LE DROIT
Repas divin dans un lieu saint...oh!
Pierre Jury
Le Droit
La cote Jury: 17,5/20
 L'endroit
était cher, m'avait-on dit. La qualité se paie,
ai-je répondu, et devant ce difficile équilibre,
le Saint-Ô relève assez bien le défi.
À l'extrémité nord du boulevard Saint-Laurent,
cela fait bien une quinzaine d'années que les
amateurs de fine cuisine française se donnent
rendez-vous dans cet édifice blanc sans aucun
style. Depuis six mois, une nouvelle
administration est en place et le chef Philippe
Dupuis est à la barre.
Les clients semblent avoir suivi parce que ce
samedi soir, l'endroit est à peu près plein.
Mon invitée amorce sa soirée avec un trio qui
réunit dans un même plat trois potages, un au
brocoli, un aux carottes et un à la betterave.
Les trois s'alignent comme un drapeau, ne se
mélangent pas. C'est un petit artifice de chef
qui produit toujours son effet. Mais plus
important, le mariage des saveurs, du plus doux
(brocoli) vers le plus fort (betterave), est
séduisant et les potages veloutés à souhait.
Mon plat était une simple salade à la Saint-Ô :
encore là, la présentation rehausse des saveurs
simples portées par des ingrédients frais et de
qualité : un mesclun agrémenté de fraises
goûteuses, le tout arrosé d'un peu de vinaigre
balsamique.
Nous avions un peu beaucoup le coeur à la fête
et avons décidé de nous gâter avec une seconde
entrée, un ceviche d'origine péruvienne. Plutôt
qu'un poisson à chair blanche, le chef Dupuis y
va de saumon et de saumon fumé qui accompagnera
les traditionnelles pommes de terre. Son
imagination lui fait ajouter des câpres et de
l'oignon rouge et à côté, trois délicieux miels,
au balsamique, à la fraise et à la moutarde de
Meaux.
Elle poursuit avec une caille déjà désossée, à
propos de laquelle elle n'évoque qu'un mot pour
résumer leur douceur : confit, même si elles
n'ont pas été préparées ainsi.
Mon veau n'est pas moins bon. Servi en étage,
légèrement grillé, sa sauce est extra. Les
accompagnements, tant de la caille que du veau,
sont bien choisis et préparés.
Le repas a été comblant mais néanmoins léger.
Nous nous sentons donc d'attaque pour un
dessert.
Mon invitée cède sans aucune résistance devant
l'attrait d'une crème brûlée, un standard qui
met en compétition des dizaines de restaurants.
En fait, c'est un trio que le Saint-Ô propose :
une à la menthe, une au gingembre que l'on dit
aphrodisiaque, et une au citron. Si le mélange
est un peu coulant, le miroir est beau et
croquant.
Quant à moi, j'ai plutôt porté mon dévolu sur un
gâteau crème au beurre, aux pacanes et aux
noisettes. Pour révéler toute son onctuosité, la
crème au beurre doit être servie bien froide :
on a alors l'impression de croquer dans un divin
beurre sucré et aromatisé. Celui-ci est un peu
trop température de la pièce à mon goût, mais
gourmand, je ne crache pas dessus, quand même.
Nous ressortons avec une admiration encore plus
grande pour ce jeune chef qui a déjà su, en
quelques mois, insuffler du dynamisme à une
adresse qui aurait facilement pu sombrer dans la
facilité.
Pour deux personnes, calculez entre 70 et 85 $,
avant service et consommations.
Press Review by Ranjiv Singh of OttawaEast.ca
There’s no better way to celebrate a
beautiful summer’s eve than to get dressed up
and head off to a fine restaurant. This is
exactly what my wife and I did last week, and
what a pleasant evening we had.
I have driven by Le Saint-O on St. Laurent
Boulevard numerous times over the years, but
never taken the opportunity to dine at this
little gem. Now I regret all the wonderful meals
I could have enjoyed.
Chef Philippe Dupuy honed his skills during 15
years of training and working at some of the
best restaurants in Quebec City. Established in
Ottawa since 1990, Dupuy, along with his wife
and co-owner Natasha Dumont, has been offering
Ottawa a little taste of southern France.
