Elixir Bistro

Much of what reaches the plate at Elixir Bistro starts in the chef's own garden. Pirooz Jafari runs the kitchen as chef-owner, and his cooking is classical French to the bone — technique first, built from hand-picked and often home-grown ingredients rather than from a fondness for the genre's clichés. Organic vegetables come out of his own plot and onto the day's plates, which is a rare thing to be able to say about a French bistro on a strip of west Kitchener. The dining room sits in Belmont Village, a small commercial stretch on the city's west side, and it carries itself as a personal restaurant rather than a group's idea of one. It is reservation-led and dinner-only, built for the table that has come out to mark something.

The menu is a catalogue of French standards cooked with conviction. To start, escargots arrive pan-seared in a red wine-garlic butter with sweet black grapes; foie gras de canard comes as a terrine with house-made toast; moules de Provence sit in tomato, shallot, garlic and white wine, a baguette alongside for the broth. There is an avocado tartare layered with smoked salmon and cucumber, and a Poire & Chevre salad of mixed greens, goat cheese and pecans in a champagne vinaigrette. The mains hold the line — Souris d'Agneau, a lamb shank braised in white wine and rosemary over pomme puree; Confit de Canard, duck leg with fingerling potatoes and orange jus; Boeuf Bourguignon, slow-braised in a red-wine reduction with button mushrooms and pommes persillade. The Seafood Bouillabaisse shifts with the day's catch, finished some nights with a pistachio crust, others with a saffron beurre blanc or a garden herb oil.