1077 rue Drummond | Tel. (514) 934-1077 | Website
ne of my friends once dated a woman who kept on smoking during sex. Another guy I know makes dates on his cellphone in the middle of a pack of drugged lunatics during a bike race. After today's business lunch at Decca 77, this prompted me to ask How many senses can be stimulated at the same time? Are we all going into sensory overload, our body parts operating independently, each competing for the brain's attention?
Decca 77, which occupies the bottom two floors of the IBM Building, is a visual stunner. Two sides of the restaurant have copious amounts of sunshine, filtered in through calming Venetian blinds. The art deco interior, mostly in black, grey and pink tones, soaks up the rays, bounces them off the tables, shoots them through the chandeliers, twinkles them across the glasses and bottles, focuses them on your metal watch and beams them up your left eye, ouch. Absolutely a must on a sunny day!
A bit of disorganization aside (lost reservation, two hours for a three course lunch, unavailable wine selection, no more contrefilet), the service was courteous and came with oodles of smiles from a staff that was optically optimized.
So, there we were, four guys in a joint for guys in business suits – we were the only ones without! High noon for the moneymakers. At $25 for a three-course lunch (and $35 for a three-course dinner), this is a bargain for them. And how about that star lineup in the kitchen – Daren Bergeron (head honcho), Romuald Coladon (who used to be the main chef at Les Caprices de Nicolas), and Éric Dupuis (who was sous-chef at Les Chèvres).
The menu is not overloaded and seems to change often, because Decca's website can't seem to keep up. My American colleague pointed out that a menu is good if each item contains at least one word he does not understand. Some things were clearly too adventurous for him, like the pigeon liver appetizer. Especially not in plain view of the mean gang of back alley garbage pigeons on Dorchester Square a block away, all their livers cirrhotic and intestines peptobismolic. Three of us selected the lobster milk soup in vanilla oil, a simple bisque with just the right dose of creaminess. Our German visitor ordered a plate of cold cuts, which looked a bit too ordinary compared to everything around us.
The "in" thing today is to have the wine cave right in the restaurant
My 200+ pound Bostonian friend chose a bison and mushroom macaronnade à la carte. This is a pasta dish in which big chunks of bison and sliced mushrooms are tossed for some unknown reason. He finished this large dish under four minutes while discussing the biomedical difficulties of performing DNA tests on food. I still have a small piece of alleged emu in my freezer at home, smuggled out from a dinner six months ago. I want to take it to a lab in town for an emu test. I think that some money can be made with portable emu and bison DNA testing kits. But I digress – Decca's bison moved smoothly south of the border.
Two of us sampled the bavette of beef with truffle juice, served under a small pile of red cabbage. As is customary in this class of restaurant, potatoes, rice, pasta, and all other stomach fillers are banned. So I soaked up the last drop of delicious truffle juice with a piece of diagonally sliced baguette.
Bavette of beef with truffle juice
We ended our sensory experience with four fabulous desserts. The most spectacular was a yoghurt and avocado mousse, chocolate mirror and lime sorbet. My lipstick-colored pear soup shouted Andy Warhol. And so it went at the sensory circus.
Lunch for four, including tax and one glass of wine, came to $153.19. -- Reviewed by RestoSpy (March/07)