As a sign of their consistent excellent food and
service, Le Saint-O has been recognized as one
of the top 500 out of 15,000 restaurants
throughout eastern Ontario and Quebec by Le
Guide Debeure (comparable to the Michelin Guide
in Europe).
Le Saint-O has a winning formula, with Dumont
taking care of guests in the dining area, and
Dupuy creating his masterpiece plates in the
kitchen and the cozy dining area with soft
French music playing in the background.
Dupuy takes great pride in the ingredients he
uses as well as the presentation of his food. He
grows many of the herbs that he uses in a garden
at his home, and procures meats and salads from
local farms in the area.
After being seated, and having a few moments to
peruse the menu, Dumont went through the chef’s
menu for the evening. As wonderful as everything
sounded we decided to order a la carte.
For appetizers, my wife decided on the
thyme-crusted warm goat cheese salad with
mesclun mix, hearts of palm, and a raspberry and
balsamic vinaigrette. I chose the trio of
escargots, scallops and shrimp with a roasted
garlic sauce and caviar, all three cooked to
perfection.
Next the main entrée, I went with the beef
tenderloin with a five peppercorn and armagnac
sauce with Roquefort butter. The tenderloin was
extremely flavourful and tender, and the
accompanying sauce was perfect. My wife felt
like something a little bit light, and chose the
red snapper filet with toasted almonds and
amaretto sauce. Once again the fish was superbly
cooked; flaky, tender white flesh with the nutty
crunch of the almonds made a perfect combination
of ingredients.
Both entrees were nestled on top of a crisp
phyllo parcel filled with potatoes and julienned
vegetables. A litre of house red went perfectly
with our meal: note that there is a
comprehensive wine list available from
moderately priced to the $200-400 price range.
After such a wonderful meal, it made perfect
sense to finish off with something just a little
bit sweet. My choice was a beautiful trio of
crème brulées; a mango/lychee, cappuccino and
rum raisin. All three had a perfectly crisp
camelized topping: delicious!
A strong espresso with raw cane sugar went very
well with the brulées. My wife selected the
white chocolate ice cream with pistachios. I had
to sample a few spoons of it as well, just
couldn’t resist.
Le Saint-O is a dining experience. Don’t expect
to be finished in 45 minutes. Dress up, enjoy a
few glasses of wine, listen to some calming
music and most importantly enjoy your meal. In a
society where everyone tried to get as much
stuff done in a short period of time as
possible, it’s nice to enjoy and experience the
old world European traditions of spending time
with friends and family and have an excellent
meal.
Check out Le Saint-O’s website at
www.lesainto.com for more information.
Reservations are highly recommended. Ranjiv
Singh can be reached at diningout@sympatico.ca.
Comments are most welcome.
By MAURICE CHENIER, OTTAWA SUN
You know there's something special going on when
the chef of a popular Ottawa French restaurant
comes out from the back of his family-run
converted home-eatery to tell you where to
safely park your vehicle.
But that's what chef and co-owner Philippe Dupuy
did at the 32-seat Le Saint-O near the north end
of St. Laurent.
I was further seduced by the attractive enclosed
22-seat patio we walked through -- perfect for
even a sunny winter day.
Then came the radiant greeting from the other
owner, maitre d' and waitress Natasha Dumont,
who offered us a choice of reserved tables,
presented us the four-page menu, gave us a
detailed verbal report on the daily specials and
the wine list. It's the kind of
attention-to-detail restaurant service not often
seen in the Ottawa region.
And the food? Much to say in so few words.
We chose the special soup trio, the red snapper
for my companion, the Quebec venison (deer, not
elk), for me, plus a glass of French house wine,
a Chardonnay for her and the Merlot for me.
The soup alone was worth the trip! A unique
multi-coloured, three-handed presentation in the
same bowl of creamy hot pureed pink carrot and
blood orange, greenish spinach with basil oil
and the slightly over-sweet quail, with a hint
of nuts and nutmeg. Marvellous to the last drop,
with hot-baked white bread and spreadable sweet
rosetted butter!
PERFECT PRESENTATION
The two mains came on attractive, very large,
very hot, square plates, both piled high
"nouvelle cuisine"-style, on artistic sauces.
Perfect presentation, but small portions!
Each dish was topped with an edible red and
white orchid, a leaning fresh sprig of chive,
all on filo-wrapped pureed-potato bases, full of
julienned vegetables including zucchini. Very
impressive!
