Marcus is suitable. The recently opened eating place and bar from celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson has spared no expense in giving us a beautiful setting, placed on the 1/3 floor of the equally new (and superb-looking) Four Seasons Hotel on rue de Los Angeles Montagne St.
As quickly as you step out of the elevator and are available head-to-head with an entire wall in floor-to-ceiling gold metallic, it becomes clean: Everything is stunning. Then, in soothing sunglasses of cream, grey, and inexperienced, the bar transports you to an art deco-inspired reverie. But did I get dressed properly for this? This might cross your mind, as it all looks, feels, and likely is costly. Plus, on the alternative facet of the bar, you can get the right of entry to Holt Renfrew Ogilvy, so the shopping fantasy is built properly in.
But it’s the eating place that’s the chicest of brasserie chic. The layout performs with sharp and easy textures of timber and marble, mellowed out by using plush brown leather-based banquettes and circular booths, rattan-backed chairs with sage velour seats. There’s a wall of lush green plants arranged in front of a bay of sliding home windows that can be opened to convert to a covered terrace overlooking the cityscape. This is all the wonderful paintings of Montreal’s gifted Atelier Zébulon Perron, who first raised eyebrows with the interiors of Buvette Chez Simone in 2008 and hasn’t stopped wowing Montreal eating place-goers ever since.’
So it’s clean to be swept up inside the magic of Marcus, with this kind of impressive putting and all of the hype surrounding the — take a breath — Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised, New York-based chef’s first Canadian undertaking. (He currently has 12 eating places around the sector, together with his most well-known, Red Rooster in Harlem). The concept at the back of Marcus? To draw on the chef’s Scandinavian influences while highlighting neighborhood, seasonal ingredients, and focusing on seafood. But you gained’t see Samuelsson main the brigade inside the expansive open kitchen. Rather, local restaurant chef Nicholas Bramos (former Toqué!, Monkland Tavern, 1909 Taverne Moderne) and French pastry chef Frank Vilpoux are at the helm. As Marcus seats approximately two hundred, it’s no easy feat to serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch, non-prevent.
I had no hassle finding 3 Mar-curious eating companions to join me. Everyone changed into excited to stay luxuriously for a night. On Thursday night, the eating place and bar were packed, and even as we did, we had to wait for our table regardless of having a reservation. We were soon shown to a remarkable spot on the terrace. It turned into cool and wet, so no home windows were open, but still, our big wooden desk became spacious and secure, the views first-rate, and the abundant green foliage around us very Haute Jardin. Our server delivered herself, but nobody should pay attention to her due to a DJ playing very far from cool (or maybe ironic) the ’80s and ’90s living room remixes. It was so loud that we found it tough to speak. Also, this was the simplest eight forty-five p.m.
The wine listing is what you will count on from an upscale hotel restaurant: excellent when you have the cash to burn. But there are some more cheap, exciting wines to be tasted way to sommelier Gabriel Bélanger, so when our server added the wrong bottle (I guess she couldn’t hear us, both), it becomes truely a happy mistake; the Meinklang Grüner Libre became a refreshing, low-priced, active preference at $65 (pores and skin contact, unfiltered) to start the nighttime.
The menu is broken into sections: raw, tartare, robata grill, salads, platters, mains, grilled fish, and dishes to proportion. To begin, for the reason that highly spiced tuna tartare wasn’t to be had (bought out!), we went with salmon. The tomato salad had no more buffalo mozzarella (offered out!), so we went with a crimson endive alternative, in conjunction with yakitori wings from the robata grill. For mains, we kept it simple: Cornish fowl, crab spaghetti Picadilly, halibut, and New York strip in the region of the favored lamb chops (offered out!).
And then we waited … simply below an hour to get any meals. Unfortunately, the tune had not dimmed at this point, but the lighting fixtures had, so it became hard to decipher all of the information on each plate, and as I started to question our server, she seemed flustered, giving me vague answers.
Easily a standout, the salmon tartare with lemon, dill, and cucumber turned out outstanding; we fought for each bite. Unfortunately, the endive salad, a jumble of thinly sliced carrots and green papaya, endive leaves, cilantro, basil, and trace quantities of chopped peanuts, can only be defined as dry. As in, there was no dressing. The simplest perks came from the uncommon cubes of grilled watermelon hidden at the bottom of the bowl and the muted chunk of the soft endive. And then there were the yakitori wings. Cooked at the robata (a Japanese charcoal grill that nobody defined), two metal skewers splayed a gloomy amount of deboned chicken the dimensions of my thumb, sparingly drizzled in a sticky maple and Sichuan peppercorn sauce. The fowl scant, the sauce cloying, and the accompanying grilled shishito peppers unseasoned.
Mains were also uneven. The Cornish hen became tender, yet the accompanying fricassée of carrots, peas, and onions felt chook dinner-ish conservatively, regardless of a tangy mole sauce, the ingredients of which had been as a whole lot a mystery to our server as they had been to us. The spaghetti Picadilly had a lot of capacity: a wholesome dose of crab, an excellent quantity of chili warmth, uni (sea urchin, to provide it that umami creaminess), and a dusting of breadcrumbs; however, unfortunately, way too much salt. The generous piece of halibut changed into additionally oversalted, even though served with a vivid eggplant puree and energetic lima bean, blistered cherry tomato, and sliced-okra succotash. The steak turned into notable on a fine word, with a finger of glistening fat capping each thick-cut piece. If only it got here with something more seasonal than a brick of scalloped potatoes underneath a warm, melted blanket of what tasted like Gruyère cheese (I assume? No one changed into the round to tell us).
By the time we were given cakes, we had been discouraged. The vibe had gone from sublime to membership, and the song is now not improving. The lights became even dimmer, and we noticed several of the $one hundred fifty seafood towers going out, adorned with avenue-flare-sized sparklers — or perhaps that becomes just a diner letting the team of workers recognize they were nonetheless there, in a dark nook. The best location for candy comfort from that tune was Perron’s lovely bathrooms, mercifully soundproof; the girls did in pretty red terrazzo tiles and crimson gold accents, the men’s in hanging black and white marble.
