Fougoo, Redneckhunter, and I were in Montreal earlier this month, and we decided to have a meal at Restaurant DNA in the Old Montreal neighborhood.Executive Chef Derek Dammann's cuisine is a blend of Italian- Mediterranean flavors with Quebecois ingredients. We decided as a table to try the tasting menu which was just great.
We started with an amuse bouche of scallop crudo with Meyer lemon, fried garlic, chile, basil and bonito. A really pleasant set of flavors, and the scallop was really fresh.We then had a charcuterie plate of meats cured in-house which included mortadella, sopressata, pepperoni, fennel sausage, and lardons. All of them were good, but my heart belongs to lardons.
For our first course, we shared a trio of plates.We had a lobster salad on toast. Like the scallop, the lobster was incredibly fresh, sweet and delicious. Redneckhunter, who boasted about not being a huge fan of lobster, was converted by this dish.
We also had a tasty veal tartare as well as a lamb carpacchio.
For the second course, we again got 3 different items.By far the best was the duck tongue and foie gras ravioli with a raw egg inside. You could see the color of the yolk when looking at it and the blend of the yolk with the foie was just so smooth.
We also got a mint risotto which looked nice, but not creamy enough.
The third item was lamb ravioli with leeks.
The following dish was white chinook salmon over lentils, green onion and garlic topped with a veal brain bernaise. The salmon was perfectly cooked, and after this initial brain eating experience, I want more (prions be damned).Our last item was pork shoulder with rainbow chard on polenta. It was topped with a dragoncello (tarragon) salsa. The pork fell apart nicely.
Just before our dessert course, we had another small palate cleanser- a small pots de crème with chocolate cookies that had a ring of salt.
Again, we received a trio of dessert items: a chocolate cake with white chocolate and whipped cream, a slice of pine nut pie with vanilla ice cream, and a meringue burger with ice cream, chocolate, and fresh local cherries and strawberries.All in all, the meal at DNA was exquisite from start to finish.
355 Marguerite D_Youville
Montréal, QC H2Y 2C4, Canada
(514) 287-3362
Holy moly that looks incredible! Do you mind sharing what the cost for such an incredible meal was? Wondering if I can afford to go there.
ReplyDeleteThanks and love your blog.
The tasting menu was billed as a 5-course menu, though as you can see it ended up being more like 9 courses! There was even a cheese course that we turned down, as we wanted to save room for dessert.
ReplyDeleteThe cost (without wine) was $85 per person. It was more with wine pairings, but what we did was just buy a bottle and because we timed our reservation for 7 pm, we were able to take advantage of their pre-7pm 1/2 price bottle special deal.
Thanks for the info. It seems like too much food! Did you wish, at all, that you'd just ordered a la carte? $85 doesn't seem to crazy for such an extravagant and special meal.
ReplyDeleteI think we were full, but not stuffed. I think it was wise to skip the cheese... Probably hard to tell in the photos, but the portions were definitely tasting menu sized - small dishes.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad we did it for sure, after we realized that for many of the courses, each of us got a separate item. Making the total number of dishes we got to sample astronomical!
We don't live in Montreal, only able to get up there maybe once a year, so I felt like we were able to sample basically the entire menu in one night.