4720 Marquette Street, Montreal |
Ph. (514) 524-4187
lmost every decent street in the plateau has its own "bring your own wine" restaurant. If you are a tourist and do not know how this works, it is very simple: the diners are allowed to bring their own wines. The restaurants uncork them, serve them, put them in ice buckets, and generally help you enjoy them. It makes the dinner more affordable, and above all, it allows you to select a wine of proven quality. These restaurants, often in the style of Parisian bistrots, are becoming quite popular in the city. The best among them are excellent.
We already visited places such as L'Entrepont and Le Petit Plateau, both highly recommended. On this Sunday evening, we were invited to Yoyo by NSG, our stomachless Czech friend.
The menu has about ten choices each for appetizers and main dishes. The latest selections are simply scribbled on a blackboard. The interior is very pleasant, with dark yellow walls and other earthen colors giving the dining room a lot of warmth. It is easy to feel at home here, safe in the knowledge that no ugly tourist will ever make it this far in the plateau's street jungle. 
I had decided not to go as Restospy, just to have an evening off from the tedium of the spy business, to listen to NSG's stories about his boss, whom he lovingly calls Mussolinski, and to wine the Sunday evening away before another heavy week.
But then the ostrich changed my mind. I had always thought of ostriches as the oppressed species in the ostrich feather hat industry, and not as something gastronomically valuable, and certainly not as something one could enjoy eating raw and uncooked. Well, that is exactly what I tried: I had an appetizer of plumeless ostrich tartare that gave me a high not unlike the first time I tried raw chicken sashimi in Tokyo. Ostrich tartare! I guess this will be the final blow for the beef industry after a year of nothing but setbacks. The other choices included a duet of salmon, smoked and tartare, and a "croustillant de calmars avec une vinaigrette au coriandre." The croustillant was a large airy squid-flavored chip.
Nothing could go wrong after that, and nothing did. NSG had a succulent bison, cooked to perfection. My magret de canard, the mainstay of most of these French restaurants, was fantastic. I would not be surprised to see Yoyo soon offer wildebeest stroganoff, Serengeti salad, llama roast and black boar paté. Our two adventurous ladies both had halibut. One was accompanied by shrimp and a curry cream sauce, while the other one had shiitake mushrooms and teriyaki sauce, meant for mahi mahi (which was replaced by halibut). The only complaint I heard was that the teriyaki sauce was rather ordinary.
To end the dinner, I had generous portions of French and Quebecois lait cru cheeses with enough bacteria to kill a large male hippo ($12.50). The other members of the expedition oohed and aahed throughout this phase of the dinner. The ooher had an ice parfait on the basis of coffee in a compote of fresh raspberries. This had some mint infusion and was served with a thin crisp wafer planted as the flag on top of the Kilimanjaro. The aaher had another French classic, profiteroles filled with vanilla ice cream ($6.25). NSG himself ordered a pink sherbet, served as a creamy soup with vodka and chunks of grapefruit. He complained that there was not enough vodka, but then again, he always complains that there is not enough vodka.
I could not see how much NSG paid for this feast, and I did not ask. The prices seemed very reasonable though, with appetizers between $8 and $20, main dishes between $20 and $36, and desserts between $6 and $9. -- Reviewed by RestoSpy
