Try The Braised Bison Short Ribs | Our taste buds are still screaming for them.
The Copper Pot
101, 9707-110 St., 452-7800.
The last time I wrote about the Copper Pot, I reminisced about the days in my misspent youth when the same space held a held a shiny middlebrow restaurant called Crackerjacks that hosted live music of a frequently loud and rambunctious variety. There I saw an early incarnation of The Wheat Chiefs (featuring the Belke Bros. of SNFU fame), and a band from California called Tupelo Chain Sex, whose singer Limey Dave used one of the mirrored pillars near the stage to sketch Wayne Gretzky in lipstick, buns-up-kneelin’, before ritually sodomizing the image with a hot dog during the song “Chili Dog Wrap.” I bet the people at the Copper Pot hate it when I tell that story.
It’s sure not the room it was back then — the Copper Pot commands the same lovely view of Ezio Farone Park and the river valley, but the warm interior is all swathed in dark swooping fabric, with roomy yet cozy booths oriented toward the aforementioned panorama and a curtained-off private dining room to the east. The sun sinking over the construction crane skyline of the university, a bottle of Chilean cabernet and a basket of oven-fresh bread with whipped butter — a million miles from the violated hockey icons, sweaty punk bands, and Drummond Dry on tap of yore.
We had no idea when we decided to celebrate something or other with a spur-of-the-moment fancy meal, but the Copper Pot was that very evening launching a new menu. This was most propitious as the updated bill of fare seemed squarely aimed at the kinds of food I go in for — entrées that cry out for capital letters like Wild Mushroom and Cashew Crusted Lamb, Espresso Rubbed Bison Rib Eye and Sea Bass and Fennel Risotto. That’s some serious-sounding food, no?
Unbelievably, I didn’t order any of those things because one dish allowed me to try both Braised Bison Short Ribs and House Made Duck Sausage — not to mention seasonal vegetables and buttermilk mashed potatoes ($30). My co-diner had avouched her desire for seafood before we even left home and chose the Sea Bass & Halibut Duo ($25). The salads — one spinach, one organic greens ($6 each for starter) — seemed less gravid by comparison.
But they were really good. I had wavered before ordering the green salad, wanting to match my ingredient-y supper with an equally baroque starter, but I was really glad once I got the salad. It was perfect — organic greens crunchy with vitality, a refreshing mesclun of endive, frisée, radicchio, rocket, and friends; a light, savoury vinaigrette and a bonus sprinkling of creamy goat cheese not previewed on the menu. The spinach salad was a touch fancier, thanks to the presence of chevre, red pepper spears, dried cranberries, and a House Made Vanilla Vinaigrette (again with the caps), wherein the eponymous flavour seemed to occur as an aroma as much as an aftertaste. Quite impressive.
Now I’m not a guy who goes around having a $30 plate of food all the time, so when I do I like to make it count. Good Lord, did I make it count at the CP. My tastebuds are still crying for how much they miss the two bison short ribs and rounds of duck sausage, shellacked in a dark reduction, lovingly buttressed against a hummock of mashed potatoes and a garland of vegetables, including a hypnotic wheel of bright pink beet and sprigs of baby asparagus. As a regular consumer of bison, I know from experience that its relatively low fat content makes it really easy to wreck, so I was astonished by the exacting tender substantiality of the shortribs. A comparison to beef doesn’t really do the bison justice — it has a flavour and a texture all its own and the kitchen did it lip-smacking justice. The rich potatoes were as much a condiment as a side.
Did I mention there was also duck sausage, fresh-made that afternoon, which managed to seem fluffy and was flecked with fresh herbs?
Co-diner’s pair of pan-seared fillets were almost as sensational — she always covets whatever I order — the halibut in particular standing up well to the sundried pesto that coated it. Each morsel I stole was moist and meaty, and the vegetable risotto beneath it was something beyond rich.
By the end it was hard to tell if the cabernet had gone to our heads or we had so glutted our senses of taste and smell that we were feeling a little post-orgasmic — in the end it was probably a mélange of the grown-up pleasures we’d imbibed. As much as I miss my youth, I’m happy to have one of its landmarks supplanted by a restaurant that lives up to the promise of its capital letter-intensive menu.
The Tab: $67 for two (food only)
The gist: fabulous new menu, great view, a casual-fancy night out
Avoid: The Politicians
