Cheerfully delicious

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/04/2018 (2198 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The setting of this family-run St. James resto is cheap and cheerful, the former Rustic Bakery space being a fixer-upper that’s still being fixed up. But the welcome is warm and the food — which includes some unpretentious takes on French classics — is honest and often inspired.

The hours are expansive, running from morning to night (except for Sunday, which focuses on brunch). Lunch and dinner offerings can be a little uneven, but Little Goat’s breakfast, offered all day, is a treat.

There are sweet or savoury options with some cool details, such as mushrooms on toast gussied up with basil aioli or sweet potato hash served with curried yogurt. But the kitchen’s breakfast excellence really comes down to the fundamentals.

Let’s just take the omelette. A common North American approach to the omelette is to consider the eggs as a neutral — or even worse, rubbery and tough — envelope for loads and loads and loads of stuff.

The omelette at Little Goat instead emulates the classic French version, which is all about the eggs. Creamy and tender and subtly finished with a touch of Boursin cheese, the Little Goat omelette is a marvel of beautifully prepared simplicity. It pairs nicely with a delicately dressed green salad.

A single baked egg, which comes to the table in its own tiny, adorable cast iron pan, is dusted with a crisped, garlicky cheese gratin and served with grilled house-made sourdough toast and very good jam. House-made sausages are also good, lean and a bit herby.

There is a rotating selection of morning buns, one day featuring a sweet dough with an undercurrent of lemon topped with just-torched billows of soft meringue. The house coffee is Flatland from Gimli, brewed dark and strong.

Lunch offerings include several salads, the sampled spring salad light and lively with added asparagus, artichokes and tart vinaigrette.

Mac ‘n’ cheese is a little disappointing, the bottom layer being creamy and the top layer being cheesy but the two elements never quite connecting.

Moules et frites, a signature dish, are available at lunch and supper. The big heap of mussels is good, as is the featured sauce of butter, lemon and mildly licoricey tarragon (a rotating daily special), but there’s a practical issue with the high, deep serving bowl, which makes it hard to get at the sauce. The accompanying frites are slender but not quite crisp enough.

Dinner options include choose-your-own-adventure charcuterie and fromage plates, which let you pick from some worldly meats and cheeses chalked up on the board. We tried a gorgeous French double crème brie with an ashy rind, a pungent Quebec blue and a nutty sheep’s milk, which came with walnuts, pear slices, some good olives and two breads, one crisply thin and the other a mealy, slightly sweet brown bread.

Battered and fried artichokes, on one occasion, were a little undercooked and beige, and needed a bit more labneh for dipping.

Boeuf bourguignon is a straight-up and intensely flavoured take on the French favourite. With meat moist from a buttermilk marinade and skin subtly crisp, the resto’s Gallic approach to fried chicken is lovely and matched with a super-rich, silken puree of pommes aligot and skinny tender-crisp green beans.

The lamb shank is falling-off-the-bone tender but could have used more heat, both with the depth of spicing and in terms of temperature. The shank and its accompanying pearl couscous come to the table only lukewarm.

Desserts rotate, often relying on the simple staples of home baking, such as a nicely plain, dense vanilla pound cake.

The space is, well, kooky. It’s light and bright but a little beat up and oddly configured, with a slope-roofed addition along one side. But it’s been freshened with whitewashed walls and some very happy textiles.

The small venue can get busy. (Reservations are recommended for weekend brunch.) There were some lulls in service on a quiet weekday night, but the staff handles the bustling breakfast rush well.

And there’s a nice neighbourhood feel to Little Goat. On one early morning visit, the staff offered samples of bread pudding with caramel sauce to the hungry people waiting for tables, a friendly touch that got us talking with each other — and kept our blood sugar levels up as well.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca