My workplace is quite close to Auberge du Pommier and that seemed like a perfect opportunity for me to take advantage of their quite affordable $25 Winterlicious lunch. I had gone to Auberge almost exactly a year ago, during non-Winterlicious time, and their food was pretty good, so it would be interesting how that experience compared to the $25 one.

I called in a few days ahead and booked the reservation for a weekday – I was able to get a reservation without any issue, although they only had sittings at 11:30 and 1:30 (perhaps by plan, to get two sittings). I chose the 11:30 one since I didn’t want to come back to work from lunch at 3PM. The restaurant was not full by noon, but it got quite busy after that – I guess there were a lot of walk-ins as I could only identify one other table (you know, asians) who came there specifically for Winterlicious.

To start, I had the Fruits de Mer (mixed seafood, winter citrus, cucumber, soy bean, radish, chili-citrus vinaigrette, lavash) which was weird because of the chili-citrus vinaigrette. It was sour and tangy, which isn’t too odd because many salads are of that taste; but it is unexpected from a dish that looks like a soup and which has seafood in it. Pauline had the Soup de Céleri-rave Crémée (celery root soup, braised ham hock, apple, vadouvan spice) to start. This one was also different because the soup was very thick. The ham provided the flavour and contrast to the soup itself.

My main was the Truite Véronique (rainbow trout, brown butter almonds, red grapes, braised cabbage, tasting of cauliflower). The garnishes were quite good, but I was eating the fish and the garnish separately for a long time. The fillet of fish is not very flavourful so the different notes from the almonds and grapes make a good complement.

Pauline had the Crêpe Gratinée (buckwheat crêpe, braised chicken, mushroom ragoût, Tuscan kale, Comté Mornay) which was not too special – there’s only so much flexibility with those ingredients in a crêpe.

For dessert, Pauline had the Fruits du Verger (poached pear, parmesan cream, caramelized pastry, mulled apple cider). I didn’t like this one that much, mainly because it continued the trend of a dessert not being very sweet. I had the Bleu Bénédictin which wasn’t bad considering I don’t like cheese that much. The prune jam worked well with the cheese, but the granola was too hard to eat with the cheese.

For $25, it’s not a bad deal given the quality of their cooking (even if some of the dishes were not impressive).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: food, winterlicious