Bouillon Bilk

I'm eating so much this month it's quite scary.  Em's arriving tonight and we have a full on week of eating planned.  Excited.  I'm justifying this by signing up for a 5k run at the end of the month, it'll be fine, heh.

A spontaneous dinner last week happened at Bouillon Bilk, I've tried to eat here before, but they were closed for refurb.  The décor is nice, larger communal tables at the front and the bulk of the tables arranged around a central raised bar area.  For a Monday night, the place was really busy and the atmosphere was great, relaxed but it immediately felt like they have their shit together.  

We began with a bottle of fizz, the Sebastien Brunet Vouvray, I'd not heard of it before, it was great!  Very creamy.  Bread arrived next, it was the best bread I've had here so far, would love to know where they get it or if they make it in house.  You can basically eat as much of it as you want too, which I obviously love.  Held back and had just 2 bits each. 

I ordered an appetizer from the daily specials, the bone marrow with mushrooms, diced green apple, whelks topped with crisps and prettily served inside a massive bone ($18).  It looked so lovely and tasted great, the almost sour fruit really helping to cut through the fatty richness of the marrow.

 

The 'thing' here is that each dish contains a protein matched with a fruit, here marrow and apple, other examples on the menu were Hamachi (a Japanese fish served raw) with raspberries (which I tried, it was great), foie gras with rhubarb and lobster with nectarine.

For main, we both opted for the scallops with pear, fried courgette flower, yellow courgettes, mushrooms, pepper sauce and beurre noisette ($29).  This was really very very good, I was worried that the portions might prove to be a tad small but this was deceptively filling.  The sauces were incredible.

We had a bit of a break before moving on to cheese, we chose a couple of glasses of rioja to accompany.  All local Quebecois cheese, none of which were familiar to me, a selection of 5 for $20 came with some candied nuts, toast and some apricot jam.  The blue was the highlight.

 

We paid around $120 each which I think is fine value for the quality of cooking on display here by chef Francois Nadon.  Loved the flavours, the service, the vibe and the room.  Will definitely be back because we foolishly overlooked the sloe gin fizz on the cocktail menu.  Need those in my life. 

Bouillon Bilk 
1595 Saint Laurent

Latin Quarter
H2X
9/10