Grill 41
100 Elgin St. (in the Lord Elgin Hotel), 613-569-2126,
grill41.ca
Open:
daily from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Prices:
mains at dinner from $22 to $69
Access:
fully accessible
The veteran Ottawa chef René Rodriguez doesn’t need me to sing his praises, but here goes anyway.
Back in the fall of 2012, when I was just getting settled into this reviewing gig, a dinner at Rodriguez’s restaurant Navarra blew my mind. The Murray Street business served vibrant, elevated dishes energized by the culinary inspirations of Mexico, which is where Rodriguez’s family is from. After Navarra closed in 2017, Rodriguez later ran the kitchen at the upscale Italian restaurant Orto in the Glebe. There, we also found the food impressive.
Even if you haven’t eaten Rodriguez’s best efforts, you may well have rooted for him during his much-publicized TV cooking escapades. He won Top Chef Canada in 2014. On the 2017 Food Network show Beat Bobby Flay, Rodriguez did just that, prevailing over the American mega-chef.
So, this week’s disheartening mystery is why the dishes we’ve had at the Lord Elgin Hotel’s Grill 41, where Rodriguez has been the chef since last fall, have ranged from alright to so-so to disappointing.
Since at least mid-November, Rodriguez has held that position at the venerable downtown hotel, reporting to the Lord Elgin’s executive chef Neil Mather, while the restaurant itself is owned and operated by food services giant Sodexo Canada. The revamped menu now includes a slew of “René Rodriguez signature dishes,” designated with “RR” beside them.
And yet, during my two lunch visits and one dinner, we too often found those dishes and others were scarcely items of which an accomplished, famous chef should be proud. Some were too casually made, such as an appetizer of dry, overcooked octopus, or too casually conceived, like the entry-level beet salad awash in frisée. The high prices of dishes compounded our disatisfactions.
Rodriguez told me this week of the hours he works at Lord Elgin, which are from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., five days a week. (He also works at Mercadito, the taco-based business in the Queen St. Fare food hall.) He was not in the kitchen when we had dinner. Nor was he hands-on with our lunches. But how much should that matter? I know that the dinner at Navarra that wowed me years ago was prepared while Rodriguez was absent from his kitchen, by talented cooks who could assemble Rodriguez’s dazzling creations.
At Grill 41, we ate best when we had less ambitious fare at our two lunches. Thanks to the heavy-on-the-umami quality of the “RR” truffle burger (eight ounces of ground chuck, bolstered by truffled triple cream brie and mushroom jam), its $25 splurge was palatable, even if its fries were mediocre. The “RR” watercress salad, which matched the greens with cured tuna gravlax, deviled egg and olive powder ($21) was a simple dish, but all of its components were satisfyingly in place.
At lunch, we also tried the oddly designated “RR” Wolfgang Puck pizza ($24), made with Alfredo sauce, shiitake mushroom, arugula, radicchio and truffle, which was reasonably tasty, but also too crisply cooked. For a non-“RR” dish, we went for the highly recommended “Michael Smith” chowder, which must owe its name to the fact that the P.E.I.-based star chef helped develop Grill 41’s menu in 2011. While the thickly creamy seafood chowder was expensive ($19) and looked as if it had been doled out haphazardly, at least it was generously stocked with shrimp, lobster and other ingredients that were almost surprisingly toothsome and fresh.
Our dinner at Grill 41, though, was more uneven and included some “RR” dishes that flopped.
Of four appetizers, best was the ostentatiously named “RR — Grill 41 signature steak tartare” ($21), which was roughly chopped, adequately seasoned and enjoyable, although I’d say that its ingredients could have sung a little louder. Bear in mind, too, that there are slightly cheaper tartares in town that by comparison make you say “Wow!”
We were perplexed by the sea of Granny Smith apple emulsion that almost drowned four seared scallops ($19). While not a dud, the dish lacked the finesse you’d want from a scallops starter. Dry and flavour-deprived “RR” grilled octopus was a big letdown ($18) that made us scrape the plate for the meagre consolation of burnt honey. The menu also mentione pork belly being a component of the dish, but it was MIA. The “RR” house beet salad ($18) seemed off-puttingly thrown-together, made with slow-roasted squash that felt tired and an alarming amount of frisée.
Wild mushroom risotto ($22 and not an “RR” dish) was massively portioned and acceptable, but fell short of the more flavourful and al-dente rice treat I can make for myself. The “RR” grilled chicken supreme ($31) looked overcooked and was too dry. The side casserole of vegetables was a nice touch, but the chicken’s morel butter sauce tasted more of salt than of prized mushrooms.
Putting the “grill” in Grill 41 were the menu’s several steak-based dishes. We tried the “RR” 10-ounce striploin “steak frites” with Roquefort butter, fries and salad. While it was the best of our three mains, it was also priced high enough ($39) for us to expect perfection.
Let’s put it this way: These and other dishes did not instill confidence that we should later order the $69 “RR” surf-and-turf of filet mignon and butter-poached lobster, Robuchon potatoes, lobster sauce Américaine and broccoli gratin, no matter how much it appealed on the menu.
Another downer: the choice of desserts consisted that night of a standard issue house-made crème brûlée and a few brought-in items made by Pasticceria Gelateria Italiana in Little Italy. Perhaps this is the Sodexo way, but it’s hard to square with a $69 surf-and-turf dinner.
Had my budget allowed, we would have tried some of Grill 41’s reasonably priced two-ounce cocktails and martinis. But that’s a stone we left unturned.
Service from three different servers ranged from efficient and anonymous to effusive but also somewhat slack and lacking in polish to brusque. Two of three times, we did not feel attended to or cared for.
Reached this week, executive chef Mather responded to a synopsis of my thoughts with: “We’re very happy with René and since November, when we launched his dishes we have had great feedback and the culinary team is growing with him as they continue to learn more about his style and dishes.
“We are about to make more changes to the menu and add some other dishes from René. Also, we are working on a service training program to constantly improve our guest experience.”
When my predecessor, Anne DesBrisay, reviewed Grill 41 in February 2011, its appearance, following a renovation, didn’t do much for her. She called the bi-level room “remarkably unremarkable … beige and brown and bland, filled with composite wood, fake Benjaminas, hotel-issue carpet and Home Depot-ish lights. About the only interesting bit is the long wood-like cupboard of wine, behind which is tucked a private dining room.” I would say that nine years later, very little has changed.
Searching for a plus side, I would say I liked Grill 41 more than my predecessor did. She approved of the Michael Smith chowder, but sent back gnocchi that were “hard little floury pellets.” She deemed the macaroni and cheese inedible and found a pork chop so “desperately dry” that it was removed from her bill. In late 2019 and 2020, we ate better than that.
But the magic of Rodriguez’s cooking could scarcely be felt in the dishes we had. Of course, all the “RRs” on the menu were meant to entice and raise expectations. But the marketing rang hollow. Grill 41, whether Rodriguez was there or not, needed to deliver much less drab, overpriced food.
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