WED AUG 10, 2011_FOOD AND DRINK
Kiss their grits
How do you make a chlorophyll base? After inspecting trays of herbs and greens that arrived one Monday morning at his new restaurant, Acadia (50C Clinton St., 416-792-6002, #COL), Matt Blondin explains the process.
“You blanch any chlorophyll-rich leaves or vegetables—in this case it’s purslane, spinach, parsley and lovage. Then you purée and boil it and skim the pigment off the top,” says the 28-year-old, spiky-haired chef. “It’s a very flavourful, earthy pigment that can be added to anything, like mayonnaise or even drinks.” At the restaurant, he serves the concoction with buttery red grouper and homemade andouille sausage.
Blondin and 27-year-old Scott Selland, who runs the front of house, have embarked on an ambitious project for two first-time restaurateurs. They’re serving cuisine inspired by the sprawling Acadian region—the former French territories in the Maritimes, eastern Quebec and, at least in terms of cuisine, parts of Louisiana. And they’re doing it using unconventional cooking techniques.
Blame their upbringing. “If you look at our pedigree and background, I don’t think you’d expect us to do a U-turn and do something completely casual,” says Selland, who worked for the Fairmont and Four Seasons chains as well as at Toronto icons Splendido and Susur. Blondin did stints at the Rubino brothers’ now-closed Rain and Luce (both known for elaborate presentation) before working with Claudio Aprile at Senses and Colborne Lane, a restaurant famed for its liquid-nitrogen ice cream and other extravagant adventures in molecular gastronomy. It was at Colborne Lane that Blondin met Selland, then working as the general manager, and started talking about opening a place with him.
The food at Acadia maintains the experimental aesthetic of Blondin’s former kitchens. Taking inspiration from nature and his own sketches, his plates feature things like Northumberland Strait scallops garnished with watermelon rind, chicken crackling and a thick squiggle of green, which turns out to be an arugula gel. This isn’t the place for humble cooking. The whipped buttermilk dressing served with Chesapeake Bay crab, for instance, is made from a mixture of cream, buttermilk, cucumber and green-pepper juices. It’s then aerated using an ISI canister, which looks similar to a seltzer bottle. There are also head-scratching items like sungold chow chow, sorghum and benne seeds. “We realize when people pick up our menu, there may be 10 or 12 ingredients on it that they’ve never seen before,” says Blondin. “But we want to introduce them.”
Although Acadian is a Canadian cuisine, the dishes will feel foreign to many diners. The restaurant’s tables are slowly (but surely) filling up, though on the second day of business in mid-July—which also happened to be the city’s hottest day in over 60 years—the patio across the street at Café Diplomatico was brimming with patrons downing pints. Convincing Torontonians that cornbread, collard greens, shrimp and grits go hand in hand with scorching summer temps may be a hard sell. But if that doesn’t work, Acadia has plans to open a patio of its own next summer.
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