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Other than my short stay in Cuba, Le Paladar is my first Cuban experience.

Apparently, Le Paladar serves authentic cuban food. I cannot ascertain this, but what I noticed is that the hostess is from Cuba. She was overly friendly and very insisting in teaching us Spanish. The whole restaurant is decorated with Cuba related items. Nothing pretentious.

When I noticed that they serve Canchanchara from their cocktail menu, I got overly excited and was the hostess. She was curious how did I know about the drink. Canchanchara was introduced to me during my stay in Cuba and it was my favorite drink; it’s mixed mostly with rum and honey. Le Paladar delivered the drink quite well as it tasted just like the one I had in Cuba. I highly suggest to order a Canchanchara!! – sadly, i forgot to take a picture of the drink.

We also ordered Mojitos. They were good, just like the typical mojito.

That evening, I felt like eating some nachos…

Just looking at the picture, we can tell that it was a huge mistake. There were barely any salsa. After the first layer of nachos, we didn’t have any more salsa. This was the same for the guacamole.

I had

I really don’t remember the name of the dish. The meat is pork – it was definitely too oily and has too much fats in the meat for me to take in. I really did not enjoy the pork. What i actually enjoyed eating in this plate was the rice! It was so delicious! Even Mr.Butter couldn’t stop digging in my plate to get the rice! On the right side of the plate, we have the fried plantains. I actually liked the fried plantains. It’s a nice twist to fried potatoes.

Mr.Butter had fish, which is nothing spectacular…. it was served with plain white rice and fried plantains.

To finish off the supper, we had flans in the flavor of coconut and caramel. The texture is sort of similar to a creme brule minus the brule part and more thick/solid. It was nice, but nothing impressive that I would want to have it again…

All in all, the service was definitely very nice, but the food was mediocre – or maybe I am just not accustomed to cuban food?

Zuuchini

Many claim La Banquise has the best poutine or xxx place has the best poutine. Well, I claim Benny has the best poutine!

If you have an 1hr45 to spare or looking for a little road trip, drive to Trois-Rivieres RIGHT NOW!

Why? Because Poivre Noir makes Trois-Rivieres a very memorable city to visit…Yes, Poivre Noir had totally sucked me in like a black hole already.

No exaggeration at all.

This restaurant is located at the harbour. Find the perfect timing ( accordingly to the day’s sunset), and you’ll get one fantastic view while sipping your evening away with good wine (…and feeding your tummy away with good food). Not to mention, bring good company with you and the experience will be one hell of a good one.

The service is almost impeccable – blame them for not assigning my seats on those cool looking chairs ( I feel like my experience is not 100% complete without those chairs lol). Joke aside, the waiters are so attentive and very knowledgeable with wine. We were even offered some additional dishes on the courtesy of the chef and also because of the long wait. But honestly, I really didn’t mind that my order came a bit late. I think it’s part of the whole relaxing, no-stress, sip the wine, take everything slowly kind of restaurant. But I really don’t think it’s the norm of the restaurant – as the table beside us did not have such a problem.

This is a small bouchee of a very creamy soup (tomato base). I am to blame that I cannot remember the exact detail of the soup – I am so behind with my restaurant reviews (Yes, I am trying to make it as a habit to take down notes from now on…) But what really matters is that, this soup may be small, but that’s all it needs to have us enjoy and savour every sip. I think I can officially declare that it’s the best tomato soup I ever had.

Oh – almost forgot to mention, this soup is a courtesy of the chef. It may be little in quantity, but definitely plentiful in quality.

We ordered a table d’hote which consisted 3 courses.

Here comes our appetizer, our first course. We each had 6 little ball looking things. We both chose different ones, each “flavor” came in a set of 3. Therefore, a total of 4 “flavors”:

–Boules de neige de chèvre-chaud, pistaches et tomate (Pampille et Barbichette)
–Cubes de Parmesan, tomates soleil au cumin
–Dattes farcies de Chorizo  (dates enrobed in bacon which is coated with maple syrup)
–Rillettes de sanglier à la bière ( beer marinated boar stuffed with cheddar cheese)

Yes I have purposely led you to only focus on the last two. I even take the extra miles to translate it in English. Because I just want you to order those. Listen to me and you will not be regretful. I promise you. 

Those last 2 are bursting in flavors, especially the dates. The sweetness coming from the dates and the maple syrup and the crispiness coming from the bacon. It’s just harmonic pairing.  

The first 2 were nothing amazing…. and sadly….they were both my choice. Just let me have you imagined my little puppy eye scenario when Mr.Butter had me tasted his (which are….the last 2 that i have so highly praised).

And then… we had some bread, which were WARM (why don’t all restaurant make this as a standard?!). Ok, this wasn’t a normal bread. But honestly…I don’t remember which one I chose out of the millions ones shown on the tray. Anyhow, little details, because I don’t remember it being overly special other than it was so cutely shaped and that it was warm. But I like to add that it wasn’t some dry bread.

After waiting for I don’t know how long…hey you don’t see time passing by when you have great conversation going on! The server surprised us with these dainty cocktail like General Tao. It wasn’t the typical General Tao. Not chicken but shrimps! I was awed by their diligence – but really…I’m not a fan of general tao…Good thing is, this is not part of our order, so nothing has affected my opinion.

And yes! This is the star of the evening! Braised pork with gnocchi! The meat was so tender. Some may complain that the portion is in the smaller side – but i think it was just perfect. With the gnocchi, it was very filling. Not to mention, the gnocchi was perfectly cooked as well – just chewy enough. It seems like a basic that all restaurants should know – but sadly it isn’t. I have gone to various restaurants that overdid the gnocchi. A restaurant that cannot cook gnocchi right – or pasta right – is a big NONO restaurant.

So, Poivre Noir is a YES YES restaurant.

And who took this salivating picture? Who other than me?! LOL. But in reality, the picture makes this dish more delicious than it should be. Although displayed tactfully, this dish was nothing compared to the braised pork. It was then Mr.Butter’s turn to have his puppy eyes looking at my dish. 😉

And we finished off with a delicate dessert. At this point, athough I did not eat a lot, I was very full already – probably the fact that we took so long to eat, my tummy had the time to process all the food and send the signal to my brain. The dessert was light, which was exactly what I needed after having a dense in flavor main dish. I think the pairing was excellent – but I do not think the dessert was anything overly special that I had not tasted before…It was white chocolate mousse texture with dark cherry sauce. Although it is made with white chocolate, the level of sweetness was very well-balanced.

Let me add this little detail that made the experience that much more enjoyable. The server actually let us finish our wine before bringing us the desserts. Ok, this may be another basic…but for some reason, I don’t ever remember having service like this.

It’s just nice to know that they ace all the basics of  the service if not more – when in reality,  not many restaurants are able to.

All in all, I am very pleased with Poivre Noir. It may not be friendly (but not aggressive either) to the wallet, it definitely holds a very special spot and certainly it will suck me right back in whenever I’ll be visiting Trois-Rivieres again.

Zuuchini