ville-marie Quartier de la Montagne (Hôtel Four Seasons) - 18 étages (2019)

[ScarletCoral]

Dans la Gazette : https://montrealgazette.com/news/chef-marcus-samuelssons-montreal-restaurant-debut-will-be-celebration-of-life

 

Chef Marcus Samuelsson's Montreal restaurant debut will be 'celebration of life'

Montreal Gazette 
by Susan Schwartz.

Marcus Samuelsson, the acclaimed chef at the helm of the restaurant that bears his name in the soon-to-be-opened Four Seasons Hotel Montreal, says he was drawn to the city for its food and entertainment scene.

He was drawn to the city that is home to the Cirque du Soleil and to a restaurant like Joe Beef, which boasts, in addition to its innovative French market cuisine and welcoming vibe, “so much tongue-in-cheek” and a “dialogue” with diners, he said this week.

“There is an emphasis on food and entertainment: It’s a fun city that wants to celebrate food,” Samuelsson, 47, said during an exclusive sampling for the Montreal Gazette of dishes that are works in progress and not final.

He wants for Marcus, his first foray into Canada, to be “light and fun.” He wants it to feel like “a celebration of life.”

Anthony Bourdain, the late television personality and celebrity chef, called Samuelsson “a great chef, a great cook, and a transformative figure in the landscape of American food.”

His restaurants include Red Rooster Harlem, four blocks from the home he shares with his wife and their young son, Red Rooster Shoreditch in London, and establishments in Newark and Bermuda. He has written award-winning cookbooks and has a solid television presence: He’s a regular guest judge on Food Network shows and host and executive producer of No Passport Required, a series by PBS and Eater celebrating immigrant cultures and foods in the United States.

Samuelsson himself is an immigrant, born Kassahun Tsegie in an Ethiopian village. He was two when he contracted tuberculosis during an epidemic, as did his mother and sister. Orphaned when their mother died, he and his sister were adopted by a white Swedish couple, Ann Marie and Lennart Samuelsson. He grew up in Gothenburg, a city he described it in his 2012 memoir as “Pittsburgh-by-the-sea.”

Rendering of the restaurant bar at Marcus, in the new Four Seasons Montreal.

His first culinary inspiration was his grandmother Helga, he went to culinary school and apprenticed in Switzerland and Austria before signing on with a cruise line to save for an unpaid apprenticeship in France and to travel.

It was when he joined the Manhattan-based Scandinavian restaurant Aquavit as chef that things took off. At 24 he became the youngest chef to receive a three-star rating from the New York Times. The James Beard Foundation named him best rising young chef and, in 2003, best chef in New York City. In 2009, he cooked for President Barack Obama’s first state dinner. That year he married Gate Maya Haile, a model, in Ethiopia; the couple welcomed a son, Zion, in 2016.

Marcus is on the third floor of the de la Montagne St. hotel, in a space described as a social square: The Marcus restaurant, lounge, day bar, night bar and terrasse are linked and served by the same open kitchen. The main dining room has 90 seats, the terrasse, or patio, has 100, and the lounge and day and night bars have a total of 100.

“We conceived of the space as many different moments,” said Zébulon Perron of the Montreal firm Atelier Zébulon Perron, which designed it. “It’s about social interaction. We are interested in bringing people together.”

The space is about different opportunities, Samuelsson said. “We can have a light bite on the patio or we can spend 2½ hours together and have a heavier, long meal — or a light glass of rosé on the patio, then dining here or elsewhere.”

Rendering of night bar at Marcus, in the new Four Seasons Montreal.

Marcus is designed “in the style of a brasserie,” he said, and the menu took a long time to develop. “We really wanted to think about what we were doing.”

He knew, for instance, that he wanted a focus on seafood and a raw bar. “I grew up with seafood,” said Samuelsson, who used to fish for crayfish, mackerel and lobster in Sweden with his father and uncles. “To me, it is about building it around the food: very light. You can eat a lot without feeling stuffed.”

The five savoury dishes, two desserts and two cocktails I tasted were stellar in flavour, texture and presentation.

The tasting began with the Garden Party, an aperitif featuring white port, elderflower liqueur, verjus “for brightness and acidity,” as bar manager Simon Lespérance put it, and Champagne foam.

Chef de cuisine Nicholas Bramos described the dishes as Samuelsson observed, consulted with his team in the just-completed kitchen separated with plastic sheets from the as-yet unfinished spaces around it, and plated some dishes.

Chef Marcus Samuelsson, left, and chef de cuisine Nicholas Bramos work in the kitchen at Marcus, the restaurant opening at the new Four Seasons Hotel Montreal.

First up were two offerings from the raw bar: a French Kiss oyster with apple and compressed cucumber and a snapper crudo featuring, among other ingredients, sweet potato pearls, small segments of grapefruit and crisped snapper skin. Next were two dishes from the robata, a Japanese-style grill: salmon belly with maple, nori and uni butter set on shiso leaves, and carabineros prawns with spicy seafood sauce, lemon juice and lemon aioli.

