How the French bistro is reinventing itself for today’s diners | Canada Voices

On a recent spring evening in Toronto, the new 40-seat restaurant Chez Nad on Queen Street West hums with the familiar choreography of a neighbourhood bistro. Servers weave between tables carrying French onion soup, steak frites and baskets of warm bread, while guests chat over glasses of rosé.

The space is an extension of the fourth-generation, Lyon-born pastry chef Nadège Nourian’s home and history. A framed recipe sits on a wooden shelf, written in cursive by her grandmother on yellowing paper.

Next to it, a black-and-white photograph shows a pastry shop in Lyon more than a century ago, with Nourian’s great-grandparents standing outside, wearing long aprons and stern expressions. Another frame shows her relatives gathered around a crowded table, passing plates family-style.

“I want people to experience the dishes I grew up with, but tweaked to reflect Toronto’s eclectic tastes,” says Nourian, whose five Nadège pastry shops have helped reshape this city’s bakery culture over the past 17 years.

Chez Nad (“Nad” is her nickname) arrives at a moment when French dining in Toronto is undergoing a subtle but significant transformation. After years of French restaurants often being associated with white tablecloths, heavy sauces and culinary formality, a new generation of chefs is reinterpreting the bistro through contemporary Canadian sensibilities.

They are using classical French culinary techniques and pairing them with local products, international flavours and a more relaxed style of hospitality. The result is a wellspring of cozy bistros that feel recognizably French, but without the stiffness and starch.

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Or as Nourian describes them: “Places where you can meet your friends or neighbours for nice food in a relaxed atmosphere. They’re not stuffy. I think people are done with stuffy places.”

For much of the past two decades, Toronto diners gravitated toward cuisines that felt more casual and globally expansive: omakase counters, regional Chinese restaurants, Korean barbecue spots and contemporary small plates. French restaurants with loyal clientele also existed during that time – Scaramouche, Le Sélect Bistro, Batifole, and Alo, to name a few – but they rarely occupied the cultural centre of gravity in the way Italian, Japanese or contemporary Asian restaurants did.

Part of the challenge, says Jacob Richler, editor-in-chief and publisher of Canada’s Best 100 Restaurants, was perception.

“In Toronto, bistros don’t mean the same thing they do in Montreal,” says Richler. “Toronto diners tend to have much more international expectations.”

Chez Nad’s menu was developed with executive chef Laura Maxwell, formerly of Le Select Bistro, and is unmistakably French and Lyonnaise – escargots in a garlic cream sauce, tartare de boeuf, gougères and steak frites. But nearly every dish carries some subtle personal or cultural inflection that pulls it away from strict tradition.

The crudo de thon à la niçoise features British Columbia albacore tuna, with tapenade and a whisper of Espelette (red peppers cultivated in the French Basque Country). Her Lyonnaise quenelles (poached dumplings made of minced fish, pastry dough and cream) float in lobster bisque with green olives, a detail Nourian borrowed from her mother’s cooking.

Then, there is her reimagined cordon bleu poulet frit. “My parents owned a restaurant, so they didn’t have time to cook for me,” says Nourian, who has two young sons. “I was raised on store-bought cordon bleu, which was pretty terrible.” Her version is a juicy chicken thigh, stuffed with imported French cheese, bacon-wrapped, breaded and deep-fried, finished with a Mornay sauce and Espelette heat on the side.

The produce is largely local. Canadian seafood replaces imported alternatives. “Chez Nad is a love letter to the food of my childhood, and a natural evolution of everything I’ve learned from France, the U.K. and here in Toronto,” says Nourian, who trained under Meilleurs Ouvriers de France before working in influential London kitchens including the Ivy and Yauatcha. She met her husband and business partner Morgan McHugh, a Toronto native, while living in Britain.

“Chez Nad is about bringing people together around dishes that are honest, deeply French and joyfully familiar,” she says.

Across Canada, many chefs are loosening the boundaries of traditional French cooking. In Montreal, award-winning Mon Lapin channels French bistro energy through Quebec ingredients and Italian influences. Vancouver’s Chez Céline pairs French comfort food with West Coast informality. In Toronto, popular bistros such as Parquet, Maison T and Brasserie Côte similarly blend French foundations with seasonal Canadian ingredients.

“At one time, chefs felt pressure to cook what they thought diners expected,” says Richler. “Now, especially in a multicultural country like Canada, they are more confident bringing their own histories and influences to the table. The result is dishes that speak to a chef’s personal experience more than at any time I can remember.”

Nourian believes diners today are looking for restaurants that offer good value, feel grounded and are emotionally familiar. After years of economic anxiety and geopolitical upheaval, she believes “comfort has become cool again.” A bowl of her French onion soup, for example, served with a splash of Portuguese Madeira wine, is the “perfect medicine for burnout culture,” she says.

“It’s about rediscovering what made French food irresistible in the first place: great produce, proper technique and the simple pleasure of sitting down to eat and drink well.”

Rob Feenie, the award-winning chef who recently took over the storied Le Crocodile in Vancouver, sees French cuisine as particularly well-suited to this moment.

“I feel that French culinary scene has never been stronger,” says the culinary director of Le Crocodile and four-time winner of Iron Chef Canada. “French cuisine to me is simplicity … and simplicity is much more difficult to achieve than complicated.”

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At Le Crocodile, Feenie combines classical technique with Canadian ingredients and subtle Asian influences, an approach he believes reflects the direction that contemporary French cooking is moving in across the country.

“Canada is becoming better at recognizing we have first-rate products: Quebec cheeses, West Coast seafood, PEI butter,” he says. “French cooking has always been about respecting the ingredients, and we have a bounty of exceptional local ingredients right here.”

Even in France, the bistro is undergoing a period of transition. Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron backed a campaign to add the country’s cafés and bistros to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list, describing them as “guardians of time.” The effort reflects growing concern about their decline. At the turn of this century, France counted more than 500,000 bistros; today, fewer than 40,000 remain.

However in France, like here in Canada, new chefs are adapting the traditional bistro structure. Many contemporary bistros are surviving by becoming more relaxed, local and reflective of the communities around them.

Nourian understands the risks of opening a restaurant during one of the industry’s most difficult economic periods in decades. Rising rents, labour shortages and inflation continue to pressure even established operators.

Still, she is cautiously optimistic, and believes that diners today want dishes they can understand, good wine on the table and a space that celebrates the conviviality of dining at a restaurant without any of the pretension.

“When everything feels gloomy, people still want somewhere they can escape,” Nourian says. “They want to sit with friends, share a bottle of wine and feel taken care of.”