The Little Things About Nuances

A gamble at Casino de Montreal pays off

Story and photo by Benjamin Pomerance

It takes a lot to get me inside a casino. I am not a gambler; given my bad luck and obsessive personality, becoming one would probably put me on the fast track to bankruptcy. Nor do I embrace the loud, smoky atmosphere one tends to expect inside gambling halls. Slot machines, poker tables, and roulette wheels are foreign implements to me, and with the exception of one long late-night, high-matchsticks-stakes game of blackjack with my cousin several years ago, I truthfully do not recall any personal experiences with games of chance. There is only one thing that can draw me toward the flashing lights and glassy-eyed gamblers of a large casino: the allure of good food.

Such a temptation resides on the fifth floor of the Casino de Montreal. Overlooking the St. Lawrence River and providing a postcard-worthy view of the city’s skyline, Nuances Restaurant provided me recently with a dining experience that was more than just good. The dinner I enjoyed inside this sleek, modern culinary palace marks one of the finest meals I have ever had the privilege to savor. And while the greatness comes at a steep price — Nuances is easy on the palette but hard on the pocketbook — I certainly hope to return in the not-so-distant future in order to try the dishes I was unable to enjoy on my first trip to this establishment.

Despite the prestigious reputation of the place — Nuances has earned the rarely awarded five-diamond rating from the Canadian Automobile Association every year since 2000 — I did not enter the restaurant with sky-high expectations. I assumed the food would be good, perhaps even excellent, but the ambiance would be crowded, dark, and noisy. Imagine my surprise, then, when one of the Casino’s glass elevators stopped at the fifth floor (after an ascent at a speed that would have made Willy Wonka proud) and I walked into a surprisingly intimate, beautifully designed room.

Nuances is shaped like a crescent moon, with most of the tables spaced at an acceptable distance from one another. The entire place is designed in soft, muted colors — thanks, I later learned, to a renovation a few years ago — and features enormous windows, affording all diners that magnificent vista of the city at night. Some five-star restaurants exude stuffiness from every crystal of their chandeliers, but Nuances, while obviously providing an upscale feel, gives diners the impression of being at home. A very, very, very nice home… but home nevertheless.            

And then there’s the food. Where to begin in a place where the menu reads like a novel? With the little things. As the name Nuances suggests, it’s the little things that matter most in this place. Little things… like bread. Rarely do I mention bread in a restaurant review, but the ample basket brought to the table shared by my parents and I was filled with not one, but three varieties of bread: a light French baguette, a denser flaxseed bread, and (my favorite) a savory Egyptian wheat bread. And this, of course, was only a preview of the gourmet delights to come.

For my meal, I decided to be daring and leave my entire experience in the hands of Nuances’ culinary team. Along with their listed offerings, Nuances provides the option of a “surprise menu” — allowing the chefs to create a five-course meal for you. Intrigued by this option, perhaps because I was unable to pick which dishes I wanted to try off of the “regular” menu, I ordered a dinner of surprises. I would not know anything that I was slated to eat until it was brought to the table. Our waiter offered to reveal the surprises to me ahead of time, as apparently many guests prefer this, but the element of the unknown was more to my liking.

The first surprise was a surprise indeed: lobster tempura served with a sauce of tomato and white truffle oil, and accompanied by julienned vegetables wrapped inside paper-thin rice rolls. Typically, I avoid seafood tempura dishes when dining out. Past experiences with items like shrimp tempura have not been the greatest, as I tend to find the breading over the seafood item to be too heavy and overpowering. Here, however, the breading was light, just enough to let you know it was there, but not so much as to overwhelm the luscious taste of lobster. In a word, delicious.

Both of my parents knew what was arriving at the table for their appetizers, but we were all awed by the presentations and tastes of their chosen items. My father had foie gras, the delicate liver delicacy that has become synonymous with fine dining. Yet while only the top French restaurants serve foie gras at all, at Nuances they serve it prepared in two very different styles: cold, with dried spice bread and a sweet syrup of figs; and hot, pan-seared with a rich apple marmalade. At the risk of starting a culinary war, I mentioned in a previous issue that I felt it was impossible for any Montreal restaurant to surpass the foie gras I sampled at the Beaver Club in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. I wouldn’t say that Nuances’ rendition superseded the Beaver Club, but I will say it came pleasantly close to equaling it in terms of taste and quality. Let the battle of the gourmands begin…

As for my mother’s appetizer, this was a dish truly unlike anything I had ever seen. I have had appetizers with scallops, and I have had appetizers with veal sweetbreads (a gland from the calf’s brain…sounds disgusting, tastes delicious), but never before had I found an appetizer that offered both. The scallop was huge and served with a light soy emulsion, while the sweetbreads were lightly smoked and caramelized to perfection. My mother, for years a sweetbreads aficionado, said Nuances might have come up with the best sweetbreads preparation she had ever tried.

After the appetizer, the surprises continued on this experimental menu. Next on the list was a hot soup of pureed butternut squash, garnished with pork cheek. The meat from inside the pig’s cheek is apparently considered a delicacy in French cuisine, as it is known to be the most tender meat that can be found in the animal. This, to me, would be a wonderful autumn soup, although it tasted quite good in late-March, too. Then came a plate of guinea hen stuffed with mushrooms, served alongside a celery root mousseline and an assortment of pink and yellow beets. The guinea hen was delicious — think of chicken with a richer flavor and about ten times more tender, and the celery root mousseline and beets were excellent accompaniments. So far, so good with the surprises.

The positive trend continued with the main courses. My mother’s roasted black cod, served with a fritter concocted with fried fettuccini pasta forming the outer shell, was one of the finest fish entrees I have ever tasted, enhanced in large measure by the accompanying sauce made from the buds of the cassia plant. My father tried another unique combination plate — veal tenderloin served with lobster confit — and this, too, was memorable, in part because of the wonderful creamy polenta that accompanied this meal.

The surprise entrée was wapiti, a special breed of deer from the Western regions of Canada, served with quince, mushrooms, and an assortment of root vegetables. All of this, served with a rich Béarnaise sauce, left me pleasantly full and satisfied for the evening.

But, of course, we still had to have dessert. My parents shared a warm chocolate cake — what would be a good meal without something decadent to finish it off, right? —with a creamy vanilla center, served with a scoop of maple ice cream. Maple was the theme of my surprise dessert, too, not surprising given that we were dining during the “sugaring-off season,” the time when the sap is ready to be extracted from maple trees and transformed into maple sugar…which can be used for maple syrup, maple butter, and a variety of maple candies. Or, if you’re at Nuances, it can also be used for a light maple parfait, served with baked apples on a chocolate pie base. And, naturally, a little scoop of maple ice cream just to round off the plate elegantly.

Little more can be said about a meal like this…except try it soon, if the experience sounds appealing to you. In the autumn, Nuances will close for renovations, changes that will result in the restaurant being moved from its present location to a new space on the first floor. Why this establishment would tamper with a good thing is beyond my comprehension, but if you want to experience Nuances in its present form, don’t wait too long. The prices are high, but for a special occasion, I can think of few restaurants (the Beaver Club being one of them) that I would put in the same gastronomic category. As you leave for the evening, whisked back to the ground floor by one of those glass elevators, chances are your taste buds will be in rapture, thanking you for letting them experience the many nuances of Nuances.

Have you ever dined at Nuances?

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