Menu: Europea

Every year at the motss.con there's a foodie dinner the Thursday night before events begin. At the Montreal motss.con.xxxi in 2018, dinner was at Europea.

The meal itself was wonderful. We all wound up getting the signature tasting menu. Technically it was the 10-course meal, but when you include all the amuses, intermezzi, and the individual mignardises as their own courses it was closer to 22:

• (Amuse) Goat cheese and pesto lollipops.
  
  
• (Amuse) Mini breadsticks dipped in olive oil.
  
  
• (Amuse) Beef jerky (served having from a string on mini clothespins).
  
  
• (Amuse) Quebecois cheese cigarillos. The server asked if anyone wanted cigars or cigarettes before opening the cigar box to allow us each to pick one.
  
  
• (Appetizer) Organic (activated?) charcoal-dipped risotto-and-truffle with celeriac purée.
  
  
• (1) Lobster cream cappuccino with truffle purée.
  
  
• (Intermezzo 1) Smoked gravlax, served in a book-shaped box tableside so the diner could release and smell the smoke.
  
  
• (2) Al dente lemony calamari tagliatelle, garlic butter squid ink croutons, parmesan emulsion, tobiko, and poached quail egg.
  
  
• (3) Slow cooked Quebec veal carpaccio, creamy tuna mayonnaise, and tuna sashimi with watercress petals and young sprouts.
  
  
• (4) Foie gras au torchon, crispy langoustine with tarragon leaves, homemade brioche, and citrusy beet and green apple smoothie.
  
  
• (5) Macadamia nut crusted halibut pavé, cooked on hay with citrus, in a coconut-infused white butter sauce, over Israeli couscous, marinated vegetables on zucchini tagliatelle with Thai basil.
  
  
• (Intermezzo 2) Crispy-melting yuzu and green apple ice mist sorbet.
  
  
• (6) Yours to discover: Quebec veal cheeks slowly braised and cooked in clay, topped with slivers of crispy potatoes served with Jerusalem artichokes and civet sauce.
  
  
• (7) The Europea cheese cellar: A wide variety of Quebec cheeses (a creme, an aged cheddar, a smoked cheddar, and a bleu), with apricots, candied figs, and walnuts.
  
  
• (8) My passport to sweetness: Panna cotta with a mango and passion fruit purée.
  
  
• (9) Candy tree from Guilty land: Strawberry cotton candy puffs, with small wrapped cellophane bags of additional sweets — a cookie, a jelly, some mixed nuts, and I think pralines — were hanging off the same tree stand as the cotton candy puffs.
  
  
• (10) Mignardises: Macarons, jam-drop cookies, and house-made marshmallows.
  
  
• (Additional) Madelines, served in a large Chinese takeout food box.
  
  
• (Additional) White chocolate sphere around baba al rhum, sauced tableside with hot white chocolate.

For the four of us who got the Elegance wine courses, the Italian pinot grigio went with the first intermezzo and courses 2 and 3; the French guillac (?) with the foie gras (course 4); the Provençal bandol (?) with the halibut (course 5); the Chateauneuf du Pâpe with the veal and cheese (courses 6–7); and Italian prosecco with the desserts (course 8 et seq.).

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