Gray Jay
300 Preston St., 613-680-0380,
grayjayhospitality.ca
Open:
Tuesday and Wednesday 5:30 to 10 p.m., Thursday to Saturday 5:30 p.m. till closing, closed Sunday and Monday
Prices:
smaller plates $14 to $24, larger plates $25 to $50
Access:
two steps to front door
The second time I ate at Gray Jay, I knew better than to ask for coffee.
Chef and co-owner Dominique Dufour’s cosy restaurant on Preston Street is as principled as it is accomplished, friendly and even intriguing. At this four-month-old restaurant named after Canada’s national bird, Canadian ingredients are a must. Because coffee beans don’t grow in Canada, Gray Jay does not serve coffee.
For the same reason, don’t expect any tropical fruit at Gray Jay, or any Canadian produce out of season unless it’s been preserved. Do expect Dufour to exercise great creativity within her constraints. She, like a growing number of au courant chefs, is pushing a vision of elevated Canadian dining aligned with the precepts and expanded bounties of new Nordic cuisine.
That’s why Dufour tops her lightly cold-smoked oysters with a sprig of foraged and then fried reindeer moss. She indulges in fermentation, following the trickle-down influence of culinary trailblazer Noma in Copenhagen. Dufour marries seaweed with roasted cod or potatoes, adds rye and oats to her savoury dishes, and favours mushrooms to the point of working them into a persuasively tasty dessert.
Before launching Gray Jay, Dufour came to Ottawa from Montreal last year to be the executive chef at the Le Germain Hotel Ottawa. She opened Norca, the boutique hotel’s sleek restaurant whose name refers — and this will sound familiar — to “Northern cuisine, Canadian ingredients.”
But if Dufour is working from a similar playbook at Gray Jay, her food here, which I enjoyed twice this month, strikes me as more personal, interesting and consistent.
Gray Jay’s taut fall menu consists of 11 items. About half of them are smaller, very well crafted, novel and vegetable-forward. Three meatier large plates round out the savoury selections and there are two desserts. Sharing is very much encouraged.
You can also order a chef’s-choice tasting menu, served family-style for $65 a person, or graze from a selection of cheeses and house-made charcuterie, which befits a place with a sophisticated and user-friendly wine list (that is, surprisingly, not exclusively Canadian).
There’s a great deal of thought and technique involved in Dufour’s dishes, all the more to deliver something complex and stimulating that a guest hasn’t eaten before.
Those succulent, hard-to-pass-up oysters ($24 for six) sat on beds of puréed cauliflower and cucumber, emulsified with hemp seeds, and topped with dollops of a zippy fennel, roasted red pepper and Tokyo turnip mignonette, not to mention the fried moss.
I’ll note here that these and a few dishes were brought to our table from the long open kitchen facing the dining area by Dufour herself, who likes to break down the distinction between front and back of house. She’s generous with the details and stories of her creations, and will tell you, for example, that she favours wild, hand-harvested P.E.I. oysters because choosing them helps to minimize damage to the oysters’ habitat.
Indeed, between them, Dufour and sommelier/server Alex Nicholson provided the most engaging and knowledgeable service that I’ve experienced this year in Ottawa.
A dish that wowed us as a distinct indulgence consisted of thinly sliced and marinated pumpkin, tossed with roasted cauliflower and garlic-oil-confit sunchokes in a caramelized onion sauce, with scoops of rye-and-sunflower-seed-topped bone marrow as a finishing touch.
Just as impressive, but more unexpected, was Gray Jay’s deliciously braised Japanese eggplant ($16) with a chickpea-based miso and loose yogurt made with soy milk driving up the umami factor, while beets that had been julienned, fried and dehydrated added crunch and novelty.
Gray Jay’s menu offers cod collar at two price points ($25 and $40). We took the smaller cutlet, and were told by Nicholson that either way, Dufour was experimenting with roasting that off-cut of fish on the bone, as if it were red meat. The slab of fish, topped with a gremolata of garlic, butter, lemon thyme and sourdough crumble, was juicy and varied in texture, quite unlike a more demure fillet.
True red meat lovers should be pleased with the steak of deer or bison, depending on availability ($50, for two people). We had significantly smoked but richly meaty bison, served with yet another perplexingly good sauce, this time made with chestnuts, fermented and caramelized apples and caramelized onions. Completing the dish was a mound of dill-flecked shoestring potatoes that were dramatically crunchy, possibly to a fault.
A bowl of rabbit dumplings ($33) was a lucid, comforting dish. Its toothsome, expertly made dumplings sat in a rich bone broth that played its salty notes with pride.
Both of Gray Jay’s desserts were winners. The more conventional (and vegan-friendly) of the two was a squash flan ($8) whose sweet, soy-milk-based sauce had notes of hay.
More startling was the dessert ($9) that paired a molten (but not overly sweet) maple cake with a semifreddo that was topped with morsels of chanterelle mushrooms that had been made more mellow, yet still savoury, by their preparation, and the semifreddo sat on a crumble of yogurt cooked down to caramelized solids. The semifreddo had a streak of tamed mushroom to it as well, thanks to the addition of sugar blended with dehydrated chanterelles.
All of these experiments happen in what was formerly a Domino’s pizzeria, which Dufour and her co-owner, Gray Jay’s general manager Devon Bionda, renovated on their own. Their restaurant, which seats 27, is a light-coloured space with concrete tabletops and concrete underfoot, cushioned banquettes and harder chairs.
There’s softer seating at the front of Gray Jay, on an older sofa, while a small bar also appeals. The open kitchen is an eye-grabber and conversation-starter, with its pale green antique fridge and other funky accoutrements. The overall vibe brings to mind some Quebec City restaurants I’ve visited that make fine-dining fun.
Related
Gray Jay’s fall menu will be in effect until mid-November, Dufour told me, after which a game-based winter menu will take over. Meanwhile, on Saturdays, Gray Jay serves whole-animal-based menus. Past stars have included smoked goose, a Holstein calf, brook trout, and lamb from Shady Creek Lamb Co. in Kinburn.
Dufour is clearly a chef filled with talent and ideas, stretching out successfully at Gray Jay. “This project is very personal and very much a gamble on our side,” she told me. “We are holding on with hopes, dreams and passion.”
That gamble by Dufour and her team has paid off handsomely. It’s time now for Ottawa foodies to be passionate in their support of this special place.
phum@postmedia.com
twitter.com/peterhum
Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews