Restaurant Les Fougères
783 Route 105, Chelsea, Que., 819-827-8942, fougeres.com
Open (winter hours): Wednesday to Friday noon to closing for daily menu,; Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for brunch, 3 p.m. to closing for daily menu; closed Mondays and Tuesdays
Prices: small plates $8 to $18, large plates $16 to $36
Access: small ramp to front door, several steps to dining room, a few steps to washrooms
The old Les Fougères is gone — replaced, fortunately, by the new Les Fougères.
The Chelsea, Que., fine-dining destination, which opened in 1993, closed last fall for nearly two months for sweeping renovations that did away with its rustic-getaway ambience.
I was keen to see Les Fougères 2.0 — and, of course, to sample chef/co-owner Charles Part’s food, last reviewed in this space in 2003. Twice last month, I made the trip to Chelsea and after, I spoke to co-owner Jennifer Warren-Part about Les Fougères’ sleek, new contemporary look.
Modernized by the Wakefield firm Maisons Chicoine Homes, Les Fougères’ dining room is still woody, although lighter and brighter. It’s almost Scandinavian in feel with its minimalist chairs and blonde tables that are no longer covered by white tablecloths. The woods surrounding Les Fougères feels even closer thanks to larger, frameless windows. The tile floors have been replaced with grey, flecked epoxy. The kitchen, where Part and his brigade work, is now open to about half the dining area. Those with the best view sit at an undulating bar of a dozen or so seats, made of multi-coloured “rammed-earth” layers of material brought from Morrison’s Quarry in Wakefield.
Les Fougères co-owners Charles and Jennifer Warren-Part. (Jean Levac/ Ottawa Citizen)
The windows have been enlarged with the renovation of Les Fougeres.
Co-chefs Matthew Pritchard, left, and Yannick LaSalle of Les Fougères in the new open kitchen.
Les Fougeres’ dining room in 2012
Meanwhile, the restaurant’s capacity has dropped from 72 guests to 48. Newly added are a wood oven at the entrance to the dining area and showcases for cheeses and charcuterie, as well as elevated take-home food, all for sale. The Les Fougères food store remains open and well stocked, to the left of the entrance that it shares with the restaurant.
Warren-Part told me that the decision to remake Les Fougères was a tough one. “It’s highly emotional. It’s been our life. Our children grew up here,” she said. “But we’re delighted with the new transformation.”
Warren-Part said the bottom line — “numbers moving into dangerous territory” — necessitated the renovation.
Les Fougères, she said, earned a reputation as a special-occasion restaurant. But birthday and anniversary dinners alone couldn’t sustain it, and the new bar in particular highlights an appeal to less formally inclined diners. Warren-Part says she’ll be glad to see guests pop by, perhaps with their ski boots still on, to have a smaller meal and a glass of wine at the bar before heading home.
“There’s not that compulsion to have that grande bouffe, that big expensive meal,” she says.
For our first visit, we couldn’t kick that old habit. It was appetizers, main courses and desserts all around at our table, even if the concise Les Fougères menu had been rewritten to encourage less traditional, three-course dining. Les Fougères has gotten into the small-plates business, with most of 10 or so dishes on the menu available in small as well as large sizes.
Compared to the restaurant’s previous, seasonal menus, the new, “constantly rolling” menu will see dishes coming on and off more frequently, said Warren-Part. “We’ll be more hyper-seasonal and hyper-local than we’ve ever been able to be before,” she said.
Among our starters, the classic seared foie gras with honey, brioche and apple ($18) as well as a more modern plate of roasted Juniper Farm carrots with avocado, kale, rice chips and nori dressing ($8) hit their respective flavour notes well and honoured their impeccable ingredients.
Foie Gras at Les Fougeres
Roasted carrots, kale and avocado at Les Fougeres
I didn’t get quite as much as satisfaction from small-plate servings of lamb pappardelle with preserved lemon, feta and pine nuts ($13/$26) or squash risotto ($18/$28). While tasty, these plates seemed just a bit jumbled, and in the case of the pappardelle, overly oily.
Lamb pappardelle at Les Fougeres
Squash risotto at Les Fougeres
More well-crafted were the mains and desserts.
Venison ($36) exemplified the kitchen’s sure hand with game, offering medallions of lean meat that were perfectly pan-roasted and bolstered by a pool of rich port-and-chocolate sauce. Red currants added another sweet note, brussels sprouts and bok choy added colour and crunch, and rutabaga purée contributed humble earthiness.
Venison main course at Les Fougeres
What remains constant, food-wise, here? Sumptuous duck confit, smartly and generously offset by roesti, goat cheese, poached pear, spinach and partridgeberry compote ($18/$36), is deservedly always available. For grande bouffe fans, the dish can also figure in a four-course, $54 table d’hote.
Duck confit with roesti, goat cheese, pear, spinach, partidgeberry compote at Les Fougeres
So too, and again with good reason, is a dish that the menu calls “Mouth of the St. Lawrence”($18/$34). A version of the dish that won Ottawa’s Gold Medal Plates Competition for Part in 2008, the refined seafood composition combines seared Grand Banks scallops, potted Matane shrimp, a raviolo filled with luscious salt-cod brandade and mussels in a concentrated mussel stock.
“Mouth of the St. Lawrence” at Les Fougères
From the wood oven came the night’s less fussy, “hearth-oven” special, a hearty, slow-braised lamb shank with big batons of polenta ($18/$34).
Braised lamb shank at Les Fougeres
Warren-Part told me that the oven is also being used to make artisanal pizzas that will eventually be on the menu.
Les Fougères’ new hearth oven.
Desserts ($10) were uniformly impressive, from a faultlessly creamy crème brûlée to a chocolate-and-cranberry terrine to the most involved creation, which presented a light, appealing jelly of Quebec buffalo milk supported by lemon curd, maple pecan crumble and cranberries.
Creme brulee at Les Fougeres
Flourless chocolate and cranberry terrine at Les Fougeres
Quebec buffalo milk jelly, Venosta cranberries, lemon curd, maple pecan crumble at Les Fougeres
Last week, I went for lunch, as much for a day-time view of the room and its surroundings. I had another excellent savoury plate (a robust wild boar curry with lentils, adorned with onion bhajee, $18/$34) and another well-crafted dessert (some refreshing vanilla rice pudding with mango sorbet and a sesame tuile, which added a distinct saltiness, $10).
Wild boar “vindaloo” at Les Fougeres
Vanilla rice pudding, mango sorbet and sesame cracker at Les Fougeres
I also had a little misunderstanding. When I didn’t specify the size of my curry plate, and the question was not put to me, I received a large order when I had a small one in mind. Happy ending: the dish was delicious enough to warrant devouring all of it in one sitting, and an apologetic server gave me dessert and coffee on the house.
Service, then and at our previous dinner, was polished, attentive, bilingual and knowledgeable — there’s a bit more snap to it than at many comparable Ottawa restaurants.
I count myself among the many Les Fougères fans who regarded its previous iteration as a place to combine eating and celebrating. Back in the early 200os, the night after my wife and I were married, we took our guest who had traveled the farthest to Les Fougères.
My impression is that since those days, Ottawa’s new and ambitious restaurants have raised their game to compete more forcefully with Les Fougères. You could say that the remade Les Fougères, with its smaller portions and elegantly updated setting, has taken some pages from their books to stay in the game.
However, Les Fougères has not diluted its identity. Its signature dishes remain on the menu. More importantly, the quality of the food remains high, but more of it can be sampled on a given night.
The view of the woods and feeling of being inside Les Fougères was always worth a premium. With that ambience refreshed, and a more diverse menu, the getaway has only grown more appealing.
phum@postmedia.com
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Peter Hum’s previous restaurant reviews
