Le Robin Square

Delicious, high quality food with lots of flavour and made with love. Sylvia, the enthusiastic and friendly owner, treated us like guests in her home or family, being really accommodating with several food restrictions and making sure my girlfriend was able to enjoy a meal without worry. Speaking of family, that is sort of a core to the restaurant, as the owner has a few members of the family that work with her, and there are three women who are sisters who work there too. The creamy onion soup I started with had a good amount of spice, thanks to the addition of a house hot sauce, a specialty of her brother. The bread with it is made in-house daily by her mother. My main was the fois gras with ginger bread and duck magret. Savoury, sweet, salty all at once with a variety of subtle flavours from the bread and clementine marmalade. I tried some of the sous-vide beef and it was tender, seared on the outside and incredible with the red wine sauce. I will have to go back for the calamari with risotto and chorizo which is accompanied by pumpernickel bread (also made there, of course) which I also got a taste of. Oh, and the decadent sounding mac and cheese, as well as the pork belly--their signature dishes. The 'cheesecake' in a glass dessert I had to finish was also quite nice. It seems most on the menu are fairly rich foods that would likely go extremely well with wine pairings, but unfortunately I am allergic to alcohol! Oh, also I will note that as of the time of this review, there is a huge and beautiful painting of and in honour of David Bowie (painted by Sylvia's sister Rachel) on the wall; at least until someone buys it. So anyway, Robin Square: a convivial experience, and in the top ten of TripAdvisor restaurants for Montreal for a reason.