With fall comes the desire to cozy-up in an intimate setting with your significant other and one of the best restaurants to do that is at Bocata in Old Montreal. My guy and I actually went there, spontaneously for dinner the night that we met, so it’s a nostalgic spot for us. Whether you’re in a relationship or not, it’s still the perfect autumn-winter place to have a comforting dinner with amazing wines. We went recently to try their new fall menu and it still lives up to our warm and fuzzy expectations.
If you’re looking for simple fare, I suggest ordering a soup and a board of sliced pata negra ibérico (Spanish cured ham) with thick slices of tomato and garlic-rubbed bread. Let your sommelier suggest a soothing wine from their selection of some 30 wines that are offered by the glass and voilà, you’ve got a perfect Mediterranean dinner to warm you up. If I were single, that’s likely all I would order, but since I date a meat-and-potato kind of guy, we opted for a series of small plates that Chef Benjamin Léonard proposed from his recent menu. The highlights were: the smoked duck & arugula salad ($14) with an apple vinaigrette, a foie gras and seasonal mushrooms with an apple and 25-year-old Jerez (Spanish sherry vinegar) reduction, and finally the Bourguignon braised beef ($19) with fingerling potatoes, mushrooms and grelot onions. My date also really enjoyed the lobster tail roasted in basil ($18) while I ate the citrus fennel salad that accompanied it.
It wouldn’t be a dinner at Bocata without some unforgettable wine pairings – which we left up to our sommelier, Eduardo who found the perfect wine for each plate. Most of the wines in their cellar are organic and unique private-imports.
Of course our romantic outing wouldn’t have been complete without something sweet, so we shared a hearty homemade brownie topped with a salted caramel sauce and side of seasonal sorbet. A decadent dinner-date happy ending! Now I’m just waiting for our next gourmet walk down memory lane at Bocata.
Bocata Restaurant & Wine Bar
310 Saint Paul Street West
Opening hours:
Sun – Wed : 18h – 22h30
Thu – Sat : 18h – 23h
Find Bocata here:
Website | Facebook | Twitter
