An Exclusive Club

Gastronomic delights abound at one of Montreal's finest restaurants

Story and photo by Benjamin Pomerance

First, a disclaimer: one should not make the Beaver Club restaurant an every-weekend stop. To begin with, there’s the matter of the Grand Canyon-sized hole such a move would create in your wallet. Looking at the prices on the menus of the historic establishment in Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel is not a venture for the faint-hearted. With appetizers ranging from $16 to $25 and main dishes all falling in the $40 range, this is not the kind of restaurant you typically frequent on a "oh, let’s go out to eat" sort of whim. Dinner at the Beaver Club is a special event.

There is another reason why dining at this restaurant should not be an everyday occurrence—one simply cannot take so much of such a good thing. After a while, dinner at the Beaver Club becomes rather like going to an art museum and seeing room after room of paintings by Monet, going to a concert and hearing piece after piece of sonatas by Mozart, or going to an architectural exhibition and studying design after design by Frank Lloyd Wright. After too much time in the presence of such excellence, you become numb to the greatness of the masterworks around you, dulled by the saturation of perfection—the epitome of too much good becoming bad. Such is the case at the Beaver Club, where every plate of food delivered to your table is so delectable and so beautiful that too much exposure to it would be sinful. One must limit the amount of time spent in this gastronomic paradise.

My father's birthday at the end of April, however, was a special occasion worthy of a Beaver Club visit. A birthday, an anniversary, a grand celebration of any sort—these are the sort of occasions the Beaver Club is able to frame with gold. So Mom, Dad, and I were off to Montreal, unsure of what the menu would offer us this evening, but we hoped that it would be worthy of such a special event.

We need not have worried. Walking through the elegant entrance into the beige-and-black dining room, we were met by Serge, the Beaver Club’s veteran maitre d’hotel who has seen countless high-powered visitors come and go and yet still seems to treat every guest like a king or queen for the evening. Walking past two glass cabinets bearing an array of engraved Beaver Club plates, we were seated in comfortable chairs and our napkins placed on our laps. At the Beaver Club, as we would find out, the customer is to do as little as possible. Every task is attended to by the waitstaff—professionally formal, yet anything but snobbish or stuck-up — to ensure the customer’s stay in fine-dining heaven is a pleasant one.

After the difficult and lengthy task of examining the menu, we finally settled on three cold appetizers, three hot appetizers, and three main plates, each set (cold appetizer, hot appetizer and main course, plus dessert and coffee or tea) costing $75. For those with a good appetite, this appears both more economical and more delicious than ordering a la carte (each dish separately).

Before dinner, though, comes a history lesson, for the Beaver Club’s world-renowned reputation did not come overnight. Opening in 1959, the Queen Elizabeth’s flagship restaurant was named after an elite organization of Canadian fur barons and traders, an elite group dating back to 1785. Like the Beaver Club of the early fur traders and voyageurs, the restaurant also counts members among its clientele—today close to 850 of them — ranging from software giant Bill Gates to hockey giant Maurice Richard. This veritable who's who of social elite are honored by having their names engraved on plates bearing the Beaver Club insignia,  which are displayed in the glassed-in cases at the entrance to the restaurant. Looking at such an array of famous names, one can think only one thing: Well, they must have seen something in this place.

By the first course, we learned what these captains of society already knew. Before our cold appetizers arrived, we were presented with a beautiful "amuse-bouche"—an appetizer before the appetizers—concocted by the chef at his inspiration. On this particular night, the chef was inspired to create a lovely little plate of veal sweetbreads, served on a square dish that could almost fit into one of the squares on a checkerboard. The sweetbread was so tender that it melted in our mouths. Such inspirations from the chef, we agreed, should certainly be allowed to continue.

Then the appetizers arrived, each one a work of art. My father, the birthday boy, received the Beaver Club’s patented "Palette of ocean delights," a favorite appetizer of the restaurant which received a glowing recommendation from our more-than-accommodating waiter, Jose. Presented on a rectangular glass plate, the dish included a marinated square of arctic char, two thick slices of hamachi (a yellowtail fish from the tuna family), a scallop on the shell bathed in a tangy vinaigrette (my personal favorite), and a tasty smoked oyster. Mom’s dish was cold duckling foie gras, a presentation of duck liver considered synonymous with haute cuisine, accompanied by a parsnip jam with kumquats and cranberries that was simply exquisite. As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed my "lobster trio" of lobster carpaccio (fantastic), a layered dish with large lobster pieces and turmeric (also fantastic) and a roll made with lobster meat, yellow beets, and green apples with tarragon (sheer heaven). We were off to a wonderful start.

The hot starters were equally wonderful. My father’s hot foie gras of duck, pan-seared and presented with a luscious blackcurrant vinegar reduction, left all of our taste-buds singing. Mom’s sautéed scallops with saffron-flavored sea urchin butter, however, wasn’t too far behind on the mouth-watering scale, nor was my plate of glazed oysters in the half-shell served with baby spinach. A common complaint of oysters is that they are simply too fishy tasting, but even my non-oyster-eating father enjoyed sampling one of these. Cooked to perfection, they were neither too soft nor too rubbery—a shellfish lover’s dream come true.

At some restaurants, I find that top-notch appetizers actually set up disappointment in the main course, which is typically not as creatively cooked nor as artistically presented as the starters. Not so at the Beaver Club. The principal dishes were both delectable and beautiful, worthy of a picture, and we took several. Dad enjoyed a succulent tournedos of beef, cooked with pepper and flambéed with Canadian Club whiskey. This last step was performed—and I do mean performed, with every theatrical implication of the word—on a trolley next to our table, the flames seeming to reach the ceiling when the whiskey was poured into the heated pan. Rarely, if ever, have I tasted beef so tender and juicy. My roasted venison was equally tender and was served with some of the most creative accompaniments I have ever seen: juniper berries, red cabbage mousseline with chestnuts and apples, and a sauce of pepper and spiced chocolate. Yet it was Mom’s plait principal that may well have been the highlight of the entire evening. Lobster served out of the shell—remember that in this restaurant, guests do not have to work for their dinner—and presented with black trumpet mushrooms and celery root gnocchi made for a terrific plate of food. The lobster itself was perfectly cooked and rich with flavors, and the mushrooms added a deep, almost nutty sensation when you nibbled on them. A true feast indeed.  

Yet it wasn’t over. In fact, it wasn’t even time for dessert. First, we  cleansed our palettes with refreshing raspberry sorbet served in petite goblets, also not on the menu but included in the price of the tasting menu. Then it was on to dessert. Mom ordered one of her favorite desserts, a lime soufflé. Light as air but infinitely more tasty, it mingled sweetly with the tiniest hint of tartness from the lime, creating the prefect conclusion to such a large meal. My final course was crepes Suzettes, worth the price just to watch Jose flambé the paper-thin crepes with Grand Marnier next to our table. "Deep down inside, all crepes are just pancakes," Woody Allen once said, but calling these crepes pancakes would be like deeming Versailles a house. Orange zest mingled with the flavors of the Grand Marnier to create a remarkable flavor, sweet and yet very much alive at the same time.

Dad’s dessert…well, Dad didn’t know he was having two desserts. The dessert he ordered was a chocolate orange delicacy, the kind of dish chocoholics mumble sweet things about in their sleep. He had no sooner finished this dessert when Serge and Jose arrived at our table bearing a rather large piece of cake, resplendent with flaming candle and a sign made from spun sugar reading "Happy Birthday, Ron." I had asked on the sly to have a cake brought to Dad for his birthday, but this defied expectations. Most restaurants bring out a piece of cake. The Beaver Club presented Dad with a memory, an edible memento of our evening of celebraion.

It was nearly midnight when we finished nibbling on the chocolates and other confections Jose had brought us after dessert to further tempt our palette. Reluctantly, we took our leave of the Beaver Club. We had been eating for more than five hours. The time had flown by, the world moving on around us while we sat and enjoyed the pinnacle of gastronomic heights in pure decadent bliss. No, the Beaver Club is not a place to dine every week, or even every month. Yet when the moment is right, when you have that special occasion that requires the ultimate in culinary magic, point your feet in the direction of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Just for a night, allow yourself to be swept away with the ecstasy of a dining experience few other places in the world can offer and realize for yourself that the Beaver Club is part of an exclusive club indeed.

Have you ever eaten at the Beaver Club?