#nleats

Given the relatively small population of St. John’s and environs (just over a quarter million people, give or take), we have a lot of restaurants. What we don’t have in abundance is fine dining; in fact, Raymonds might be the only one in the province. Despite having eaten at a lot of restaurants over the last few years, we have avoided Raymonds for a few reasons: it’s far from cheap, the menu is not published in advance, and it can be hard to get a table there. I had precisely zero experience with a tasting menu before the night, and I was slightly concerned that multiple dishes would be something I didn’t like. As you may know if you’ve read any of my reviews here before, I have been trying to expand my tastes somewhat. A recent promotion at work gave us the excuse we needed to celebrate, so we bit the bullet and booked the table. We had no idea what was waiting for us.

A caveat: Raymonds is not for everyone. While the staff are incredibly accommodating and patient in explaining the menu options and ingredients, the choices are relatively set. There’s a five- and seven-course tasting menu, and a three-course menu that is somewhat à la carte. If one of the courses is something you just can’t eat they will try to make a substitution, but ultimately it’s down to the chef. The price is also high: the five-course menu is $125 per person, with an additional $80 if you go with the wine pairings (selected by the in-house sommelier and manager Jeremy Bonia). Not an everyday outing, that’s for sure. 

We went for the five-course option, which actually ended up being more like eight courses by the time all the extras were provided. As adventurous as I wanted to get, I couldn’t stretch to trying scallops so we were able to substitute them for a beef option (more on that soon). We opted against the wine pairings this time, though I think when we go back we’ll take that plunge too. 

You can tell a meal is going to be something special when the bread and butter they bring you to open the palate is better than most appetizers you’ve had, ever. House-made sourdough would have been great on its own, but it was served with whipped house-made smoked butter. I had never before had smoked butter, and now I am ruined forever. All future butter will either be smoked or inferior. I could have eaten it with a spoon.

This was somehow the beet dish, a beet and apple salad with ricotta, toasted red fife, and a topping of both beet and apple “glass” and some sort of hardened foam that melted in your mouth. I really don’t know how to describe this, except for “total tongue assault”. The combination of flavours and textures made every part of the palate sing. The apples were tart and crisp, the beets had their characteristic sweetness but were also pickled, the ricotta was exceedingly light and creamy, and the red fife gave a nutty undertone. The “glass” on the top was made from the juices of the apples and beets used in the dish, somehow turned solid and wafer-thin. If you can picture the thin film of ice that forms on puddles just as the temperature drops below freezing, that’s the texture. The flavour was intense with a subtle smoky, almost ashy taste that worked so well with everything else. The bread-looking stuff on the top was the foam that served almost as a tuile, and added a really light and airy crisp. When the waiter explained the dish as if he himself had conceived of it, I knew this was going to be unlike any meal I had ever had. 

On to the pasta course, a moose ragout on orrechiette with more ricotta and finely-diced carrot, topped with a toasted breadcrumb. In the 20 years I have lived in Newfoundland, I have had so many people tell me that I would love moose. So I dutifully try it and dislike it, until the next person tells me that nobody else knows how to cook it and I should try it the way they cook it. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Now I can legitimately say that nobody else knows how to cook moose. This was tender almost to melting point, with a hint of the earthiness that had been overpowering and off-putting to me before. The ricotta here was of a different texture and flavour than in the previous dish, and it gave an excellent additional dimension to the dish. The pasta was pleasantly al dente, and the whole dish felt like a warm hug from the inside. High-end comfort food if you will. Although I did really enjoy this, I didn’t get the intensity of flavour from the ragout that I expected. It needed a bit more punch and depth I think. Sarah loved it more than me, but I still really enjoyed it. 

Left to my own devices I would not normally order ribeye this rare. It was served in a veal and chanterelle jus (not the last time we will see chanterelles tonight) with a parsnip puree and charred broccoli and leeks. I just...I have no words. If you watch any cooking shows you have heard the term caramelization, but I never really fathomed how important it was until I ate this. No fancy seasonings, no special sauces, just a depth of beefy salty flavour that seemed so wonderfully natural. The jus added even more depth to the meat, and almost seemed to bridge the gap between the beef and the vegetables. The parsnip puree was perfectly smooth and slightly sweet, and the charred leeks in particular were beautifully done. “Meat and two veg” might be a British cliché for Sunday dinner, but this was that old chestnut rehashed and mastered. 

