Restaurant Review: La Société

Can I believe my eyes? Spank in the middle of Bloor Street’s Mink Mile is this Parisian bistro spilling out of the Colonnades’ apartment complex into a jolly little sidewalk café. Nostalgics are indulging a cinq à sept, once the favourite window for dangerous liaisons. Take that you bloggers who’ve recently been assailing Toronto as funless. And the fun continues upstairs in La Société itself. Nightclub king Charles Khabouth, who is fast becoming the city’s most ambitious restaurauteur, has given the former Dynasty premises a splendid makeover. The space is forbiddingly wide and low. At Dynasty, I felt I was living the Sherlock Holmes story where a man is trapped in a room with a slowly descending ceiling. But fears of ending up like The Engineer’s Thumb are banished by the newly installed stained glass ceiling, channelling that of Paris’ venerable Bofinger brasserie, which La Société evokes in its rich art nouveau decor, dark wood, soft lighting, sparkling tile floors, a long zinc bar and a carefully crafted casualness.

La Société looks like a brasserie, which is bistro plus, a big restaurant with long hours. The food is earthy favourites, a rich paté, onion soup, steak frites, rillettes. La Société’s menu isn’t as authentic as that of long-running Le Sélect — what’s eggs Benedict doing on a French menu? But we’re in fusion city where tweaking is the tradition.

I went a couple of times to sample La Société — and bearing in mind that it’s only just opened and the kitchen hasn’t had much time to shake down, I am focusing on concepts.

In Paris, fruits de mer is a spectacular three-tier platter of fresh North Sea bounty. Here, presentation of the $65 platter is dramatic but the fish underwhelms. A handful of farmed scarlet Thai shrimp, eight oysters and six pieces each of tuna and salmon sashimi. Only the oysters are fresh, and considering we’re in Oyster City, we wonder why we are offered only Malpeques. Farmed Thais are the blandest shrimp. And why are we given frozen farmed Atlantic salmon when Mike’s Fish in the St. Lawrence Market reports excellent Pacific Sockeye and Whole Foods has wonderful Copper River salmon from Alaska?

Truffle-scented mushroom soup ($12) is thick as porridge with a drowned crouton in the bottom.

Excellent steak tartare with a pretty poached quail’s egg on top ($16).

Fresh foie gras ($24) comes with a pear and port reduction, which spread on the accompanying brioche tastes pleasantly like breakfast.

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