Food: An all-Canadian feast at Perch
Even the balsamic and oils at Perch are home-grown, and it's delicious
I’m not writing restaurant reviews these days, but I like to give a boost to the chef et al when we have a superlative meal, and Perch inspires many superlatives.
The Missus and I recently spent an evening enjoying the menu of chef/co-owner Justin Champagne-Lagarde, all the many courses of it.
I recently wrote a piece for Edible Ottawa magazine about Champagne-Lagarde’s new cookbook, which looks into how exacting in practice he is, and how committed to using and re-using every thing possible, e.g., the soap in the washrooms is made in-house with espresso grinds (for grit) and used oil.
Click here to read the article in Edible magazine.
Here are photos of our dishes, taken by me, otherwise known as not a professional photographer.
To start we had house-made seed bread with Canadian balsamic (from B.C.) and Canadian sunflower oil. No non-Canadian ingredients to be found at Perch, so, for example, there’s no olive oil (unless there’s been a good olive crop for one producer on Salt Spring Island.
First up (post-bread) was smoked Atlantic sustainable sturgeon from the St. John River with kohlrabi, roasted sturgeon marrow, sturgeon XO, yuzu and sumac. TBH, I’ve not previously enjoyed sturgeon meat but I enjoyed this sturgeon fest, and the kohlrabi was the key for me, I believe, as it balanced the sea-ness of the fish.
Second was a pair of mustard macarons, one with Atlantic Bay scallop mousse and one with beet mousse, and both with ground cherry, borage and violas.
Next was cured and smoked Arctic char with marinated roe and a nori (seaweed) tuile on sake Kasu velouté. That tuile was a delicate and admirable thing; I asked if they had someone whose entire job was to spend the day making those tuiles.
Plate 4 was actually a small and mysterious jar, which when opened revealed snow crab with squash, dulse, mustard and poultry broth. (If you’re counting, that’s two types of seaweed so far — actually three, but more about that later.)
Five was two parts, firstly a succulent brined quail breast in a vidalia onion sauce, and two cured and confit quail leg beignets, one with quail fudge beneath and the other with a treacle BBQ sauce. Yes, I said “quail fudge.” Who knew?
Following that was unagi-sauce marinated black cod with chickpea miso, lacto-koji butter sauce, charred green beans and a little cucumber roll.
Then we moved back to the land for a pair of small crispy cones layered with koi-aged venison, Matane shrimp, garum, crême fraîche and Acadian sturgeon caviar. I’ve never had anything like this before. (I kept saying that all night long.)
Our final savoury course was shio-koji duck breast with sea lettuce, celeriac, pearl onions, maitake mushroom and black current. That ribbon you see meandering through the veg is a single slice of roasted celeriac coated with seaweed-infused sunflower oil and dusted with smoked maitake powder.
We were three hours in, and nearing the end.
And, wait, that’s a fourth showing for seaweed.
We finished with cortland apple, camelina seeds and oil, balsamic, bee pollen, buckwheat and mugolio.
Everything was world class, in my reasonably well-travelled opinion, and everything was Canadian — every drop on every plate, even the one appearance of citrus (which was the yuzu, from Quebec).
As for the third appearance of seaweed, to which I alluded earlier, it was, actually, the first appearance, and it was in a cocktail that was as Maritime-Canadian as a cocktail could be.
The evening began with a Selkie’s Breakfast, which is basically a martini with three ingredients — “oyster shell gin” (made in-house), tomato oil and seaweed vermouth. At first I felt like one of our cats when it tastes something and it’s not quite sure what to think. Now, I’m wishing I had another one on the desk in front of me right now. I am certain it would undo the seasonal angst I feel about the outrageously cold temperature outside.
Perch, btw, is on Preston Street, where Gray Jay used to be. To contact Perch, click here.
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