(L-R) Profiteroles filled with vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and little apple galette, along with Steak Tartare topped with a poached quail egg served with sharp cornichons at La SocieteMichelle Siu /The Globe and Mail
One of the great joys of dining at La Société is watching the grand dames and debutantes of Toronto society work the room like they own it. Air kisses are proffered, secrets are shared and perfectly coiffed heads are thrown back in vivacious laughter. It is a testament to the place that such elegant women feel at home here, flitting from table to table in breezy summer dresses, the very definition of social butterflies.
Unfortunately, gaining access to this effervescent scene - if you're not a recognizable face and are, say, merely a restaurant critic with a pseudonymous reservation - can be a challenge. After being refused a patio table because it was "reserved," I was then marched through the restaurant past numerous comfortable-looking seats and offered a minuscule two-top awkwardly jammed against a column in the thick of the traffic. When I said I'd prefer something else, I was shown an equally obscure seat beside two shouty bankers. I eventually persuaded the maitre d' to give us a proper table, one of the many that were available, but not before being made to feel distinctly unwelcome. Despite such petty and ridiculous pretension, the charm of the restaurant is considerable.
The glamorous new bistro from Charles Khabouth and Danny Soberano on Bloor Street's Mink Mile is the result of a $4-million facelift that has transformed the space that was once the dowdy but delicious Dynasty Chinese Cuisine into a sprawling, tiered homage to the classic Parisian bistro. It was money well spent. In the main dining room, booths of supple leather embrace you like an old friend. The stained-glass ceiling and mosaic-tiled floor are triumphs of craftsmanship that caused one admiring, if confused, patron to announce, "They don't make 'em like that any more."
The rest of the space - its various rooms and pair of patios, one ground level, the other one storey up - is theatrical in the extreme. It's easy to imagine some philandering husband trying to keep his mistress occupied in the quiet back bar (zinc-topped, of course) while his wife and her friends dine al fresco. If just such a scene hasn't played out already, it's only a matter of time.
But it's not only the layout that seems designed for trysting; the menu fosters it, as well. No dish, after all, is better suited to seduction than a towering plateau of fruits de mer, spilling over with aphrodisiacs, and La Société offers two of them. The "petit plateau" is a wedding-cake-layered tower of oysters and prawns, sashimi-esque slices of salmon and tuna and a host of condiments, sauces and toast. The "grand plateau" offers all this, along with an entire lobster, shrimp and a seafood salad.
There are few dishes I love more than a good plateau, and while La Société's is pleasant enough, it's far from perfect. The oysters look like they've been opened with a hammer, the prawns are farmed and flabby and the sashimi's inauthentic and amateurish. Where are the clams? Where are the crabs? What about the langoustines and periwinkles? I don't even like periwinkles, but know that any self-respecting plateau has them in abundance.
Aquatic quibbles aside, much of the food at La Société, under the direction of executive chef James Olberg, is worthy of the room it's served in. He composes an excellent salade Niçoise with barely seared tuna in a gingery crust, some yielding little fingerling potatoes, bright, tender beans, proper Niçoise olives and binds the whole thing together with a lemony vinaigrette. His foie gras pâté with brioche and a pear port reduction is as rich and smooth as Maurice Chevalier, who, incidentally, is one of the artists featured on the restaurant's Gallic heavy soundtrack.
Both the tartares, steak and tuna, are sure to gain loyal devotees. The former, topped with a poached quail egg and sharp cornichons, is deep red and carnal. The latter, pairing yellow fin tuna with apples, pine nuts and just a touch of coriander, is light and pure. These are the kinds of dishes a bistro builds its reputation on.
Perhaps no other item, though, is as iconic to bistro fare as steak frites. By all rights, La Société's version should kill it. A great steak frites, in this setting, would cement the restaurant's reputation as one of the great places in the city to eat. While that may happen one day, it hasn't happened yet. Having wisely abandoned an attempt at a 24-hour sous-vide-cooked steak, the current version is simply a grilled slab of flatiron topped with herb butter and shallot confit. It tastes great, but is so tough, even the knife has a hard time getting through it. The accompanying overcooked frites make the whole thing feel a bit forlorn.
The kitchen rallies with dessert, though, and the party's back in full swing with the arrival of profiteroles, light and puffy beneath their rich chocolate dressing and filled with vanilla ice cream the texture of soft-serve. A dandy little apple galette combines caramelized sweetness with a keen, almost sticky density.
With La Société, Mr. Khabouth and Mr. Soberano - who have two more restaurants, a gastro-pub and a Spanish/Mexican inspired spot scheduled to open before the year's out - have succeeded in giving the city something it can't have too much of: an elegant bistro that's as lively as it is attractive.
Follow Chris Johns on Twitter @chrisandvinegar