The Globe and Mail
September 6, 2008

Nota Bene makes a foodie's heart beat faster

by Joanne Kates

Having subsisted for the summer on the likes of mac 'n' cheese, fajitas and overcooked chicken - all self-serve, as if to add insult to epicurean injury - I was more than ready to reassume the princess position. Dining out would, I imagined, be just what the doctor ordered for a city gal fresh from the woods and hurtin' for some good ole-fashioned pampering.

Where else to go but Nota Bene, opened in late July by David Lee and Yannick Bigourdan, who own Splendido, with partner Franco Prevedello. This three-pack carries a platinum-plated pedigree. As chef at Splendido, Lee is doing some of the best cooking in town. Bigourdan's front-of-the-house work is good enough to make me sure that I really was born royal. Add Franco Prevedello to that mix and the foodie heart beats faster.

Will Nota Bene be a reprise of Franco striding the floor at Centro, controlling the room, iron hand in velvet glove, emptying ashtrays at Pronto, air-kissing at Biffi, guaranteeing glitz 'n' glam 'n' superb service at every table? Franco has been gone a long time from the Toronto dining scene, making good money in real estate and blue jeans. The guy would need to have his head examined if he got out there on the floor again.

He didn't and, on this evening, he doesn't. The Prevedello partnership in Nota Bene does not appear to involve Franco on the floor. More's the pity, for the fantastic food deserves better service. The three partners' combo of platinum-card taste and deep pockets, with design by KPMB, has produced an elegantly spare restaurant. Like KPMB's design aesthetic at the Gardiner Museum, Nota Bene combines clean lines with luxe. It makes its decor points quietly, so one feels at home rather than overwhelmed by design. The chocolate leather chairs are ultra-comfortable, the walls a mix of light and dark wood, with the only colour supplied by two walls' worth of exuberant art.

Even in fall, when night falls early, one wonders at the absence of natural light in the dining room. The entire front of Nota Bene is occupied by a long bar. Aha! Think geography! What is within a 10-minute walk of its Queen and University address?

Nota Bene is ideally located for pre- and post-theatre events, for business lunches, dinners and the famous Thursday Bay Street cocktail prowl. Hence pride of place for the bar.One could quarrel with the service, but not with the food. Chef David Lee is dividing his days between the two restos, spending his days downtown, evenings uptown - which works because Nota Bene's food is so much simpler than Splendido's. It's not that the service is bad; it's just not what we expect from this trio. Our apps are delivered incorrectly and have to be switched. I ask the waiter what the crunchy stuff is atop my duck salad, but he hurries away and doesn't reply. And water: Maybe they don't want us oldsters to have to pee all night? Maybe they're making a statement about the politics of bottled water? Either way, nobody offers refills of empty glasses.

The food, however, is what happened when David Lee took it down a notch: Comfort food meets the maestro, and the maestro wins. The duck salad with the mysterious crunchy bits on top is divinely crispy duck shreds atop crunchy green papaya slaw jazzed with bitter sumac and sweet coriander, gentled with toasted cashews.

The apps are all like that - relatively inexpensive ingredients for relatively painless prices, packing big flavour punch: Yucatan hot and sour soup is crystalline chicken broth on a knife-edge hot/sour balance, with tiny moist chunks of smoked chicken afloat.

Gourmandizing thrill-seekers will adore the variety in octopus salad: fat chunks of octopus with lightly smoked green peppers, sweet grated fennel in contrast to bitter green rapini and piquant olives. The priciest app on the menu, lobster salad, is a clever economy - with just enough perfectly cooked lobster to deserve its name, the salad is a remake of so many summer icons: Bacon, lettuce and avocado are tossed with lovely nuanced blue cheese buttermilk dressing, the opposite of a steak house blue cheese dressing that screams cheap blue cheese.

The theme of comfort food rendered elegantly continues with mains: Suckling pig and boudin noir tart is what happened when a real chef took on pork. This is to Berkshire pork with a thick layer of fat on top what bouillabaisse is to Howard Johnson's clam chowder. The suckling pig is tender and moist, and mixed with spectacularly delicate rounds of dark pork sausage. Sprinkles of pork crackling add sinful delight, as does the tart's short crust. Add seasoning of bacon bits and truffle vinaigrette, and a side of their ridiculously crisp onion rings or frites, and we're in high-fat delirium.

Slightly less erotic but still exciting is fat pasta with sweet rabbit shreds stewed with smoky pancetta and fragrant chanterelles. Chef loves meat: His braised beef short ribs are man-sized, fall-off-the-bone tender meat. His sole misstep is overcooked pickerel with impeccable fixins - assertively smoked cherry tomatoes with buttery cauliflower purée and fresh pesto.

Still no water refills when dessert comes. But sweets soothe the ire. The texture of bread pudding is as smooth and creamy as crème brûlée, complete with a caramelized roof. Chocolate tart is as deep and dark as it gets, and panna cotta with the bite of yogurt and lemon is a clever way to take its heavy punch down a notch.

Franco Prevedello waited a long time to get back into the restaurant game. He prefers to back winners, and Nota Bene has it all: a dream location, a cool look and food that's easy to understand, lighter on the wallet than the top end but executed by a protégé of the great British chef Anton Mosimann - which David Lee was, and you can taste it in every bite.