Skip to main content
review

Photos by Jennifer Roberts for The Globe and Mail.

The room

Martin Brudnizki’s remake is elegant and classic but with a seam of youthful energy sewn through: The banquettes are done in rich, two-tone greens and lollipop corals and the lighting now is soft and warm, particularly around the room’s long, busy bar. The acoustics are perfect. The natural leather dining chairs are cushy-soft enough that you may never want to get up. And that room, once a hard sell, is crammed now at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The chef

Café Boulud has also refined and refocused its menu, with an emphasis on brasserie classics both well and less known, many of them executed with knee-weakening finesse by a kitchen run by the Montpellier-raised chef de cuisine Sylvain Assié.

The food

This being a proper French restaurant, on every plate there is stuff under the stuff – creamy-centred white coco beans and smoke-and-garlic-imbued eggplant under the lamb; a nutty black rice, bok choi and lobster knuckle hash under that rotisserie lobster – and the under-stuff is almost always as pleasantly decadent and delicious as what’s on top.

The beignets de calmar and the pate en croute Canadien.
The blanquette au vert.
The quenelle de brochet.
The profiteroles dessert.