Air Canada has been making its rounds, highlighting some of the country’s top restaurants as part of its Best New Restaurants awards.
As part of its countrywide list, the airline’s “enRoute” ranking has chosen one meal as the best in Canada as part of the “Best Dish of the Year” award, dished out to a spread right here in Montreal.
Air Canada has chosen Mastard’s “La Ferme des Quatre-Temps” tomato as Canada’s dish of the year.
The publication says Mastard puts an “herbaceous spin on the BLT,” adding herbs, lettuce, flowers, camelina oil, and smoke beef fat onto the tomato.
“This sensational dish started with Mastard chef Simon Mathys’ love for cooked or grilled lettuce,” says enRoute. “For a fresh lettuce taste without the cooking, he tried pounding a mix of green and more bitter white leaves with a mortar and pestle, incorporating some sorrel, parsley, local camelina oil and a little verjus.”
enRoute says tomatoes and olive oil are a “natural pairing,” so chef Mathy added a “fat slab of organic tomato,” brined it with salt, sprinkled some fleur de sel, and garnished it with small and brightly coloured edible flowers.
The result? Canada’s must-have dish:
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But that’s not all. Restaurant Mastard tops off the meal with a tableside pour of hot, fragrant beef fat —sourcing the smoked beef from his pals at Atwater Market’s Aylwin Barbecue. “They use whole wood, so it’s better for deep flavour,” Mathys explains.
The chef says, like all of his dishes, this one is more complicated than it looks. “There’s a lot of technique going on in the kitchen but it’s simple to eat and understand.”
Besides just the nation’s best dish, enRoute and Air Canada have been shedding light on the stellar Canadian dining scene, as part of its annual “Best New Restaurants” awards.
Regarding how establishments are chosen, Air Canada says that any spot that fully opened between late Spring 2021 and May 31, 2022, was up for consideration.
Thirty Canadian restaurants were in the running for a coveted spot on this ranking, two of which are from Quebec.
- Restaurant 20 Victoria (Toronto)
- Mastard (Montreal)
- Mimi Chinese (Toronto)
- Perch (Ottawa)
- Một Tô (Calgary)
- Heart’s Tavern and Bar (Kimberly, ON)
- Fonda Balam (Toronto)
- Major Tom (Calgary)
- Fox & Monocle (North Saanich, BC)
- Restaurant Alentours (Quebec City)
Mastard — which opened on 1879 rue Bélanger in January 2021 — is open from Monday to Friday, from 6 to 10:30 pm.
Air Canada says its enRoute lists are all about “revivals and reinventions” that burst onto the dining scene over the past couple of years. “The joy of eating out is back, and – dare we say – more delectable than ever.”
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