Seeing Love in Food – Hoogan et Beaufort

Hoogan et Baufort is a restaurant in Montreal known for its wood-fired oven. Here was the menu the day I went for lunch:

The restaurant brought some bread to start. The taste and butter were good but it needed a better crust. While the pic below looks like it had a crust, in reality it was soft and almost non-existent.

The next course was the gem lettuce. The presentation was good and it had a nice scent and slightly crunchy edges from the wood fire oven, but the taste was muted. While the buttermilk flavor came through, it lacked acidity to balance out the dish. More seasoning would of been nice too.

The next dish was the chicken liver mousse. The mousse itself was very good. Nice creamy, thick texture and good flavors. This was served in a puff pastry. The dish had good texture from some sort of salty and crunchy bits topping the pate. The only issue with this dish was that the berry jam/compote they added in, which was necessary to cut the richness, was too heavy handed and almost overpowered the mousse. Afterwards, I used the bread to mop up the mousse that was left on the plate. Delicious.

The pasta course was my favorite. The pasta was well cooked and the meat filling was tender. The star was the sauce. The brown butter reduction was so thick and the flavors so concentrated, I wanted to pour it all over everything, and in fact, drank it on its own like soup! Outstanding. The only way someone would take the time to make a sauce like this is out of love. You can see it in the sauce!

Lastly, we have the beef rossini. This was my least favorite dish. The meat itself was a bit tough (chewy) and not flavorful. The foie gras was not tasty either. The only good thing about this dish was the sauce – black truffle beef jus.

Overall, service was fantastic, and I found this to be true at every restaurant I visited in Montreal. Food ranged from disappointing to outstanding. I would not return, and would recommend someone to try it, but choose very carefully as not all dishes work well.