Les brumes du coude Moncton
The name of the French/Acadian restaurant in Moncton is catchy, multi-layered and allusive: roughly translated as the “mists of the elbow” as might be found at the bend of a river, especially in Canada’s at times foggy, misty east coast.
But, according to staff, the phrase is cheeky and playful because it might also evoke the back-and-forth elbow-action as one shakes a sauté pan flipping and tossing hot food and in doing so flipping and tossing up some steam, liquid and perhaps a short burst of flame.
All of that helps capture, linguistically, the casual essence of number 91 on Canada’s 100 Best restaurants.
The small menu is nicely packed with big flavour and fine technical execution — several apps and three mains — that comes out of the open, rustic kitchen situated, interestingly, in the visual and multimedia hub “Centre culturel d’Aberdeen.” The venue is a lovely 1898 structure that was once a secondary school — and alma mater to Northrop Frye, one of Canada’s preeminent and iconic literary critics. Given the various meanings layered into the restaurant’s name, that seems a quite suitable coincidence.
Alongside the open kitchen, the background of which is century’ old brick-and-mortar and weathered and rough boards, is a 40-seat open dining room serving bistro dishes and Canadian/Acadian-inspired fare, details of which come via a blackboard.
A well-designed patio overlooking Botsford Street is perfect for outdoor dining on a warm summer night — and is, temperature-wise, cooler than inside. There, waitstaff shuffle a placard-sized blackboard with beverage selections to your table-side. An interesting quirk.
Competent and friendly, staff transition easily between French and English and can explain succinctly both the wines and cocktails as well as the food served with them.
Four snacks for sharing lead off the menu (the ciabatta was mediocre; the burrata very good) followed by five appetizers and a trio of mains that include a tenderloin tartare with beef-fat fries.
Medium-rare bavette is perched on a raft of asparagus and zucchini spears, the latter of which have taken very nicely to a few moments’ charring on the grill, accompanied by a duo of delicate green peppercorn and celeriac sauces.
Tender fletan cheeks are confited in olive oil and nestled prettily on a “summer succotash” with some zucc, cannellini beans and a rich roasted-corn velouté. The halibut is delicately sweet, slightly briny and buttery in texture. It’s a gorgeously colourful, picturesque dish with perhaps the palette of a Monet.
Desserts — we gobbled four of them — are alternately sweet, lemony and tart with summer fruits and are possessed of ample texture contrasts. All were beautiful to look at and appreciate at meal’s end as well.
Attentive service was paced properly throughout the evening allowing for a leisurely but engaged experience with staff promptly responding to a request or question.
It struck me that many of the guests had been to Les brumes du coude previously, and I happened to have noticed a few patrons earlier in the evening as they walked to the restaurant: it would seem that the venue is part of the fabric of the neighbourhood and that of the local food-lovers community in Moncton.
This success might also be the reason that ownership has more recently opened a sister restaurant — Sève bar-apéro — a few minutes away in Dieppe.
