Atelier Thuet
171 E. Liberty St., Toronto
416-603-2777
$45 for lunch or brunch for two with wine, tax and tip
For a Frenchman to call his second restaurant an "atelier" and then append his name is an act of daring and perhaps hubris. And Marc Thuet, who has named his Liberty Village satellite Atelier Thuet, cannot be unaware of such eponymous establishments as Atelier de Joël Robuchon, the Paris resto where superstar chef Joël Robuchon dishes his fab food in an informal atmosphere.
At Atelier Thuet, we enter the dining area through a patisserie with jewel-like pastries and charcuterie in the display cases and a few café tables for grabbing a bite. Hopes are high for Thuet food at Swiss Chalet prices, especially after the place was named one of the city's top 10 new restaurants by Toronto Life.
The dining room does have belle époque glamour, as befits a Frenchman of impeccable taste. A high red ceiling, two fabulous chandeliers made of red twigs and flocked red-brocade chairs all give the impression that we are in a kinder, gentler age and place. Which impression is quickly dispelled when you notice that there are not one but two TVs mounted on the walls. What does college basketball have to do with la vie en rose?
We also soon question what Atelier Thuet has to do with French epicurean grace. It's weekend brunch but there is no fresh OJ available. And they supposedly specialize in Thuet's house-made charcuterie, but, after asking two servers, we still can't find out what's on our charcuterie plate. They both agree on the prosciutto, the headcheese and the salami - all three fattier than they need to be - but one calls the mostly fat bacon look-alike bacon, while the other says it's smoked pork belly. Whatever it is, this item is about 80-per-cent fat, which, even to a lifelong carnivore and animal-fat addict like me, is gross. In my world, uncooked pig fat is a garnish and ought not to be the main event.
The pork and pork liver pâté on the charcuterie plate is less greasy than the pork belly, but not by much. Its pork liver taste is balm to carnivorous palates, but do we really need not one but two layers of pure pork fat in the pâté, rendering it a cardiac minefield? Just for fun, we took home six slices of the aforementioned pork belly from the charcuterie plate and, pretending it was bacon, fried it up. It made pretty good bacon, and gave up over a quarter cup of fat when heated. Which clearly we were supposed to eat on the charcuterie plate.
I have charcuterie credentials. When my superego (the voice of the health cop) isn't looking, I hoover prosciutto (preferably with a big chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano), bresaola and pig crackling. And giving up foie gras isn't going well for me. But the charcuterie at Atelier Thuet has more fat and less flavour than the similarly titled platter at the Black Hoof, another carnivore temple in Toronto. The scoop of chicken liver, moreover, is a dime-a-dozen purée that hardly befits the city's anointed king of charcuterie. In Toronto's restaurant press, Atelier Thuet has been lionized lately, but we are wondering who the emperor's tailor is.
Frankly, the place feels like a sinking ship. They used to serve dinner, but have ceased doing so because, according to both our server at brunch one day and a Thuet staffer on the phone, "there wasn't enough business." But which came first, the chicken or the egg - or, more specifically, Atelier Thuet's eggs Benedict? One of my most cherished ways to sin, eggs Benedict are dangerously enchanting, but not here: The hollandaise sauce is not lemony, and there is not enough of it. And atop the croissant base we have both ham and smoked salmon, which (although they are both of excellent provenance) is weird. (I love both ham and smoked salmon, but together they compete with each other. And the menu does call the dish a "duo of egg Benedict with egg Norvegienne," but this suggested to me that there would be one trad egg Benny and one with smoked salmon. Not so.)
Then there is croque madame, which is also one of my beloved foods. You don't get much closer to godliness than by frying up Emmental cheese, good ham and French sandwich bread with a little béchamel sauce and then adding an egg (fried or poached) on top. And you would think that, for Marc Thuet, who is a superb French chef, this would be like shooting goldfish in a barrel. But what if M. Thuet has lost interest in his atelier and isn't supervising the cooks there? What if he's too busy doing brunch at Bite Me, his principal place on King Street West? What if he has decided that Liberty Village is over-supplied with restaurants and he's going to let Atelier Thuet die a natural death?
Any of those hypotheses could explain why the croque madame at Atelier Thuet featured bread cut so thick that it overshadowed the fillings, a paucity of both cheese and béchamel sauce and a poached egg served on the side instead of on top. We could, of course, have moved the egg. But the eye eats first, and seeing that lonely egg on the side of the plate made me sad.
At a subsequent lunch, we sat for 10 minutes (with only one other table occupied) before a waiter came to us. None of the terrific Thuet bread ever arrived, and when we asked for menus, the waiter said they don't have menus, just a daily special. He then recited a list of items, from which we chose a badly overcooked burger and undercooked, hard-in-the-centre pasta with rabbit confit, pancetta and over-salted heavy cream sauce.
The lights are on at Atelier Thuet, but nobody's home.
Now you see him, now you don't: Chef Greg Couillard has decamped yet again, saying goodbye to Hazelton Lanes restaurant Spice Room. In an e-mail message dated April 18, he wrote: "I have found my paradise in Ajijic, a small fishing village on beautiful Lake Chapala in the heart of Jalisco, Mexico."
Erratum: Franco Agostino (ex-owner of Imperia) is no longer the owner of Franco Inc. at Yonge and St. Clair. We apologize for saying this was so.
Changes: For those who may not have heard the news, the delectable Perigee in Toronto's Distillery District has closed, because of a lack of business. And Yannick Bigourdan and David Lee have sold Splendido to its manager and chef, leaving themselves free to focus on their wildly successful Nota Bene.