Lamb three ways was up next: loin on the left, tenderloin on the right and lamb belly underneath. The loin was a touch disappointing and lacking in flavour, although the tenderloin made up for it. Both cuts were greatly enhanced by (yet-again) perfect caramelization. Sarah loves lamb and enjoyed hers much more, but her loin looked less fatty than mine so that may have been the difference. 

I had not even heard of lamb belly before (as a meal, obviously I know lambs had bellies...), and it was an interesting offering. Definitely less fatty than the more common pork belly, but with a flavour that was actually pronounced. It was glazed with a black apple glaze and garnished with unripe blackcurrants, but the flavour on the glaze was either too subtle for me or just didn’t come through. I don’t remember what the jus was but it was delicious. On the side we had more parsnip puree and sliced celeriac. I’ve seen celeriac in supermarkets before and it did not look appealing, but the flavour was like parsnip with a hint of celery. Probably because it is related to them both. 

Next up we had a “pre-dessert” as our waiter Julian called it - blueberries poached in brown butter with a chanterelle and blueberry pound cake, chanterelle meringue (!!) and chanterelle ice cream (!!!). Again, something I would never in a million years ordered on its own. Who’d even think of chanterelle ice cream? That said, this was a surprisingly good a refreshing amuse-bouche before the dessert. I am not normally a fan of blueberries, but they were good here with the brown butter. Pound cake is almost always delightful, and the addition of chanterelles almost seemed to lighten the usually dense cake. The real treats though were the meringue and ice cream. Sarah isn’t a big meringue fan but even she really enjoyed the lightness of it, and the ice cream had such a clean and subtle flavour that I finally understand the term “palette cleanser.” A bonus course, you say? Don’t mind if I do!

It’s not often I have to google an ingredient, but I had never heard of sea buckthorn before. One of the things mentioned in the description was that its flavour is enhance by something called maltolactic fermentation. Lactic, as in milk? Well that’s helpful. It was served as a curd, topped with a streusel and milk sorbet. The flavour is very hard to quantify: it reminded me of passion fruit, sour orange, mango and bakeapple all at the same time. The milk sorbet did wonders to mellow the tartness of the berries, which Sarah found stronger than I did. Definitely a unique flavour, but one I really want to work into a cheesecake somehow. To cap the meal off (in addition to our coffees), a lemon verbeena salted caramel was served, A delightful little treat to send us home.

Aside from how much I enjoyed everything, I think the biggest surprise to me was that despite the small serving sizes I was pleasantly full at the end of the meal. The service was impeccably friendly and helpful, not at all snobby as once could be forgiven for thinking. The decor really is reminiscent of every high-end restaurant you’ve seen on TV, complete with waiters with one arm in the small of their back. If you have an occasion to celebrate and/or the income to manage it, you owe it to yourself to visit Raymonds, It is not a meal you eat so much as it is a food experience, and I am a more rounded person for having done so.

It’s hardly a secret that my love for Thai food is all but unsurpassed. Although we have Thai Express in the mall and the delicious Yes, Thai in the various markets around the metro area, St. John’s has been devoid of a sit-down Thai restaurant for many years. This has caused me no small amount of envy of my friends in other places.

For the unfamiliar, Thai cuisine is quite different from the Chinese food to which you are likely accustomed. While there is a good deal of heat in many dishes, I would say that the defining flavours are peanut, coconut milk and Thai basil. The last is a pungent aromatic that is almost anise-like in flavour and holds up to high-temperature cooking better than sweet basil. 

Gingergrass has been promising that it was “coming soon” since at least January. Located in The Mix building on Duckworth Street, it has a really clean and modern feel with a very cool suspended swinging bench at one of the tables. 

Of course, you’re here for the food. The menu presented many choices, but the best of them for us on the night was the Group Meal for Two. Normally these options are limited in choice and don’t suit my tastes, At Gingergrass there are three different sets of group meals for two, three or four people. Even within the various sets there is a reasonable amount of customization available. 

You may notice a theme here: I kept tasting the food before taking pictures, because I really wanted to get this stuff in my face, For the appetizer each of us got a spring roll (pork or veggie, I went with pork) and a chicken satay skewer. The chili sauce for the spring roll was delicious, but if there was one disappointment all night it was that spring roll. It wasn’t bad, but it was very heavy on the pork which left the rest of the ingredients floundering to be noticed. That said, it seemed to me that it was made and wrapped fresh in the kitchen that day.  The satay was different; I am not used to the chicken being curried, but it worked. That peanut sauce though? I would buy that by the jar, right now. Thai cooking does often combine sweet and savoury elements, and this sauce fits squarely in that category. Thai Express has one that is really good, and this surpasses it. Worth the trip for this alone.

Next up was the soup course (yes, there are four courses in this set meal). We each had the choice between hot and spicy chicken soup, and coconut (tom kha gai) soup. The hot and spicy soup was not actually that spicy in terms of heat, but it was delicious. Very tomato-forward but carrying a lot of the flavours I expected from a Thai soup. I would have preferred several types of mushrooms, and maybe a little less tomato, but the soup did not suffer from these things. However the coconut soup was incredible. I was hesitant about the flavour, especially because of the colour. I should not have been. While wonderfully sweet, it still carried a lot of aromatic flavour and even a touch of heat. Coconut milk is such a great vehicle for the spices Thai food likes to use, and everything in this bowl was just off the charts good. Sarah claimed it for herself and I am so jealous that I need to go back and get my own. 

Our choices for entrées were peanut beef curry (the favourite of one the staff members) and basil chicken. One minor gripe here: the set meal gives you a choice between vermicelli and jasmine rice, but does not give you enough of either to accompany two different dishes for two people. One of the servers brought us additional rice at no charge, so that fixed the issue. 

The peanut curry was amazing, like they took beef and cooked it slowly in the peanut dipping sauce from earlier mixed with red curry paste. For my money though it was beaten out by the basil chicken. It might have been a little heavy on the basil, but there was a sweetened soy flavour which really shone through under that. The savoury note was greatly appreciated next to the sweeter curry flavours, and I could have eaten another plate of it.

Of course we had to end the meal with the classic deep fried banana. I’ve had this a few times before, but it hasn’t been in tempura batter. That lighter coating was a real game-changer, as I usually find this dish too heavy. I might be crazy, but I would love to try it with that delightful peanut sauce over the top. Weird? Probably. But damn, it could be great.

At some point, a burger is no longer just a burger. At some point it crosses the border squarely into “meal on a bun” territory. In my two prior years with this contest, Celtic Hearth has tiptoed expertly along that border with the grace of a tightrope artiste, somehow managing to stay squarely on that imaginary line in the...well, beef. This year though it’s as though they abandoned all pretense of trying to present a sensible-sized entry and just threw an entire day’s calories on a metal tray and hoped we came hungry. It’s a 6oz Moose burger, topped with mac and cheese, beer braised ham, crispy onions, and spicy ketchup. Words don’t really do this monster justice:

Yes, that is breaded and fried mac and cheese on top of the patty. And ham on top of that. This is a beast. To my surprise though, it did compact down pretty well at the expense of only some of the macaroni. To my even bigger surprise, these flavours worked. It’s easy on a burger this size to get overwhelmed, or for things to get lost, but nothing did here. The ham was a delight, shredded to avoid another big chunky bite and intensely flavourful to boot. The patty was either not all moose or was just as well cooked as the one at Merchant Tavern, and the crispy onions and spicy ketchup were definitely more than an afterthought.

I was also impressed by how well this held together. Some macaroni escaped to be sure, but the bun held its form and each bite gave me a good mix of tastes. Seriously though, I could eat that ham all day. The concept of this burger, a family pot luck where everyone brings a different dish, is also one of my favourite things about the contest. Tell me a story with my food!

One unfortunate downside is that this burger really is just huge, and it comes with three sides as well. One of them, the coleslaw, actually might have been better on the burger. I had trouble finishing everything, and Sarah’s daughters couldn’t finish it despite sharing one. The pickle on the top was too greasy and heavy for me, especially after everything else. And of course we do have to consider the structural integrity issues because, even though it was able to hold up, there was still a lot of escapage.