Both the crudo and the salmon would make excellent sharing plates, Samuelsson said.

Sommelier Gabriel Bélanger paired the dishes with a crisp organic French white from the Loire.

Halibut seared in a pan, finished in the oven and served with succotash and cubed, roasted eggplant was breathtakingly good. Bélanger chose a biodynamic Sicilian red to accompany it. About one-third of the wines to be served at Marcus are available at the SAQ.

Pastry chef Frank Vilpoux presented two desserts — both light, not overly sweet and yet satisfying. One featured Reinette apples from Quinn Farm cooked sous vide for several hours and accompanied by ingredients including apple gelée and a pine nut tuile. A dish simply named chocolate and coffee was a light, sophisticated, confection both in varying textures.

Rendering of terrasse at Marcus, in the new Four Seasons Montreal.

A digestif, dubbed a Caravaggio, was a twist on the classic Negroni: It was made with genever, a Dutch malt wine spirit, an aromatized wine known as barolo chinato, and a touch of Campari. It was served in a glass with a large square of hand-carved crystal-clear ice featuring the Marcus logo — a stylized M, a crest and two knives.

Because the social square is in a hotel, it will draw out-of-towners, of course, but Samuelsson said he also wants for locals to think of Marcus as “their place.”

[MtlMan]

Wow. Très hâte de voir et goûter ça!!!! Du plus plus pour Mtl. Merci pour le post Scarlet!

[Yabucoa77]

[IluvMTL]

 

https://montreal.eater.com/2019/4/11/18305949/marcus-restaurant-montreal-four-seasons-hotel-opening-date-may?fbclid=IwAR0jQ2M-Y7_A_YcMJMSxRVcZGq_0Xzs8W_WUrvTGC-t9iSxFKFgWs1B5rTo

Marcus Samuelsson Restaurant, Four Seasons Montreal to Open Earlier Than Expected

The restaurant also named a curious pick for its chef de cuisine

by Tim Forster@timothyjforster  Apr 11, 2019, 8:35am EDT

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Four Seasons/Official

In a surprise twist, Montreal’s luxury new Four Seasons hotel and its restaurant from acclaimed American chef Marcus Samuelsson are now set to open almost a month earlier than planned.

The hotel announced Thursday morning that its official opening is now scheduled for May 8 — previously, the hotel was only accepting reservations for early June. Marcus, the in-house restaurant, did not have a set opening date, although it would presumably be very close to that of the hotel.

Samuelsson’s offerings at the de la Montagne Street hotel will be two-fold — there’s the main restaurant and its large, breezy terrasse, taking a brasserie approach, but also Marcus Bar + Lounge, with a relatively casual vibe.

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Samuelsson, known for his work at New York’s Michelin-starred Aquavit and his own Harlem restaurant Red Rooster is one of the biggest imports to Montreal in years. But details about the offerings at his eponymous restaurant are still fairly slim — renderings of the space (with elaborate design work from Zebulon Perron) are available.

The restaurant will lean into seafood and vegetables and feature a raw bar, but beyond that, few precise details about the restaurant’s offerings have been released yet. In an interview with the Gazette last week, some potential dishes were unveiled — for example, there should be robata-style (Japanese grill) items such as salmon belly with uni butter, nori, maple, and shiso leaves.

That Gazette piece also unveiled some of the key staff for the restaurant — the chef de cuisine is Nicholas Bramos, a curious selection, given his last post was at Taverne Moderne 1909, the restaurant owned by the Montreal Canadiens. Then there’s sommelier Gabriel Bélanger, who has worked with the famed Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai. Marcus’ pastry chef, Frank Vilpoux, also appears to hail from abroad, coming from the Institut National de la Boulangerie Pâtisserie in Paris.

Note: Marcus Samuelsson is hosting a show created by Eater and PBS. This does not impact coverage on Eater Montreal.

[Decel]

Construction fidèle aux rendus et livraison en avance?

Si seulement c'était la norme...

[3dimensions]

N'empêche, je trouve ce projet d'une lourdeur. Du brutalisme post-béton. 

[IluvMTL]

1 hour ago, Decel said:

Construction fidèle aux rendus et livraison en avance?

Si seulement c'était la norme...

Les projets privés semblent réussir les défis en cours de route beaucoup plus que les projets publics...

[Decel]

à l’instant, IluvMTL a dit :

Les projets privés semblent réussir les défis en cours de route beaucoup plus que les projets publics...

Peut-être, mais les projets de Devimco dans Griffintown sont aussi privés, mais n'affichent pas constamment cette même excellence...

[MtlMan]

Et que dire du retard de TOM!!! Pendant ce temps, Turcot est énorme et pas mal dans son échéancier.

[Walkscore]

19 hours ago, Decel said:

Peut-être, mais les projets de Devimco dans Griffintown sont aussi privés, mais n'affichent pas constamment cette même excellence...

Qu'est-ce qu'un projet privé pour toi?

À par celui-ci, je pensais qu'ils adoptaient tous la même procédure de vente plus ou moins