Cru
946 Royal York Rd., Toronto. 416-237-1282. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $190.
I remember the first waiter I ever fell in love with. He was an older man (to me, then. I was young). I was pretty sure that he was gay, so it wasn't that kind of love. Which was good, because a component of our great waiter/client relationship was flattery. He made me feel gorgeous and smart and cosmopolitan (and on a good day, rich even).
He was a waiter at The Wine Cellar in Three Small Rooms in the Windsor Arms Hotel (in the late 60s). That little room was his kingdom, and his personal mission was to make each and every one of us feel like royalty in it.
And here's the kicker: When I look back, as I do occasionally and with great fondness, on evenings at The Wine Cellar, I have to think hard to remember what I loved eating there, but that waiter comes instantly to mind. And I'm food obsessed.
Which tells us (as if we didn't already know) that restaurant service matters a whole lot. You can serve me caviar and Champagne and the best of everything else edible, but if you're churlish about it, I won't be happy. Which may explain why a restaurant serving some of the best food in the GTA seems less than half full whenever I go.
Cru is on Royal York Road just south of Bloor Street, but its great distance from the centre of town fails to explain anything, because 1) a lot of people with money live near there and 2) serious foodies follow their taste buds pretty far.
We arrive, the place is three-quarters empty, we take off our coats and the greeter moves aside the other coats on the rack. Does he offer to take our coats? Not a chance. Not even a glance coatward.
If this were a Mom and Pop corner boîte with a grease-spattered menu and formica tabletops, I'd not mind. But a quick glance at the menu reveals that Cru has bigger fish to fry than that.
Cru's new chef Shane Waite has done stints and stages at Tru in Chicago, Restaurant Daniel in New York City. La Gavroche in London, and locally at Avalon, Langdon Hall and Canoe. The guy was paying close attention, and had a base of talent.
What upscale chef has the gall to put the lowly parsnip front row centre in soup, and call it velouté? But he proves parsnip can morph into something silken and subtle in a cream soup. In the middle of the huge bowl is velvety shiitake flan topped with a seductive orange pile of spiced persimmon purée. One small perfect shrimp croquette (all seafood and spice, no cereal) sits in the middle of a clever asymmetrical bowl of clam chowder filled with barely cooked razor and New Zealand clams.
Rare is the chef who can cook a razor clam (so called for its narrow tubular shape) without turning it to the unpleasant texture of rubber.
And yet something is rotten here. A server arrives with the breadbasket and plunks down an olive bun on my guest's plate and a pumpernickel bun on mine. I ask him how he knows I like pumpernickel (hate it), but his command of English isn't up to that conversation, so he leaves. On a subsequent visit the same thing happens, only this time I get whole wheat (another bread product I do not necessarily enjoy) and my guest again gets olive bread. Another server tells us they're not serving the "hairyco" beans tonight.
And yet, chef rolls gnocchi so light and sweet they mimic clouds, and sets them in tarragon-scented lobster cream along with chunks of sweet moist lobster. His six-hour slow-roasted Berkshire pork belly is not only the meat of the moment, it is almost erotic -- crispy crunchy on the outside in that illicit pork crackling way, juicy on the inside with a mystery stuffing. Poached sour cherries and black trumpet mushrooms make clever companions, in a rich sauce of meat stock cooked down and gentled with cream.
For dessert there is fragile caramelized lemon tart with Gelato Fresco raspberry ice. And when it's time to leave, we're getting our own coats from the rack where we hung them up ourselves, while two waitstaff chill at the bar.
The next time we dine at Cru our server hangs up our coats. She is affable, but has no clue what's on the plates. She tells us the Arctic char has been cured in salt, sugar and citrus. It's a good story, but the char is no more cured than I am; it's fresh and perfectly cooked, charmingly garnished with julienne of preserved lemons and barely sautéed fennel. Before that Chef jazzed up raw tuna by mixing it with cooked seasoned eel. Atop this creative tuna tartare is a mash of edamame with tiny cucumber bits for cool.
When she brings the lamb shank I ask what's on top of it. She says it's candied chestnuts but no, it's olive paste with puréed edamame on top. Which marries surprisingly well with lamb, as does deep frying the braised lamb shoulder in gossamer tempura batter and putting one sweet toothsome candied chestnut on top of it.
That evening, dessert is a chocolate marquise, the sort of dark dense chocolate that brings chocoholics to our knees. But again we have to get our own coats from the kinda cheesy rack, and we're hard pressed to understand how such wonderful cooking -- and its almost $200 price tag -- can fit with such amateurish service. The food and service are a terrible mismatch, which is a pity given that the room is as pretty as the plates. Cru is located in a sensitive reno of a 1930's Art Deco Woolworth's store, with ochre walls and gorgeous architectural grace notes all on a circular theme -- dropped ceiling circles, huge circular lampshade light fixtures, one enormous circular fixture holding pillar candle look-alikes. We are left with two questions: Will Chef Waite move downtown? Or will he stay and wait until they fix the service?
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