I had a really good dinner at Bistro Grenier

It’s raining like God’s arse on a King Street Sunday and my belly is rumbling French. People always ask what my favourite cuisine is, and my answer usually raises eyebrows. 

Vive la France (‎◍·̀Ⱉ·́◍) !!!!!!!!

And Bistro Grenier reminded me exactly why. 

The stairs inside Odd Culture lead you up to our lady Gren, she’s lit dark like the top of a crème caramel. Overhead: chocolate-hued wood rafters and a slanted ceiling washed in merlot red. The table is set with old-world slickness – red-striped napkins, pierrot printed coasters, vintage-y wall art and a single skinny candle which later whittled into a stub (sign of a night well spent). To begin, our drink selection was a gaggle of parrot-y iced spritzes but with me not being seven I got a glass of pinot noir (the same varietal I’ve been clinging to all year, starting with that one I loved at Letra House). 

For our first (half) bite – coquilles saint-jacques – baked scallops. These darlings were priced at a whopping $10.5 each, so one each for our table of four was a no-can-do. So, a dazzling pair came to us – verve orange, glistening in candlelight like a lamp-lit pond. We cut the cushion-y scallop in half and … we understood why it was priced that way. I’m sat! The piperade butter – piperade being a mixed sauté of onion, peppers and tomato –  had a smokey tang of espelette pepper, like roasted capsicum tossed in herbs. Now an actual bite, a golden puffball of ego and air – a bubbling soufflé. Wobbling, the surface was browned like an omelette and had an expected nutty warmth from steaming comté custard lifted with a little goat’s curd tang. The piment d’Espelette returned, this time more of a wink. 

For our more-than-one-spoon courses, a duo of proteins: demi poulet rôti and navarin d’Angneau. In a less bullshit language: roast chicken and braised lamb. Every dish from Gren came out glistening, washed in a high gloss. With puckered skin, folded neatly, the chicken is cooked expertly well. Light – a little bit of spring with the burnt baby leeks. The jus lié, juice naturally releasing from the chicken but slightly thickened, was apex. The taste reminds me of Corre Larkin’s recipes, she usually tends to borrow from peasant-style French cooking. It’s breezy, it’s haughty – lifted by something only so simple as sensational skill. My favourite cuisine is French because I like to study. What I love about French cookery is that, at its core, it is a discipline. Knives honed to the same exacting angle as the sauces are reduced. The sensibility is linear, militaristic in its sequencing: stock before sauce, sauce before garnish, garnish before plate.

My favourite was the braised lamb, dark like nutrient soil – topped with a garden of charred, shimmering vegetables. Sweet blackened shallots, their layers looking like tree growth rings; halved baby carrots and turnips, softened. The lamb had a crispy top that cracked almost like sugar, giving way to lovely bouts of scoopable meat. For a side, we opted for the fancy mashed potatoes, the purée de pommes de terre. Unlike the mashed potatoes we know –  thick, whipped, chunky  – this variant drapes across the plate like velvet with a quiet, buttery smooth finish. 

We’re hounding at the plates till it’s just scrape marks. Le dessert time… 

First, the baba au rhum. It’s like a brioche mini cake, with brown sugar chantilly cream and tart raspberries that lifted the dish prettily. To be honest, I didn’t notice it – not because it was bad but because …

The pudding chômeur was beyond. I came in with high expectations, and they were successfully met. It’s a good dish to share with a big group; it’s rich, with sticky bubbles caramelising the surface. Being a hot maple pudding, the cake is dense, made perfectly French with probably 84 sticks of butter. We dig through the dish like excavators, looking for honey coloured caramel magma. I’m dining with my best friends so we dig out the best bits to feed each other; Tan likes the crispy bits and Marina fishes me the best parts of caramel. Kenton likes the heaping scoop of buttermilk ice cream it’s topped with.

And I think about love, and how it settled into my life like batter reaching the edges of a ceramic dish. Swelling, setting, picking out the best bits.

Thank you Bistro Grenier, my title is apt! Xx