La Récolte Espace Local

Diva #1’s favourite Foodie Guy is truly a treasure! They’ve both grown up in the restaurant business and now they spend their days eating their way across the city. With a love of food comes a love of talking about food. After a boozy Christmas party, Diva #1 met up with her favourite Foodie Guy to talk about the house party antics of the night before. Topics included who got too drunk, who slept over, who fooled around with you, who should have fooled around with who, and other classy discussions amongst friends. We will never be too old to be ridiculous!

Foodie Guy recommended La Récolte Espace Local for our very late hung over lunch. Open on Thursday and Friday after 6, and on Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 3pm, La Récolte Espace Local has some odd opening hours and a chalkboard menu with just a few items. They offer cooking courses, catering and events, and their tagline is “bio-local-responsable”. When you hear about this restaurant, it’s all about how they try to only use local products and freshness, which is their mantra. We were sold!

We started our boozy hangover lunch with more alcohol. That’s the true cure for a hangover! The gin chaud was made with Piger Henricus, one of our favourite gins, warmed up nicely with tea and apples. It warmed the soul! Their homemade mimosa was made with bubbly and apple cider along with house made rhubarb juice, this was an interesting twist on the traditional mimosa, but the gin chaud was the better cocktail of the two. We ordered 3 out of their 4 dishes; even though we were just two we wanted to try everything. Our waiter made a comment that we must be hungry and we just laughed!

Everything ostentatiously arrived on one large platter, each dish mixed into the next dish because let’s face it, everything just worked really well together. The colours were brilliant and the taste of each ingredient was so fresh and flavourful. The oyster mushroom omelet with cheddar was out of this world. A Bok Choy salad with carrots added crunch and freshness to the cheesy omelet with its perfectly cooked mushrooms. Grilled baguette was provided to scoop up the omelet’s remnants.

Homemade porchetta ravioli with parsnips in a butter sage sauce exploded in our mouths with flavour. A soft boiled egg lay cracked open over the ravioli gushing into the butter sage sauce for added richness. If this wasn’t enough, crispy fried but still sweet Brussels sprout leaves were mixed into a salad of greens and tossed on top of the ravioli.

The ravioli really wowed us, the sauce was exquisite and the addition of the egg yolk added a brunch-like element. But La Récolte Espace Local did not stop wowing us there; the grilled cheese with Matane shrimp was something that we had never imagined. Montreal restaurants don’t buy enough Quebec Matane shrimp, which is a high quality regional shrimp. The grilled cheese at La Récolte Espace Local was stuffed with cheese, Matane shrimp that were chopped up in large chunks and tossed in béchamel with cubed butternut squash. We have never tasted a grilled cheese like this; it was intense and very creamy. The word decadent does not do it justice!

We left La Récolte Espace Local feeling quite in love with our city, its organic products and its fabulous restaurants. Hopefully more restaurants will take a page from La Récolte Espace Local’s book and use local products. Just look at the photos of our lunch, everything is vibrant and fresh looking. Trust us, it tasted even better than it looks!

Our Rating: Always on Thursdays

http://la-recolte.ca/

 

Tagged: 764 Rue Bélanger, bistro, Brunch, Butter Sage, Catering, Chalkboard Menu, Cooking Courses, Fried Brussel Sprouts, Grilled Cheese, H2S 1G6, La Récolte, La Récolte Espace Local, La Récolte Espace Local Montreal, Local Products, Lunch, Matane Shrimp, Montreal, Montreal Brunch, Montreal Restaurant, Omelette, Organic, organic food, Oyster Mushrooms, Porchetta Ravioli, Ravioli, Saint Édouard