Mogette Bistro, 581 Mount Pleasant Rd., Toronto. 647-350-5772.
$120 for dinner for two with wine, tax and tip.
Amogette is a little white bean from France. Unremarkable really. Also unremarkable is a retired French teacher who decides to open a restaurant, although he might be considered remarkable for his appallingly bad timing in opening this winter.
Gino Muia, however, has the Midas touch in the form of his son, Daniel, who is a chef. When Daniel Muia worked at The Fifth under Didier Leroy, he befriended Philippe Couerdassier, an Alsatian chef. Today, the two friends are co-chefs at Mogette Bistro.
A 29-seat restaurant needs two chefs like Dolly Parton needs a boob job, but Couerdassier does some catering on the side, so it works out. Unfortunately, the one charmless element in an otherwise very charming bistro is the owner, who doesn't seem to do much. He doesn't take orders, bring food or clear tables, but he does buttonhole diners (even if one is in mid-sentence) to ask rather too forcefully for feedback about the food.
M. Muia, though, must be doing something right, because Mogette, save for a few slips, shows some delectable Gallic chops. The French onion soup, for instance, is significantly better than any I have had in Paris in the past few years. Its broth is flavourful yet delicate, while its roof is made with perfectly melted (not overcooked) cheese from the Jura.
What, moreover, could be more French than snails with brie and puff pastry, an old-school Gallic trinity? This indulgence is all cream and butter, a little vessel of nicely crisp pastry filled with earthy snails swimming in brie-based cream sauce. Shades of my lost youth. We throw cholesterol caution to the wind and decide not to care that nobody eats that way any more.
Moules bleu marinière, meanwhile, are weird, but we'll go there. These are small mussels perfectly cooked in the usual white wine sauce but with a decent dose of Roquefort cheese. I hadn't heretofore imagined blue cheese in my moules marinière, but it's interesting. And the side of frites is impeccable - fresh, sweet and crisp.
During our visit, they also did a very fine lentil soup spiked with smoky bacon; M. Couerdassie's roots are showing - and they are delectable.
As an Alsatian, he is a chef in love with smoked, brined and cured meats. Like his countryman Marc Thuet, he was reared on the virtues of marrying smoked pork to almost everything. Not being exactly exciting, lentils can use all the help they can get, and smoky bacon (with a dab of crème fraîche) does it.
Chef Couerdassie also brings it all home with his beautifully wrought choucroute garni, which some say is Alsace-Lorraine's finest creation, gastronomically speaking.
This classic (composed of sausage, pork hock and pork belly on a bed of sauerkraut with potatoes) is often heavy and greasy, with bitter, vinegary sauerkraut. But Mogette's version is lighter than most, the pork full of flavour and unusually light, the 'kraut delicate and the broth rich with flavour.
Tasting a chef's lineage in his cooking is literally the study of oral history. And since both chefs at Mogette have bounced around a fair bit, the influences are interesting. In the decade that Chef Muia has been cooking professionally, he has worked at Café Societa, The Fifth, Célestin, Lumière in Vancouver (as a stagière) and for Jamie Kennedy. Lessons were obviously learned.
As serious foodies know, roasting a chicken is a deceptively simple cooking test. Most overcook it. But Mogette's chicken breast is moist and plump, wrapped in crisped prosciutto and nicely set off with Basque-style pipérade (a little sauté of sweet peppers and onions in olive oil) and red rice pilaf well flavoured with carefully sautéed onions.
That same control makes more of rainbow trout than is usual; the fish is crisp and its triumvirate of sides - gaufrette potatoes, ratatouille and ravigote - sing in harmony. Specifically, the potatoes are ultra-crisp, deep-fried waffle-cut slices; they go down easy with rich ratatouille and black olive ravigote, kissin' cousin to a relish.
But sometimes eager young chefs serve inventions that should have been left on the drawing board. Here, the smoked salmon cannelloni reads far better than it eats. The flavour is AWOL: The salmon isn't smoky, the curried leek fondue it's wrapped around is less than assertive and only the beet salad says something.
Duck confit, meanwhile, is a nicely crisp confit leg with oven-roasted duck breast that is too rare even for a raw meat carnivore like me.
Duck breast served blood red and not even singed on the outside has a sinewy mouth feel. As for its sauce, ouch! Sugary sweet on duck went out with amateurish duck à l'orange. Thank Escoffier, the scalloped potatoes with the duck are quintessentially French - creamy and rich.
The noisettes of lamb, finally, are grilled lamb medallions partnered in the classic French manner with beans.
These little, white dried beans that give the restaurant its name are the classic French accompaniment to lamb for the way their soft texture accepts flavours and complements the delicate sharpness of the meat.
Mogette does mogette beans beautifully, cooking them till they're just soft enough and adding a complex tomato-based sauce that marries beans and lamb in the matter of a classic French navarin. The lamb itself, however, is not the best cut in the world, although a bistro that sells lamb for $25 (especially a bistro just starting out during horrible economic times) simply can't afford to buy premium lamb.
Thanks to its positioning, though, my guess is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Mogette will thrive.
Diners who exercise a pinch of restraint, for instance, can get out of the place for under $100 for two (all in) and the place has a cozy warmth - just what the doctor ordered in these times.
Methinks it will be the little bistro that could.