The Citizen
730 Queen St. E. 416-465-0100. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $120.
That a restaurant should be called the Citizen tells us that Rodney Bowers is a cinephile; we already know and love his first resto, the Rosebud on Queen West. But Citizen Kane (Bower's fave movie) aside, is something other than cinematic homage being satisfied here?
Besides Mark McEwan, (of North 44, Bymark and One, which opened in the new Hazelton Hotel three weeks ago - more on One soon), precious few chefs have the skills and the moxie to morph into a manager. Since cloning is still restricted to sheep, and being in two places at once is not yet possible, a chef who owns more than one restaurant has the challenge of trying to control cooking remotely.
Cooking is manual, highly detailed and aesthetic. If I am careless and I over-brown the onions and garlic that are step one of a soup or stew, the resulting dish will have an acrid base. All is lost if the maestro was at his other shop when the unfortunate sauté occurred
What if the produce order comes in and the so-called heirloom tomatoes are underripe and hence have no flavour? Oops, the boss isn't here to check the order, and tonight those hapless tomatoes are in the Caprese salad.
We loved Rod Bowers's work at the Rosebud (which he opened in 2004): Here was a chef with a sure touch and a great palate for robust flavours. But one and one don't necessarily add up to two - not when creative work is involved. Control is often a vexed notion: So the maestro hires a chef good enough too realize both their dreams; but whose vision? And how?
For the stoves at The Citizen (which he opened this past summer), Bowers hired Klaus Rohrich from the esteemed Mistura. Rohrich's German background takes him straight to the top when he does things like Wiener schnitzel of pork (a brined loin chop on the bone, cut thin, how clever), which has been traditionally breaded, fried and topped with fried egg, capers and lemon. Add a side of spaetzle, and we could be on the Marienplatz in Munich with a cherry-cheeked fraulein and black forest cake to come next.
I personally would never sauté spaetzle in brown butter, for the heat of the sauté pan turns these little noodle darlings from ethereal light to something heavier; but the sweetness of the brown butter and the hint of crunch is another - and equally jolly - spaetzle experience.
Clearly chef was doing Italiana with big brio at Mistura, but these days he stumbles sometimes. Could it be that nasty but age-old cooking-supervision issue? Self-styled "good" anchovies are not, because of an excess of salt. House-made merguez lamb sausages are marvellously flavoured and perfectly chewy; the ribs appetizer, however tender, has a weird flavour undertone. Vanilla? Anise? Not on my ribs, thank you anyway.
Panzanella salad, the noble Tuscan bread salad, is also disappointing because of very soggy bread cubes and less than tasty tomatoes. In my world, Tuscan salad is composed immediately before serving, so that the bread cubes arrive crisp and only beginning to absorb liquid so they are eaten while in a quite sexy, almost-soggy state.
Then there is the sad story of the Caprese salad. Eat this baby on the Amalfi coast and you consume mozzarella that was born yesterday with tomatoes so fragrant their scent rises from plate to nose. The problem with Caprese salad here is not just the cheese and the tomatoes. In southern Italy, they would never serve two-day-old mozzarella raw, which is only suitable for melting on pizza. As for the tomatoes, even the heirloom tomatoes touted as culinary rescue for those truck-ripened red spheres have hardly any flavour themselves.
Smart cooks will refrain from both "fresh" mozzarella and tomatoes until our nascent farm-to-table movement can put the real flavours on the table. The Citizen's Caprese is like every other Caprese I've had the misfortune to consume in Toronto: flavour-free.
Chef does a marvellously crisp duck confit, and equally credible light gnocchi with moist braised rabbit, although I would not choose to garnish it with frozen peas at harvest time. His risotto of duck is impeccable in texture - al dente rice and creamy "sauce" - but again he and I part company on aesthetic choices. To my palate, duck is both too meaty and not sweet enough to give the rice the flavour boost it needs to be great risotto.
The sole fish among mains is roasted halibut with salad of watermelon, arugula and watercress. Put overcooked halibut with a salad featuring naked watermelon, and it's not exactly a great leap forward for gastronomy.
Nor are the desserts: There is a perfect crème brûlée, but that is not exactly unusual. The three baby éclairs are slightly soggy, and the interesting dessert homemade s'mores built on homemade marshmallows don't quite cut it because of their base of thick slices of dry banana bread. As for peach crumble, the peaches have been overcooked and turned to mush.
But the restaurant is both pretty and popular. The TV show Restaurant Makeover helped Bowers remodel the space that was formerly Riverside Cafe. Its sweetly informal good looks made it the overnight toast of Leslieville: Painted mirrors, a 1940s stained glass triptych from an old Hilton hotel and an enclosed patio are all lovely. The service is both affable and expert; only the kitchen struggles. All of which goes to show: Most people do judge a book by its cover.
