Prime Cuts

The latest cookbook from Montreal’s Joe Beef is a guide to a gluttonous way of life

- Shannon Tien

I am a follower of recipes. Unlike those cooks who substitute chicken stock for vegetable or cinnamon for nutmeg, I think of each recipe as a test, and if I pay attention and follow the rules exactly as described, everything will taste like it’s supposed to taste. So I was a bit worried when I opened Joe Beef: Surviving the Apocalypse, the second cookbook from Montreal restaurateurs David McMillan and Fred Morin along with co-author Meredith Erickson, and saw instructions for pickling deer necks, frying calf brains, and cooking up crispy frog legs. I had no idea where to begin or even where to shop.

Many of the tome’s 158 recipes are similar to, or based on, the extravagant, decadent, and somewhat outrageous French-inspired meals served at McMillan and Morin’s restaurants: Joe Beef, Liverpool House, Le Vin Papillon (all of which are found along the same street in Montreal’s Little Burgundy), and the two recently opened destinations Mon Lapin and McKiernan Luncheonette. Ever since 2005, the duo’s inventive and unstuffy cuisine — think a bacon-and cheese sandwich that replaces slices of bread with deep-fried foie gras (it was named the Double Down, after the KFC sandwich) or calf liver stuffed with mushrooms, cognac, and bread, then fried in butter — has elevated their restaurants to bucket-list status for food obsessed tourists. Anthony Bourdain featured Joe Beef on The Layover and referred to the menu as “wonderful and unapologetically over the top at times,” and Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau once met for a well- publicized meal at Liverpool House, where they had the famous lobster spaghetti.