Located at St. Clair and Christie, Leopold is a sweet neighbourhood bistro that opened four months ago. Unfortunately, the menu has suffered since the exit of chef Claude Bouillet. Tim Fraser for The Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail
Oh, to be sure of oneself. As a critic, I often seek the egocentric pleasure of the moral high ground, territory occupied only by those who are (for brief delicious moments) sure of their judgments and (perhaps more important) sure that those judgments deserve to be rendered.
When a restaurant is truly awful and seems to be taking diners in with profitable efficiency, it's clear that an editorial dressing down is appropriate. The converse is also true: I adore kvelling over great food and am always happy to support people who appear to be giving their all to making it work.
But what of the little guy (or gal) who is trying really hard - perhaps on a shoestring - and just not getting it right? I mean, you can just smell the angst of every buck going out, the worry about making payroll or finding the rent money or whether enough people show up on Friday nights. Maybe they did the floors themselves to save money, painted the walls, scrounged junk stores for those cheap spotlights on the ceiling and plain wooden tables and big, mismatched mirrors that actually look pretty cool.
It wasn't just neighbourhood people who flocked to Leopold when it first opened in December. Becs fins from all over town fell in puppy love with the sweet little bistro with the big mismatched mirrors. And why not? Not only is it cute and funky, but Claude Bouillet was cooking. He was the garçon who made the divine tarte tatin (only to order) at Le Bistingo on Queen Street West in the eighties. And don't forget the seafood stews in white wine and butter sauce or the braised duck Bourguignon-style. My taste buds remember them as if it were yesterday.
So there was a real French chef working on St. Clair West. More than a second coming, it felt like a celebration of the street's renaissance after the streetcar debacle that consumed residents and businesses for so long. Could Leopold be the herald of its transition from dumpy and dour to oh so downtown and tasteful?
With Bouillet in the kitchen, everything was unfolding as it should. The duck was oozingly tender. The seafood was perfectly cooked. Nice fat scallops and shrimps sat with julienned leek and oyster mushrooms in a big bowl of old-fashioned white-wine-and-butter sauce good enough to drink. It was old-school French fun.
But Bouillet left Leopold on March 14 and took that old Parisian touch with him. For now, it's back to ordinary, making Leopold a sweet little bistro that one hates to dump on. Clearly, they're trying hard to make a go of it and Leopold should survive as a friendly neighbourhood restaurant. But the scrutiny of someone like me is too bright a glare to shine on a kitchen of such surpassing mediocrity.
Post-Bouillet, the house pâté is neither tasty nor smooth and the purée of root veg soup is underpowered in the flavour department. Overcooked seared salmon comes with a charming shaved-fennel salad with arugula and orange in a citric vinaigrette, but the salad doesn't fix the fish. Same problem with dried-out overcooked chicken, not helped by too-sweet Madeira sauce. The frites are also overcooked, and the lemon tart suffers from tough-crust syndrome.
But that's not the end of the story. Leopold's mains are mostly under 20 bucks and it offers a three-course prix fixe dinner for $25. The place puts on no airs. It's for real people with normal lives (and budgets) who want a pleasant dinner without schlepping downtown. It's not for spoiled brat foodies like me.