Dish of the Year
Prestigious Partners
It’s Sabayon’s signature dish: grilled oyster mushrooms on potato purée, topped with a caramelized arlette wafer and capped with a cloud of sabayon sauce.
When chef Patrice Demers and sommelier Marie-Josée Beaudoin picked the name Sabayon for their restaurant, they did not know a grilled mushroom course featuring the namesake sauce would become their signature dish. But it’s the only dish that has never been taken off their rotating menu since they opened.
The inspiration for the dish did not even start with sabayon, a dessert sauce made with sugar, eggs and wine. Like many of Demers’ creations, it started with the pastry. “The main idea was to do a savoury arlette, an old French pastry recipe that we don’t see too often,” he says.
Made with housemade puff pastry, the arlette dough is first laminated with powdered dried mushrooms and seaweed from Gaspésie Sauvage, then rolled again with maple sugar and salt. Like a palmier but thinner and crispier, the caramelized arlette disc is placed atop an assemblage of barbecue-grilled oyster mushrooms and potato purée. On top of the arlette: a swell of buttery sabayon infused with fresh bay leaf and juniper.
With a light tap, the pastry breaks into dramatic shards, revealing the meaty mushrooms beneath, while the sabayon coats all. Every bite, grounded with earthiness and afloat with delicate airiness, confounds. Sweet and umami, it tastes like dessert for dinner, or dinner for dessert. Who said the best dish of the year couldn’t be both?
Prestigious Partners
