Birthday Celebration @ The Black Hoof

The Black Hoof has been on radar for ages! So I was absolutely thrilled when my friend Sandy chose this restaurant for her birthday dinner! The restaurant was quite small, so we arrived promptly at 6 to avoid waiting for a seat.

Couldn't drink because I had to drive!

Mona was very squeamish about all the nose-to-tail options available at the restaurant, so she asked for a recommendation for the safest option on the menu, which turned out to be potato & roe ($12). It was actually quite an ordinary potato soup, save for the addition of large salmon roes. I didn't actually think that the salmon roes added that much to the soup, but on the whole, it was tasty.

The rest of us were more adventurous and ordered a bunch of dishes to share. The Black Hoof is most well-known for their charcuterie, so naturally, we had to order a platter of house cured meats ($29) to share. I honestly couldn't remember all the names of the meat, but I know that there was duck prosciutto and walnut studded salami. We also had a large order of bread ($4) to go with the charcuterie. I thought that the charcuterie was good, but everything tasted pretty similar and nothing really stood out.

I've never tried horse meat before, so I was pretty excited for The Black Hoof's spicy horse tartare ($16). To my delight, it was quite delicious! To be perfectly honest, the horse meat just tasted like beef, but the texture was a good contrast against the crispy fried potato sticks. Everything together was quite rich (especially with that creamy sauce), so I recommend sharing this with a larger group.

I also quite enjoyed smoked sweetbreads ($16). Eating an animal's thymus gland might sound disgusting, but it certainly tasted great! They reminded me of delicious and juicy chicken nuggets!

I was extremely eager for tongue on brioche ($14) because I absolutely loved The Hoof Cafe's tongue grilled cheese. Sadly, this was not as good as the sandwich in my memory, because it lacked the dill that was present in the grilled cheese version (oh how I miss The Hoof Cafe...) On the other hand, Sandy commented that the thinly sliced veal tongue was reminiscent of corned beef.

We also wanted to try bone marrow here, but our server missed our order. No matter, as we were already sufficiently satisfied and everything was exceedingly rich. To be honest, I was happy to forgo the bone marrow because the last time I tried it in Montreal, I got sick from it.  All in all, I enjoyed the food at The Black Hoof, but it didn't exactly live up to my expectations (which were set by The Hoof Cafe).

Since we weren't tempted by the Black Hoof's dessert of the day (olive oil cake), I decided to drop by Nadège for some macarons as dessert! The flavours I picked out this time included cassis, cappuccino, matcha green tea, pistachio, and salted caramel. The matcha green tea was a new flavour, and it also became my new favourite (over salted caramel). I really regretted not buying more, since I ended up only having 2, and 2 was definitely not enough!