he Restospy team, three Montrealers and a visitor from London, Ontario, zipped over to have a 75 minute lunch in this exquisite high-ceiling center-of-the-city temple, located on the ground floor of the Sofitel Hotel on Sherbrooke Street. It was a pleasant surprise, if only because of the infinite ceiling, a haven for claustrophobics, oxygen fanatics, incurable optimists and generous minds. The trendy bar, a favorite of one of my companions when he meets his fellow tango dancers, faces Sherbrooke Street.
I had a good feeling about Renoir, and we were not disappointed. The professional and efficient service has to be a big draw for the business lunch crowd. Our waitress has been with the restaurant since its inauguration in 2002, yet another good omen.
Lunch at $25 consists of an appetizer, a main dish, a dessert and a coffee from a pot. There are also slightly more expensive à la carte combinations ($26 and $32). Lunch for four, without wine, without tip, but with tax, came to $124.
Three of us had the salmon tataki with marinated daikon (cucumber) – a few succulent coral-pink salmon slices, slightly seered outside, with a juicy pyramid of sliced cucumbers on the side. I would not know how this dish could have been made more perfect – chapeau, or should we say saumon, to chef Gilles Arzur. The appetizer menu has several other Asian-French overtones, such as rock fish soup, endive salad with smoked duck, and a mushroom flan/crab claw marriage. Here is my only complaint: I would have preferred chopsticks for the raw salmon. Using a knife hurt my senses almost as much as fingernails on a blackboard.
All our dishes were accompanied with a playful assortment of the best bread Montreal has to offer. Those who think that bread is not important in a lunch or dinner are entirely mistaken – the good restaurants can be recognized, almost without exception, by the bread selection. Bread is culture. Bread is joie de vivre. It is the essential companion of delicacies. It is a palate cleanser between bites and wines. No more polluting the stomach with overfed fries, undercooked potatoes and anemic mashes. Gone are the days of the oily garlic bread, the stale baguette slices, and the recycled toasts with the dentures of yesterday's last diner still embedded.
On to the main course, a tuna that was sensually rare inside and impeccably grilled outside. Pierre-Auguste Renoir himself would have been proud of the contrasting impressions. The olive cream and light basil splatter sauces did not quite fit the Asian theme – they were added for visual effect only. Renoir again? To finish the painting, my tango companion had the roasted monkfish, all colored dark crimson by red beets.
Two choices of small but sparkly desserts picked from a huge tray topped off our sublime lunch. The coffee came in artsy pots – unlimited amounts to make one linger and talk and stay around and not want to go back to work. But unfortunately I need a strong pepper upper at 2pm for my afternoon job, so I recalled these lines from one of Tom Waits's songs, Nighthawk at the Diner: "The veal walked over to beat the shit out of my coffee. [Laughter.] The coffee was too weak to defend itself. [More laughter]."
Renoir: The right place at the right time in the right city.
-- Reviewed by RestoSpy
