10129 104 St
780-421-4410
Queen of Tarts is a relatively new bakery/cafe downtown that focuses on using local and organic ingredients. The sit-down portion of the restaurant only seats a dozen or so people, but they have many take away items available. I've tried some of their baked goods in recent months and they've kept me wanting more. They've recently started hosting Pop-Up Dinners and we went to their second ever dinner this past weekend. For $45, we dined on a 3-course meal.
A Gulf prawn amuse-bouche preceded our meal. It was served with a roasted red pepper rouille topped with alfalfa sprouts. This was a delightful prelude to dinner and it got me excited for what would come next. The prawn was carefully cooked without being overdone and the rouille was quite tasty with a strong presence of roasted pepper flavor. I mopped up the remnant sauce with a morsel of buckwheat bread.
We got a plate full of 3 varieties of bread: slices of buckwheat bread, buttery brioche, and gougere. The brioche was oh so flaky and it was filled with a small dollop of mushroom pate. I thought this was yummy but the gougere was even better. The dough had cheese baked into it and they were bites of savoury goodness. Apparently they sell these in their bakery on weekends, but I'd like to try to make some of these myself. The buckwheat bread was unremarkable in comparison.
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| Left to right: cheesy gougere, buckwheat slices, and buttery brioche |
The next course was a fennel and orange soup. Before tasting the soup, the name didn't seem to appeal to me very much. The actual taste wasn't much better. It was overall kind of bland but orangey with a subtle hint of fennel. It was also too thin for my liking. It would have been better if it had some chunks in it or if it was thickened by some kind of starch.
The main course was a roasted organic chicken served on top of wilted greens with crunchy hazelnuts, currants, and pieces of pain de campagne (similar to sourdough bread). A large piece of cooked lemon wedge also accompanied the plate. The menu description didn't mention any lemon so this was a bit of a surprise, especially for Andrew as he's not a fan of the fruit. The vegetables were overly seasoned with lemon juice (it was even too much for a lemon lover like me) and I found that they could have been further cooked. The chicken was seasoned but nothing more. We both thought that the roasted chicken from a supermarket deli was much tastier. My piece of chicken had bright pink near the bone on one end, but on the other end, it was overcooked and dry.
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| Unexpectedly lemony |
For dessert, we had a chocolate tart. More specifically, it was the Longboat Porter tart au chocolat. The chocolate filling was rich and velvety smooth. Andrew found it to be too chocolatey and ate only the crust. I am not normally a fan of crusts but the ones from Queen of Tarts I have always loved. The tart was topped with creme fraiche and a slice of apricot-resembling persimmon. I thought that regular whipped cream would have worked better with the dark chocolate.
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| I wonder what the Longboat porter tastes like on its own |
They had a choice of two white wines and two red wines on their menu tonight, and the 2010 Petit Le Vieux from the Okanagan piqued my curiosity. It was a refreshing and fruity wine that suited tonight's meal.
I thought that this meal was a big disappointment compared to the baked goods I've had from Queen of Tarts in the past. These pop-up dinners bring in guest chefs for the evening but I'm not sure where tonight's chef came from. The items that were notably from the bakery were excellent, however. But overall I would have to give this meal 2/5.
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