Here’s why you should get on the email list, plus an apology

Two and a half years ago, Restaurant Pearl Morissette completely blew my mind.

Tucked into Jordan, Ontario vineyards, the tasting-menu restaurant is a Canada-to-table experience: only Canadian ingredients, exploited with extraordinary finesse. From start to finish, Pearl Morissette is the finest restaurant this writer has ever seen. 

It’s 45 minutes drive from Buffalo City Hall. I’ll tell you about it, after I apologize.

Before today, I did not share my visit with readers, out of shame. After my revelatory evening at Pearl Morissette, won by caging a pandemic-thinned waitlist spot, I failed to convince my previous employer that a review was worth sending a photographer there, to take the customary required photographs.

Since then, each month, I have winced at Pearl Morissette’s monthly heads-up email noting the start of the monthly reservation lottery. But I haven’t gotten back inside the room. So I waited. 

Until the Michelin inspectors, expanding Canadian coverage, bestowed a star on Pearl Morissette last week. From all accounts, the place has only gotten better since. 

So it’s time to get over myself, and tell you what I know. Sorry for the delay.

Pearl Morissette was a vineyard first, named after owner Mel Pearl and his vigneron, Francois Morissette.

In 2017, Daniel Hadida and Eric Robertson started offering a Canada-to-table French-inspired tasting menu that serves as a tour de Canada with extraordinarily graceful finesse. Purveyors and farms from coast to coast contribute to the menu, with wine and coffee the only exceptions to the Great White North tour de force. 

“Integral to our approach, we work closely with purveyors committed to the ecology of food; farmers, ranchers, foragers and fisherfolk from Ontario, the Great Lakes and the West & East Coasts of Canada,” its site says. “Our indoor dining room sits on the top floor of Pearl Morissette winery on the 42-acre property. With scenery through floor-to-ceiling windows of the surrounding regenerative farm, annual vegetable & flower garden, a whimsical perennial & herb plot, and local peach orchard.”

Reservation winners get out of their cars amidst a lowkey farm, quiet enough to hear birdcalls.

Up the stairs and servers greet and settle parties in. Expanses of glass make it easy to remember where you are, and the servers are delightfully up to filling in gawkers. Ask what sort of cow is cropping grass contentedly in a neighboring field, and they can tell you not only its breed but its role on the farm.

Bread arrives, stout-crusted sourdough aromatic with yeast and grain, with cultured butter halfway to brie.

The dinner menu is a journey of 10 to 12 waypoints, centered on vegetables, fruit, meat, and seafood, with options like cheese courses, juice pairings, and wine pairings.

The lineup changes day-to-day, but here’s a more recent menu sent by a friend:

Here’s some of the dishes I’ve been thinking of since my 2022 visit.

Halibut, soubise, herbed apple. Pristine fish gently cooked to lushness, against tangy fruit marbles alive with herbal chlorophyll, and more fresh sprigs from the garden outside adding to the bouquet.

Celeriac, chicken livers, whey. The softball-sized celery root shaved into a single strip, rolled back up and roasted. Served with a chicken liver relish and whey caramel, this humble root vegetable could replace the Sunday roast because of its canny cooking. Chicken innards and whey, two oft-discarded ingredients, instead shaped into a culinary feat.

Honey ice cream, honeycomb pastry, bee pollen (photo above). When the server introduced the dish, I asked how they got pollen. He happily read us in on the technique: Local beekeepers serving Ontario fruit fields put tiny brushes on hive entrances, just snug enough to knock off a few pollen grains from each bee returning from blossom-reaping. Collect it daily, and voila: bee pollen for Restaurant Pearl Morissette’s pastry chef.

That’s the way it went. Not just eye-popping mind-blowing dishes, but answers, too. Plus a loaf of that bread to take home, extending the Pearl Morissette glow for another thankful day or two.

So if you want to try the finest restaurant within an hour of Buffalo, there’s a Michelin star waiting right up the road. Lunch is Saturday noon-1:30 p.m., dinner 5:30 p.m.-9 p.m. Thursday to Saturday.

Sign up for the reservation email, take your shots, and make plans. 

It’s worth the wait.

#30#