Légende, Québec, Canada

I knew I had a solo dinner in Québec and after reaching out on Twitter, Renée got in touch again (hello!) and recommended Légende, a highly acclaimed restaurant specialising in Boreal cuisine, i.e cuisine using ingredients only found in the Boreal (Northern) forests of Canada. No lemons or passion fruit or aubergines here! While not unique in Québec for serving boreal cuisine, it is unique in being one of the few restaurants in Canada to be on the Air Canada enRoute magazine’s annual list of Canada’s best new restaurants.

I’d booked a place for one and ended up at their counter, watching plates whizz by and drinks being made in front of me. There were a couple other solo diners there and it was a nice spot to chat and find out what brought all of us to Québec (work, it turns out). I was tempted to try the restaurant’s tasting menu (10 courses) but I was still feeling a little full from lunch and so decided on sticking to the a la carte menu of half-sized plates.

An amuse of clam and cucumber was brought out. It was refreshing and opened up my appetite a little (perhaps that massive sugar shack inspired lunch was a mistake….nah).

A tiny loaf of warm, fir scented bread with butter made my way at the counter. It took a lot of discipline not to inhale it in one go.

Now, I thought that perhaps with half plates, I could perhaps put away two or three and I started by ordering two. This was a wise move as they were half sizes of Canadian portions – read: larger than I’m used to! My first dish of pan seared scallops with egg yolk, smoked duck, fennel, Nordic shrimp was delicious, with lots of textures (like those crackers on top) and even a few fiddlehead ferns. This was probably my favourite dish of the evening.

This guinea fowl dish wasn’t on the menu but replaced another poultry dish that I originally wanted. Yikes, I didn’t take any notes but I remember enjoying it and I remember being extremely full afterwards and definitely not being able to deal with a third dish!

Dessert had to be their signature Candy cap mushroom frozen parfait with fir balm infused mousse, crystallized lichen. Lichen! Fir! Mushrooms?! These are not words I normally associate with dessert! The mushrooms turned out to be formed of the frozen parfait but the lichen…the lichen was lichen! I never knew it was edible! The dish overall was more of a fun novelty rather than your typical sweet ending to a meal but I still loved it.

Overall, it was a fabulous meal. Definitely recommended and if you’re a solo diner like I was, the counter is a great place to sit and be taken care of.

Légende
255 Rue Saint-Paul
Ville de Québec, QC
G1K 3W5, Canada

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