Photos: https://david-kong.squarespace.com/#july-10-lucien
"The city's best new restaurant"
according to Toronto life has been reduced to penny pinching (the
bread costs $2-4) and to selling its soul on Groupon,
Living Social and possibly others. I will admit that this was my sixth
appearance
at Lucien and the sixth time I did not pay the regular price. Food at
Lucien is
certainly fussy (what is sarsaparilla?) and detail-oriented. Every dish
is meticulously crafted.
Five or more ingredients are the norm, and while I value the risk
premium, it
often turns out to be too busy and incongruent. The small boutique
dining room
is dark and slightly foreboding (perhaps because of the oversized mirror
atop
the bar) yet the effect is a fantastical chiaroscuro to its more than
‘bright’
name. The restaurant recently opened its doors to the Bay Street lunch
crowd,
creating simpler dishes that can be comfortably consumed in an hour
(thank
you!). And with the simplicity came some back to basic cooking that
reinvigorated the food to the restaurant’s glory days. The Carpaccio was
deliciously
salty, offset by crunchy sweet potato and apparently had a slight
resemblance to iberian ham. The juicy chicken resembled a roulade in
perfectly formed circles and sat confidently in a slightly weak zucchini
ratatouille. The steak was oversized and a perfect pink. And while the
“Nouget” came as an ice cream
sundae (without any lemon but with shortbread), if all ice cream were
this creamy,
I’d be happy calling it “Nouget”. $26 for such generous portions and for
ingredients I have never seen before (and non-existant on Google) is
unheard of.
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