Quatrefoil

Quatrefoil runs four nights a week — Wednesday through Saturday, four in the afternoon until eleven — and the week shapes the menu before the menu shapes anything else. The Sydenham Street kitchen in Downtown Dundas cooks contemporary French with named Ontario producers, and a focused calendar is what lets the line stay narrow: sea scallops over rhubarb sauce vierge, a hand-cut steak tartare with cured egg yolk, Brome Lake duck breast with a confit leg beignet, Cumbrae's beef tenderloin finished with sauce Chateaubriand. Wednesday through Saturday is the only time the dining room is open, and the kitchen draws the menu around that constraint.

The dinner menu is built in three movements. First-course choices run from sea scallops with fennel, summer sausage, and rhubarb sauce vierge to a smoked ricotta cappelletti finished with Pingue prosciutto, asparagus, ramp, and chicken brodo, with a hand-cut steak tartare in between — watercress emulsion, crispy shallot, porcini vinaigrette, charred onion focaccia. Second courses turn toward the proteins the kitchen is known for. Cumbrae's beef tenderloin arrives with stuffed onion, grilled leek, king oyster mushroom, potato terrine, soubise, and sauce Chateaubriand. Brome Lake duck breast is plated with za'atar carrot, navy beans, confit leg beignet, nettle salsa verde, and rosemary jus. Wild caught BC halibut comes with shellfish nduja, green garlic tapenade, fingerling potato, and a saffron-and-dill butter sauce. The vegetarian order has been thought through as a main rather than an accommodation — grilled maitake mushroom with lovage royale, asparagus, fiddleheads, aged Gouda, and brown butter jus. Pastry closes on Georgina Mitropoulos's side of the kitchen: a honey pavlova with spruce honey, crispy meringue, hibiscus crumb, lemon curd, and honey ice cream; a stroopwafel built around caramelized whey, milk tea Chantilly, rhubarb, and white chocolate sorbet.