When you’ve experienced everything Montreal has to offer, it’s very hard to be impressed, let alone excited, about a newcomer. Although Ikanos is new, owner/chef Constant Mentzas and the family behind the name are not. In fact, they’ve been around for quite some time, perfecting their craft and love for Mediterranean and Greek cuisine. By perfecting, we mean that they’ve completely reinvented your favourite dishes and put a twist on them.
Other than the food (which always comes first for us at Montreall.com), the venue is beautiful and features, among other centrepieces, faux fur on every second chair for the ladies’ comfort and a wall of fish bait.
We had the pleasure of trying their late-night menu, available from Thursday to Saturday after 10pm at $24 per person. Here’s what we chose for our late-night formula:
Drink 1 (Metaxa Xini): For some reason, this tasted like crème brûlée, which is f’in amazing! Ingredients: Metaxa 12 years, Ouzo, fresh lemon juice, cinnamon, simple syrup, angostura, and egg white.
Drink 2 (Caïpitziki): A man’s drink, with a hint of the chick-drink us men all want, but can’t for the life of us order. Ingredients: Tsilili, Skinos, lime, dill, and cucumber syrup.
Lamb Tartare: We’re pigs, so we wanted about 10 other servings of this dish. However… we’ve come to learn a very important lesson in all our years of pigging out. Explosive flavours are more appreciated in smaller portions. Quality over quantity applies in this case.
Mushroom Raviolis: Look at this picture and tell us you can’t tell how much effort was put into this dish. Go ahead, we dare you. It just happened to taste fantastic and once again the flavours meshed perfectly together: roasted garlic cream, peas, fava beans, pearl onions, and kefalograviera.
Grilled Octopus: Oh boy, what can we say. Actually we’d rather not say anything. We’ll start and stop at “Holy Moly.” Flavours detected: tomato, red pepper, and Kalamata olives (and in our case, a hint of my own drool).
Lobster Salad: Our favourite dish of the night. Ok, that’s not true. They were all favourites. But if you held a gun to our head and we had to choose only one, this would be it. Lobster salad with grilled peaches salsa, peas purée, orange skordalia, pistachios… mmm!
Loukoumades: [Warning, don’t look at this image for longer than 3 seconds, or you might drool onto your screen.]
These bad boys…they’re another class of loukoumades. Picture honey, orange and honey panna cotta, nuts and a spice crumble (emphasis on the oozing panna cotta). Now picture it in your mouth.
Baklava: These beauties never (or very rarely) disappoint. Merge them with honey yogurt, pistachio nougatine, and pistachio ice cream? You’ve got yourself a fan-favourite.
Don’t forget to check out Ikanos‘ late-night menu for gastronomical savings at the witching hour or visit them any other time of the week. You definitely won’t be disappointed!
112 Rue McGill #1, Montréal, QC H2Y 2E5
(514) 842-0867
Photos by Ikanos and Jonathan Naccache (@jon_webist).
