Kensington Market has not exactly been a hotbed of fine cooking. There's Agave y Aguacate for fabulous Mexican, but it's takeout. There's Torito for super Spanish, but you sit on backless benches and wait for a table. As for Supermarket, it's far more funky than fine. But the arrival of Le Kensington Bistro on Augusta may be a turning point for the neighbourhood. Could the market be going upscale, from bicycles and tattoos to confit and crème brulée?
Jean-Charles Dupoire and Sylvain Brissonet from Loire Casual Gourmet on Harbord Street bought the former La Palette, painted the outside glorious sunshine yellow and the inside deep ochre, added French doors opening onto the tiny front patio and uncomfortable French café chairs with oak veneer tables.
Word is that chef Dupoire will rotate between Harbord Street and Le Kensington Bistro on Augusta, with Scott Draper (a cook from their Harbord place) as sous in the new resto. It's the old two-places-at-once game. Works for some people.
Le Kensington's blackboard menu, which changes daily, reads classic French bistro, but the question of course is: Can Mr. Dupoire achieve the level of French artistry of Loire when he's not always there?
The answer is: Pretty much. As with Loire, the savouries at Le Kensington are terrific and the sweets suck.
Beef tartare is hand-cut into perfect chunks for bite and savour, the meat respected with restrained spicing. Mackerel escabeche is "cooked" by its marinade, which has eliminated the mackerel's grease. Topping the fish with sweated onion also sweetens it. Corn soup is nicely mellow, with good strong corn savour, but the garden salad is breathtakingly banal.
And what could be more bistro than skate-wing meunière, the fish perfectly cooked, its firm new-potato salad so French countryside and sweet? As are well-wrought moules marinières. The rosemary-scented frites, however, are slightly greasy and tough, and we wonder if chef has forgotten that his people cook their frites twice.
But we adore the seared sweetbreads, fabulously crunchy outside and soft at heart. And to call their side a garnish is rather an understatement: Hen-of-the-woods mushrooms for richness, barely wilted escarole for bitter, and snow-pea fragments for sweet, all held together by credible sauce diable. The sweetbreads are outdone only by the crispest of confit duck leg with more new potatoes and wilted greens. Forget the duck's sauce a l'orange – it seems as if that's what the kitchen did too. No orange taste. They did much better on the bercy butter (butter creamed with white wine, shallots and parsley) that spikes a delightful small steak with lots of lightly sauteed hen-of-the-woods mushrooms.
In homage to their French home, the two partners also offer takeout rotisserie chicken. It's perfectly cooked, moist and tender. But the sides need work: Ratatouille is proper and pleasant, but there are those less-than-stellar fries, and the succotash is unfortunate – it's fresh corn (good, sweet) with green beans and dried white beans. Correct basic ingredients, but where are the butter and cream (or perhaps bacon) of succotash tradition, the sin that takes succotash from merely vegetable to fun 'n' games?
Like its big brother Loire, Le Kensington's savoury far outshines its sweet. Cherry clafoutis – halfway between a custard and a cake, and one of France's best bistro desserts – starts with fresh dark cherries but descends into mediocrity. The ratio is wrong: too much fruit for the batter; the texture is rubbery. And there's a skin on top. Custards are sensitive creatures. Their integrity must be respected. Similarly, the lemon tart feels more like something from the Jell-O school of cooking. We like the chocolate layer cake, but the pastry is tough.
Bistros often have lousy desserts – their friendly price point typically doesn't allow them to hire a pastry chef. But who really cares? One hardly needs dessert after hoovering the likes of Le Kensington's duck confit and bercy butter. So keep your eye on the prize: At 30 seats, Le Kensington is a sweet little bistro – and the canary in the coal mine, as it were, for Kensington Market. Watch it happen.