The juicy snapper fillet was cooked perfectly
with toasted almonds on amaretto sauce. My five
"saignant" deer mouthfuls had been seared brown
outside, red inside, as ordered, on juniper and
brandy sauce. Wow! (I hungered for more ...)
For dessert, we enjoyed the trio of cremes
brulees -- mango lichee, raisin with rum and
blueberry lemon -- and a Marquise chocolate
truffle. The cremes were similar but
golden-top-broiled just right and crisp.
Each presentation included a delicate web of
hardened sugared caramel leaning on the dessert,
plus a succulent half slice of strawberry on
cacao powder. Short of perfect, but delightful
just the same!
Le Saint-O, with its lovely setting and
near-perfect food and service, is a great
romantic special occasion, stretch-the-budget
restaurant! For St. Valentine's Day, perhaps?
MAURICE2US@AOL.COM
Sun Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5
Restaurant Le Saint-Ô
Ô the humanity
Lucy Rest
Bunny lover caves in to Saint-Ô's
delicious gamey menu
I found out recently that my husband's
grandfather does the ordering for his
wife-actually decides what she will eat!-when
they go out. Antiquated as it sounded to me at
the time, I found myself wishing for the very
same thing at Le Saint-Ô the other night.
The indecision started as soon we arrived at the
little east end resto. Should we sit indoors or
enjoy the summer breeze on the pretty terrace?
The AC won out and we settled down in the
cooler, cute (if you're fond of burgundy)
interior. Trendy it is not, but charming it is.
Our server (wonderful, all night) beamed as she
told us the evening's "chef's suggestions." They
all sounded so impossibly good! Where's granddad
when you need him? I finally chose a table
d'hôte: soup or salad, any main, dessert and
coffee or tea, under $40 per person. (Give up a
trendier location and you can serve better
quality food at lower prices.)
Wonderful starters, more choices. Luckily our
soup was a duo-Pernod-laced duck velouté on the
left of the bowl and a zippy carrot and ginger
on the right, both gorgeous. My mom's salad also
was presented beautifully, stacked tender young
greens lightly dressed in slightly mapley
vinaigrette just verging on creamy.
All mains came artfully presented with a crisp
phyllo packet of potatoes and julienned
vegetables. My filet mignon was rare as
requested, and with a pat of Roquefort butter
and a five-peppercorn and Armagnac sauce,
perfect harmony. But the portion was a bit
larger than I expected.
I should mention there's almost nothing for
vegetarians here, and probably plenty on the
menu to offend! I was shocked when my aunt
ordered rabbit (I'm in the middle of reading
Watership Down!), but my curiosity eventually
overcame my bunny love and I had to try a bit.
Stuffed with a crumbly pork sausage in a pinot
noir, foie gras, and truffle oil sauce, it was
actually one of the most wonderful things I've
ever tasted.
My mom was hankering after something lighter yet
satisfying, and her shrimp and sea scallop duo
with a broken sauce of sun-dried tomato and
truffle oil was exactly that. About that truffle
oil. I've grown quite tired lately of seeing it
thrown on everything from pancakes to
poutine-there's nothing worse than a musky
mouthful of oil from a too-liberal dash of the
stuff-but the Saint-Ô chefs obviously know what
they're doing.
As for wine, we played it safe with some
Rothschild reds, but there's plenty here if
you'd like to splash out.
With dessert, more paralyzing indecision.
Finally I went with the crèmes brulée trio: one
lychee and mango, one rum and raisin, and one
blueberry and lemon. Lovely-but don't ask me
which I preferred. My aunt's chocolate marquise
was also exquisite. A dense, moist, chocolate
fantasy, it also happened to be delicious with a
taste of mom's creamy and tangy tangerine
semifreddo (a homemade ice cream of sorts). I
don't think I've ever wagged my dessert fork
around a table so much.
Beautiful, but I couldn't do this too often.
Done in by too many decisions and all that rich
food, I was exhausted by the end of the meal.
Luckily the bill was almost painless.
When granddad visits this winter, I'm going to
let him decide for me too.
OTTAWA CITIZEN
Consistent, reliable classical French cuisine
Anne Debrisay
I found Le Saint-Ô largely unchanged in its
attentive service and its consistently reliable
classical French cooking. What I failed to find
at Le Saint-Ô was my date.
Had I been eating poorly or served crudely, or
had I no entertaining conversation on which to
eavesdrop, I might have been less-of-a-peach of
a wife when the man finally showed up for our
once-in-a-blue-moon date -- two hours late.
I had ordered, then sampled both his starter (of
garlic-soused escargots and milky sweet scallops
coddled on a wide crakling slice of deepfried
potato, napped with a seductive beurre blanc,
finished with salmon roe) and mine (rich smoked
salmon layered with ripe mango and avocado,
garnished with slivered green apples, sauce with
a red currant and plum reduction) and had fork
poised over his pork, when he arrived, hungry,
sheepish, tail firmly between his legs.
He was left with a vivid description of the
starters he had missed, then allowed a bowl of
soup, a Saint-Ô signature of carrot poured on
the left and brocoli on the right, both well
flavoured and well made.His pork tenderloin was
crusted with sundried tomatoes, the salty,
pungent flavour marrying well and meat quite
perfectly pale pink and moist. Garlicky mashed
potatoes and local asparagus came with it. My
salmon was glorious, crusty-skinned and
effortless inside, anchored with lotus root,
butternut squash and aspargus, napped with a
light and lively citrus sauce.
Dessert was a luscious nut torte layered and
lightened with butter cream, garnished with nuts
and ground cherries.
MANOR PARK CHRONICLE
8 July, 2002
Le Saint-Ô Changes Hands
Daniel, Phillipe Dupuy (seated) and Natasha
Dumont
By Jim Kenward
On a recent hot summer's afternoon I met Natasha
Dumont and Phillippe Dupuy who became the new
owners of Le Saint-Ô on May 1. Phillippe is the
chef and Natasha runs the dining room of this
charming little French fine dining restaurant on
the corner of Hemlock and St. Laurent, right in
Manor Park.
For both Philippe and Natasha, becoming owners
of a restaurant is a dream come true. Not that
they lack experience in the restaurant business
but because it climaxes twenty years of hard
work. Philippe, still only 32, and Natasha each
learned their trade in the Québec City area,
where they met each other, worked in Vancouver
for three years, and then came to Ottawa three
years ago. Natasha worked as head waitress at Le
Saint-Ô under previous owner, Deborah-Ann
Latimer, and was instrumental in introducing
Philippe when ill health forced Deborah-Ann to
sell.
Philippe entered the restaurant business at the
ripe age of 12, working in the sumrner for his
father before traning seriously for five years
to be a chef, under mentor Luc Martineau at
Michelangelo, a Quebec City restaurant rated one
of the best in Canada. After five years at two
other Quebec City restaurants, he worked at Il
Giardino and Le Crocodile, two well known
Vancouver eateries, before coming east with
Natasha. ln Ottawa established his own business
as a personal chef, doing meals for politicians,
embassies and Ottawa families.
Now living happily above the restaurant with
Natasha's nine year old son and expecting a new
addition in October, Natasha and Philippe are
aiming to restore the quality of food to its
former standard. Philippe is well known for his
artistic presentation of food, playing with
colours and tastes, in his passion to please
customers. Menu items include venison
medallions, duck roasted with cinnamon, and many
other delicious meat, fish and vegetarian
dishes, all accompanied by amazing sauces,
dreamy desserts and an excellent selection of
European vintage wines.
Behind the Mediterranean-like patio with its
hanging flower baskets, lies a cosy and romantic
little restaurant which can seat 32 people and
is also available for groups of 20-25 people
upon prior notice. Each table has a nice linen
tablecloth, fresh flowers and a small oil lamp.
Natasha
is justifiably very proud of the attractively
decorated and spotlessly clean washrooms too!
Service is also provided by Daniel, who was born
in Albertville in the Alps, and who worked there
in a Michelin Guide 5 Star hotel during the 1992
Winter Olympics.
The restaurant is open Tuesday to Friday for
lunch, and Tuesday to Saturday for dinner, with
reservations advisable a day ahead. With that
notice Philippe can also accornrnodate special
requests for items to be on the menu.
Needless to say you will always receive a warm
welcome from Natasha, and Philippe when he can
escape from the kitchen, so why not treat
yourself to a memorable evening right in the
Park.
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