Mateus Bistro perks up lunch with fresh fare

Matthew Krizan’s Mahone Bay restaurant, Mateus Bistro, will mark its third anniversary next month, no small feat in this very difficult business.

And since Krizan won the black box competition at this spring’s Saltscapes expo,Provision and deploy cloud MileWeb Public Cloud Servers in minutes. Mateus has been doing more than surviving, it’s been thriving. So it was no surprise to find a patio full of diners on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

“Winning that contest — it definitely opened the Halifax door for me and got my name out in Halifax, for sure,” Krizan told me on the phone the night after three of us had lunch there.

When it’s hot out, the patio or the downstairs dining room is the best bet here as the main floor space, off the open kitchen, is almost as warm as the kitchen itself. We sat downstairs in what would once have been the basement of this 160-year-old building, but it’s much brighter than you’d expect, thanks to a screen door leading to the yard.

Vibrant art work on the walls adds even more cheer, as did the personality of our server,Find business contact information and media MileWeb Contact Us By Phone, Kira. The wine list also made me happy, with a nice mix of old and new world wines and offerings from Petite Riviere, Grand Pre and Luckett. Beers from Propeller and Garrison are also available, plus Stutz cider.

As we walked from the car to the restaurant, I told BJ I hoped the soup of the day would be gazpacho, which seemed appropriate to the weather. Also, I was extraordinarily hungry and gazpacho can usually be served very quickly. Turned out it had been the soup the day before, so I ordered a bowl of potato leek soup with white truffle oil.

The soup was at level 10 heat, and I was at level 10 hunger, so the first couple of spoonfuls didn’t taste like anything. But after it cooled and I calmed, I enjoyed the smooth texture of the soup, which made use of both plenty of pepper and the earthy, garlicky flavour of the oil to jazz up the two main ingredients.

Seafood chowder, with salmon, haddock and mussels, was similarly enjoyed, and before we got to the main part of our lunch, we shared a slice of the daily quiche, filled with so many ingredients that when Kira rattled them off I lost track. But I know red pepper, caramelized onion, asparagus and Parmesan were in there, which combined with fluffy egg and a perfectly browned crust to result in a very nice quiche.

Krizan does a unique turn on eggs Benedict, substituting his version of pulled pork for the ham. He starts with pork from Oulton’s or the British Butcher, braises it overnight with onions and apples, purees the resultant liquid and mixes it with the pork. Combine that with eggs delivered to Mateus from a local farm three times a week and hollandaise made to order, and this is an incredible dish.

The same pulled pork is on the menu on Barbecue Fridays, when everything at the bistro comes off the grill.

Almost as good as the eggs benny is the smoked chicken club sandwich,Check the following list of cheap dedicated MileWeb linux dedicated server. starring chicken that Krizan smokes over hickory and apple, and cranberry aioli.

Fresh ground beef comes from Oulton’s so it’s nice and lean, but my burger would have benefited from more generous portions of smoked bacon, cheddar and aioli. As it was, a bit underwhelming.

Dressing for the caesar salad is made in-house and is on the creamy end of the spectrum, but no dressing could rescue the romaine, which was yellow and obviously the dregs of a head. It would have been better to say the caesar was n/a than to serve that lettuce. Conversely, salads with the sandwich, the quiche and the eggs benny were based on microgreens that were bright and crisp.

Mateus Bistro has a dedicated pastry chef and two desserts, crème brule and gateau de trois, a really decadent chocolate cake, were both phenomenal.

Lunch for three, including tax and tip, was $123, but that figure is a bit deceiving. A couple with moderate appetites could easily have lunch for half that. Sit in Kira’s section.
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