions don’t exactly hurt the rye berries either. Ask for some of their marvelous house-made red fife bread with butter topped with onion powder (!!). Gild the lily.
Chef’s pan-roasted elk is the best meat I’ve eaten in a while: tender, juicy, loaded with flavour. Garnishing it with slices of raw boutique radish and a barely cooked egg crusted in toasted wild rice is putting snap, crackle and pop into that which is already a great delight in the mouth.
Image: Jason Finestone
But do not leave Boralia without eating the pigeon pie (1611). It’s like a tourtière because that’s the only meat pie we know. But quelle tourtière! The flakiest possible puff pastry encloses ineffably tender small chunks of squab dark meat with carrots and onions. Beside the pie sit slices of the squab breast, deep, rich, fork-tender. With sweet roasted parsnips and carrots.
Wayne Morris and Evelyn Wu Morris have created a charming room with clever shtick. But what matters most, always, is the taste of things. And theirs is superb.
Boralia, 59 Ossington Ave., $75 Dinner for two
