Tasso, mezze bar

A few days ago, I was migrating haphazardly down St-Denis from Dix Mille Villages in the general direction of Camellia Sinensis. It was snowing lightly, as it had been all day, on and off. Everything was deserted on the dark cold Sunday night--we were the exceptions to deserted, but not to cold. Window-shopping the empty stores, we passed Tasso--mezze bar. It had a lighted menu outside and looked pleasingly warm and candle-lit. I've passed a lot of restaurants on St-Denis and promised to go to them someday, this one being no exception. Because of the aforementioned circumstances, however, the lure of a light meal was too great, and in me and my party went.

Mezze is, to but it bluntly, a Mediterranean version of Tapas. (Tasso serves Greek food, but mezze itself is not exclusively Agatean.) The two are of course wildly different, because the cuisines are totally unrelated, but the idea of many small plates is the same. Flatbreads and Flavours (by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid) portrays it ideally as a cornucopia of savoury delicacies, meant for a large group, abnudant with flabreads and everything else from olives to kebabs.

This kind of place always looks deceptively cheap, at 7 or 8 dollars a dish (saving the occasional 12-buck exotic seafood dish). But small is not a misnomer, and two or three dishes are required to amount to a normal serving. We were, however, on the lookout for a light meal. As such, we ordered only one plate each. It was less than we'd have liked to eat, so mouth-watering proved the menu, but such is life.

The place was all but empty upon our arrival, but friendly nonetheless. The tables are cork and the ambiance classy. The white-washed walls and idyllic fishing pictures are meant to recreate, to the lowest common denominator, of course, a gleaming Greek fishing village. Cork is a decorative theme. I approve. The service, I will take the time to say, was extremely good: speedy, courteous, informative, enthusiastic. I do not think waiters should make or break a restaurant, although they can earn significant bonus points. The main idea is the food, and here we go.

The meal was started off, for free, with bread and olive oil. It was an extremely promising beginning. The bread was really, really good. I would guess, in my fangirl way, that it is baked in-house, then toasted before being served. The toasting is clearly done on the grill, a significant asset. Nor was the olive oil unworthy of its recipient. We were given the choice of two kinds, even; the waiter gave us the skinny on the "light" and "dark" oils and bid us choose. The description was detailed and accurate: its finish was indeed peppery, its body in effect smooth, its flavour fruity. Olive oil is yet another liquid, if not a beverage, that begs a root to stick -philia onto.

We ordered a selection of dips as our first "course". We ate them with more bread. There were four kinds. The tzatziki, a dip we're all familiar with, was excellent and somehow different from store-bought or even home-made kinds. The chef apparently uses ouzo (an anise-flavoured Greek liqueur) to pull the flavours together. It's something I'll have to try. It gave it an unparalleled roundness, almost sweetness. There were three other dips: a delicious, creamy black olive tapenade, a puree of feta and red peppers called tyrokafteri (good, but my least favourite; it tasted like feta cheese transposed to a smoother texture and slight pinkishness), taramosalata, a real delicacy made of red caviar and various flavourings, superbly light, thoroughly delicious.

We ordered grilled quail, too. Because, I presume, of the rarity of the main ingredient, the serving was really pretty puny. (The presentation was cute, though. The pieces were propped against each other on a mini cast-iron skillet.) Still, the meat was succulent and the skin perfectly crispy.

I loved the fried eggplant and zucchini with garlic sauce. Both vegetables were their respective -ish adjectives, and were sliced very thinly. The fragility of the pieces perfectly matched the airy batter in which they had been deep-fried. The garlic sauce, not dissimilar to the the tzatziki, was exquisitely creamy and flavourful.

We also had vine leaves. They were a little disappointing. The rice didn't seem up to snuff with the ethereal-quality standards of the meal, and the leaves were a little tough. They would be my only complaint about the restaurant, but a minor one. Vine leaves are so ubiquitous that I hardly think they necessarily reflect a Greek restaurant's quality. In this case they didn't.

The plates may have been small, but I was actually quite satisfied, and had a truffle instead of a scone at the teashop afterwards. After all, when you've only got two beautifully browned quail wings left to eat, you find yourself at no small pains to eke out every last morsel of grilled deliciousness from the tiny bones. Eating slowly fills the mind--it's the placebo effect for the stomach. Besides, with enough bread, dips are really very filling.

I will go back here, and as soon as possible. I enjoyed it immensely.