A tasting menu experience at Aiana
Four years ago, Aiana earned a fairly lofty place as No. 14 on Canada’s 100 Best, and likely deservedly so. The restaurant on O’Connor at Queen in the heart of downtown — right at the Parliament LRT station — didn’t make the recent list and perhaps hasn’t returned to those culinary heights for whatever reason.
Say what you will about lists, of course, but it might be that, like Michelin restaurants that give up their stars, Aiana ownership and chefs simply chose not to continue the effort and cost in pursuing the designation. I don’t know, but knowing the industry, I can certainly see that reality. Regardless, having opened about five years ago, things have obviously been streamlined at Aiana — including a return to a business model where tipping is recently back as part of the operations after a flirtation as a no-tipping enterprise.
What is known as “Aiana Restaurant Collective” has also garnered significant praise and shout-outs from all corners of the social media landscape, including Open Table, as a spot for fine dining. The city’s preeminent newspaper restaurant reviewer once pegged it as a possible Michelin “recommended restaurant,” a designation that would mean that that the venue has been found to have above average food but not quite at the Michelin Star or Bib level. Further, if framed awards on dining room walls are any indication, approval for Aiana has come from a few respected industry landmarks, including Wine Spectator.
I love the wide range of restaurants we can visit here, and that certainly includes the time and place for a fine dining experience. Aiana has that covered, yet a recent experience with their tasting menu fell just a bit flat — so perhaps clearly, the energy and impetus to maintain such high standards to be teasing with Michelin has indeed subsided.
The food over the six or seven courses at Aiana (apparently a word that means “everlasting bloom”) was generally very good, with only a couple of lapses. That is not where my quibble lies: it was the overall dégustation menu experience that fell flat as an event that cost $150 per person (not including wine, taxes and gratuity).
Inside the Sun Life Financial building that was once a major steakhouse with outlets in a half-dozen or so Canadian cities, Aiana is a gorgeous venue at once chic and elegant but and comfortable and accessible. The dining room has a sort of dual focus, I’d say: both on the open kitchen, like a thrust theatre stage inviting diners to look in on the narrative that is at play behind the stoves and pass, and on a round central booth table with impressive lighting that immediately draws the eye.
Earlier in the week, I received a phone call from the restaurant asking if I would be selecting the tasting menu or the à la carte menu. I was eager for the tasting menu, but only vague information about the menu was was available. Fine, I thought, that’s often what happens in kitchens. I did, however, learn that the evening would be an “exciting collaboration” with a Montreal chef; I thought, “Cool!,” but wasn’t told the chef’s name or if there was anything special about the menu aside from a general list of dishes that included a “red meat, maybe ribeye.” Again, I was fine with the indeterminacy.
Arriving at Aiana, the greeting was courteous and professional. Service overall was generally bright, attentive, engaged and professional. The tasting menu, presented neatly on heavy-bond paper, listed canapés, tartare, poutine, Fogo Island cod (which is a remarkable product), tenderloin, a dessert called “citrus & mint” and petit fours.
It was an intriguing menu. I assumed that there would be a number of quotation marks involved in the evening (because, obviously, we weren’t getting “poutine” in its traditional sense): the menu was entitled “Molecular Playground,” and even the starkness and paucity of information about the courses piqued interest and anticipation. But there was still, curiously, no indication of the who the collaborating guest chefs were.
The dishes were certainly abundant in molecular magic with spheres of lemon water with a smallest of lavender-coloured petal perched on top, tiny “caviar” of berries, an edible oyster “shell” holding its tartare, a very inventive black and perfect honeycomb tuile, some foams and a pour-at-the-table dashi and such.
The dishes, for the most part, were executed with a deft hand.
Yet still no indication of where the collaborating cooks were from: only that, we were told when we asked, “the chefs in whites were the visiting ones; the chefs with white shirts and black aprons are ours.” On my way to the restroom, I noticed a chef-jacket pocket monogrammed “Ritz-Carlton Montreal.” Could they not have visited the tables and introduced themselves — and their dishes? I found it unfortunate that they didn’t.
I appreciated the seafood canapés — they were delightful, though the tuiles disintegrated as you picked them up (and needed to be eaten immediately, it would seem). Next, a bison tartare dish topped with a sort of “hash brown” shaped slice of brioche was quite generous and delicious but perhaps a bit heavy and in need of a bit more citrus to cut through its duskiness.
The warm dishes included “poutine,” a playful take on the popular dish with sort of curly-twisty “Scooby-Doo” (cavatappi) extruded potatoes (tasty, but sadly only lukewarm). The Fogo Island cod, which I’ve enjoyed and appreciated on several occasions, was served with a pour of dashi at the table and was quite good in its appropriate salt level and flaky tenderness.
Equally good was the Alberta tenderloin, although it was unclear what the second component of the dish was with its morel garnish (a sort of beef “meatloaf,” I asked? But the waiter didn’t know). In any event, the tenderloin itself was silken and buttery and perfectly prepared, though the dish overall needed a bit of brightening in order to lift it from its heavier, wintry orientation.
Wine service (we enjoyed a glass of Prosecco and a scrumptious 2018 Saint-Émilion Les Cadrans de Lassègue) was fine (our waiter handled a broken cork gracefully) as was the orchestrated presentation of dishes at the table. For tasting menus, that is an expectation, but wait-staff might have been better versed as to what components were in the dishes.
As I’ve noted, the tasting menu courses themselves were generally quite good, but it was the event as a whole that fell flat; there just seemed to be no energy around this collaboration. The menu was presented without context (“Molecular Playground” was never explained or referred to), the chefs were never identified in this “exciting collaboration,” and the evening moved from course to course in a rather uninspired fashion which made us feel neither particularly special, nor particularly welcomed.
This lack was underscored when, out of nowhere, the Aiana pastry chef — she was very engaged, charming and pleasant — introduced her desserts: a very cool inside-out citrusy cake shaped perfectly like a lemon with a white chocolate rind and another sweet that included a mini-chocolate tree with candy-floss foliage: it was all quite well executed but didn’t really tie anything together for this molecular gastronomy playground. Petit fours were nice finishes to the meal (though one featured the same crisp pastry cup that appeared with the canapés earlier).
There is a luxe quality to Aiana, to be sure, and I’d like to return for the à la carte menu. The ambience at the restaurant is quite appealing — gazing up at the tall buildings from our table at the window made for a true urban-dining ambience in a major Canadian city — and the food was generally quite good. It’s important to remember that hard-working staff have a lunch service to prep plus a dinner tasting menu (with selections offered à la carte, too) in addition to their regular menu. It’s a lot to pull off, but if you are going to charge $150 for the dégustation menu experience, it needs some excitement and a fuller commitment.
Such a menu is designed specifically for showcasing — for showing off — the kitchen’s range, talent and ability to execute that highlights what a fine-dining restaurant can do, in sum, when firing on all cylinders.
