Le Swan, and the case for Mood Restaurants.
Adapted from: the Instagrammable trend.
Excess fame ruins the restaurant game. As a result, I try not to pay too much attention to Names in hospitality and keep tabs mostly for attribution, but one that I do note, whenever it comes up in the local news, is Jen Agg. I make it a point to visit all her restaurants at least once, not out of fandom or allegiance but a love for thoughtfulness. I like when care can be felt in a space, which has been true of every restaurant she’s had a hand in, from the recently-open General Public to the short-lived Agrikol, in Montreal.
Agg has a divisive personality and reputation—delightful to some, disagreeable to others. To me, she possesses the all-too-rare honesty, coarse and brut, of a person who doesn’t care to be liked. Maybe that’s why I like her; I don’t need niceness if there’s kindness at the core. She’s been vocally condemning the genocide in Gaza, notable in part because she belongs to a shocking minority in an industry that, all of a sudden, stopped proselytizing about food as a human right.
Restaurateur, writer, occasional FOH at her own restaurants—the woman wears many hats. If I were to give her one, it would say Architect of Mood. This is not to reduce her restaurants to the dreaded Instagrammable modifier, although of course they are. There is a certain alchemy at work that cannot be captured in photos—the sum of good food, drinks, music, lighting, decor, and service that add up to something greater, not anything tangible but an energy—part warmth, part excitement, that precise feeling you were seeking when you decided to leave your house in the first place.
That’s how I found myself walking to Le Swan in a snowstorm.
Le Swan, in that stretch of days that swirl together in December.
Of all the Agg restaurants, Le Swan is the one I most often want to return to. Like her other projects, the interior exhibits aesthetic concern, but never of a formality that precludes the possibility of intimacy. It’s the perfect place for, say, a fifth date: a chatty room that becomes brown noise for conversation, warm wood and cozy booths, a dimness that mimics the flattery of candlelight. Every time I step inside, I’m reminded of why I love restaurants.
Le Swan is a self-declared French diner. Accordingly, its menu—developed by chef James Santon—is cheekily divided into two columns: your traditional French bistro fare (rillette, niçoise, boeuf bourguignon) and your comforting diner classics (tuna melt, onion rings, hot chicken sandwich). There are also protein-heavy platters (rotisserie chicken and steak frites, with your choice of bavette or NY strip) and fondue, for two, or four. It’s food to pair with occasion and company, not the other way around. This time, M. and I ordered with a certain celebratory excess, one that befits a snowstorm, the end of the year, a new chapter.
It was my first time having the steak tartare: minimal and chunky, served with chives, an egg yolk, and a tinge of mustard. It was of a pleasant neutrality that made my tongue, which has been trained on the chilis and ferments of Hunanese-Chinese cuisine, wish for more pickles or capers. This is naturally a matter of taste, so subjective that one wonders why people bother to read and write about food at all—but in tartare, it’s the acidic accoutrements that make the raw meat worth eating for me.
This absence was quickly compensated for when the onion soup came—earthy, bovine, a lamination of flavour, the kind of savory the English language has no words for. It eradicated any cold lingering in my body from the outdoors in a few sips. The price, for a small bowl of soup, is steep—but what it lacks in volume, it makes up for in sensory density.
Our shared main was a chicken fried steak, a dish borrowed from the American South that made me nostalgic for a period of my childhood spent in Mississippi. It came with a pepper-laden gravy and mash so smooth it ate like ice cream. The steak, in contrast, was stripped of fat, dry and fibrous, its batter overfried and oversalted. These are inconsistencies in output that I don’t understand, which I’m sure I would if I ever worked in a kitchen. I’m told I don't have the temperament for it. (Derogatory?)
The sides are consistently my favourite part of the meal at Le Swan. This time, perfect fries, with the crispy-soft texture of potatoes cooked over days, and the green beans, done almondine, which played their zesty and tart counterpart. I’d sooner get all of them—the corndogs are also great, and the onion rings, which they group with the diner dishes—than the desserts again. They were fine, with a few asterisks—the fruit in the bananas foster needed ripening and the apple cake lacked moisture—but what I’m trying to say is, a salt-toothed diner has better options.
It averages out. You’re distracted from the stumbles by other deftly executed parts. It doesn’t matter as much when you’re sharing everything and there’s a breathy Cat Power on the speakers reminding you of your morality. It matters even less when your server is warm and generous and the glass of red she recommended is right on brief: fruit-forward with a bassline of barnyard stank. You forget about it entirely when your friend leans over and in the just-visible light of the place she looks like a statue, except one eating with its hands, stirred from its stony fate by a hunger for life.
This is not a defense of the surging trend in hospitality to overspend on interior decor and pass the cost along to your diners. It’s the recognition that ambiance is a tricky thing to perfect, and to give credit when it’s done right. I love food and flavours an impossible amount but I will never love them as much as I love mood, the particular, irreproducible conditions that enable a special moment between people. That, ostensibly, is the Jen Agg signature: hospitable environments that make this life possible. Places conducive to appetite.
Le Swan
892 Queen St W
Toronto