Acadia does Southern food with soul and style
Acadia
Address: 50C Clinton St. (at College St.), 416-792-6002, acadiarestaurant.com
Chef: Matt Blondin
Hours: Wednesday to Monday, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Wheelchair access: No
Price: Dinner for two with cocktails, tax and wine: $140
Acadia is a delicious lesson that talent, not background, counts.
The two-month-old Clinton St. restaurant proves that a French-Canadian chef from Sudbury can cook Southern food with soul and style.
It dovetails with the “appropriation of voice” debates around The Help, a novel-turned-movie written by a white woman from the point of view of black maids in 1960s Mississippi.
The Help author Kathryn Stockett is from Mississippi. Acadia chef/co-owner Matt Blondin is blunt about his connection to the South.
“I have none,” he says.
“I like the culture, I’m intrigued by the ingredients and I have a passion for new and interesting things.”
So Blondin and partner Scott Selland decided to bring Southern food to the city.
Blondin, 28, has never been south of Chicago. He’s done most of his cooking in such envelope-pushing Toronto restaurants as Colborne Lane, where he helped execute Claudio Aprile’s molecular gastronomy tasting menus.
The apple foam doesn’t fall far from the tree. Blondin bends low over each plate in the open kitchen of Acadia, ensuring the chlorophyll squiggles and whipped buttermilk garnishes are just so. It’s el Bulli by way of the Charleston Junior League cookbook.
Yet the high-concept blend of southern coastal cooking — Blondin covers South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and even Acadian Maritime cooking — is as delightful as it is unexpected.
Blondin took to the vernacular of pickled watermelon rinds and pimento cheese like a Bluetick Coonhound to the scent, learning to make his own andouille sausage and sourcing his yellow pencil Cobb grits from South Carolina’s Anson Mills.
He pairs crisp chicken crackling with wobbly sea scallops ($14), and pours a respectable Gulf prawn étouffée over firm red grouper ($23). His cornbread ($6) — baked in a miniature cast-iron skillet and served warm, with whipped brown-butter sweet potatoes — is a thing of beauty.
And if that doesn’t convince you, one rich forkful of Acadia’s grits and shrimp ($13) will.
Blondin elevates the Lowcountry classic considerably beyond homey with a postmodern glass bowl and chervil garnish. The grits are beautifully textured — creamy yet slightly chewy, with snap from lightly poached shrimp — and innovatively flavoured with delicate smoked pork hock consommé and a hit of pimento cheese (chili-flecked aged cheddar and Monterey Jack).
The high-low contrast is what makes Acadia so delightful. It’s there in the pickle tray that graces every table in lieu of a bread basket. The dish is long and elegant, an upscale container for down-home boiled peanuts, pickled okra and tiny gherkin cucumbers.
But the bells and whistles of a glass terrarium holding cold crab meat, celery relish and buttermilk foam ($12) fail to make the fare exciting.
The room is sparse. The only colour comes from the yellow T-shirts on the servers, who are informative rather than engaging. The chairs look hard, but are comfortable. Retro cocktails like the piña colada ($11) and the rye-based Sazerac ($12) are playful but potent.
Pork ribs ($24) are essentially haute barbecue. The ribs come stacked like Lincoln Logs and are pretty straightforward, even if they’re disappointingly dry in places. The pizzazz comes from the grains on the side: puffed amaranth and firm sorghum, the latter starring in a lemony salad. The frizzled “tobacco leeks” on top aren’t actually made with tobacco, just meant to resemble it.
Blondin acknowledges his esoteric ingredients may intimidate some. That’s why there’s an approachable savoury tart ($16) filled with caramelized Vidalia onions and smoky homemade Tasso ham. It’s fine, but not inspired.
We can all probably agree on the excellence of the sugar pie ($10). Acadia fills a butter-tart-like shell with condensed milk, brown sugar and egg yolks. The result is firm, slightly grainy and miraculously not too sweet. The toffee-like raisins and vanilla ice cream on top are delicious overkill.
Even in a city where some of the best Italian and French food is made by Sri Lankan chefs, Blondin admits he was “frightened at first” that people would denigrate his lack of Southern background. Then he took courage.
“We could’ve done our take on Swedish food and it doesn’t mean I have to be Swedish,” Blondin says.
“If the perseverance is there, you can adapt yourself to any style.”
Perseverance plus talent.
