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Press, 29 May 1985, Page 30

Dux de Lux The Arts Centre cnr Hereford and Montreal Streets Phone 66-919 Licensed

(By

HANS PETROVIC)

Even for the more carnivorous eater, an occasional vegetarian meal at the Dux de Lux can make a very pleasant change, and the restaurant’s ethnic evenings on Sundays prove to be a particularly adventurous outing. Food from a different

country is presented each week. For instance, last

Sunday it was French, the Sunday before that it was Spanish, and the week before, Indian. Our party of four booked several days ahead for the Spanish evening. What added to the evening’s interest was trying to guess the kind of dishes that would be offered. Not knowing anything about Spanish vegetarian cooking, this proved virtually impossible, for all we could think of was that there would be plenty of onions, and probably a cold gazpacho soup. We were wrong on both counts: there was hardly an onion in evidence, and the “sopa” was a garlic broth ($3) strong enough to keep vampires at least two blocks’ distance from the Arts Centre. All four of us thoroughly enjoyed this potent brew, which was served with brown bread. For entree, I tried mushrooms casseroled in white wine, with garlic and thyme ($4). This dish proved delightful, and included a generous helping of mushrooms, plus a little- side salad, a slice of lemon and garlic bread. There was a selection of four main dishes, and as luck would have it, we each chose a different one: Pimentos Rellanos ($9.40)

comprised peppers baked with paella, mushrooms, rice, corn and olives, and topped with tomato and almond sauce. The peppers were stuffed with the paella, and made an interesting meal.

Menestra de Verduros ($9.30) was a casserole that included egg plant, tomato, onion and mushroom, with a white wine sauce. This was accompanied by broccoli, zucchini and peppers, and was also well received.

Tortilla Espanola ($9.50) was an omelette filled with sauteed onion, potato, garlic and herbs, served with tomato and pepper sauce. This was my choice, and I felt I could call it vegetarian as long as I thought of the eggs as “cackleberries.” It was a truly golden omelette and its flavour, possibly due to the excellent light cooking of the eggs plus the herbs, was splendid. Tardillos de Col ($9.60) were spring cabbage leaves filled with tomato, apricot and almond rice, deep fried in bread crumbs, and topped with sauce. Deep-fried food is something of which I am usually very wary, but the cabbage leaves were light and crisp, and their contents another beautifully flavoured mixture.

There had been generous, beautifully presented helpings of each dish, and as infrequent eaters of completely vegetarian meals, we were all surprised how filling these meals had been. For me, vegetarian meals have the same effect as that often attributed to Chinese food: feeling you have eaten a lot at the time, but hungry again shortly after. This is not entirely true, however, for all it means is that you are left without some of those heavier, hard-to-digest meat-proteins in your stomach.

I certainly had had suffi-

cient by then, but my friends chose to press on with the dessert. One chose three bananas cooked in orange juice ($4), which was well received; while the two women opted for the orange-chocolate cream (54), which was served with cream, slices of kiwi fruit and a grape. We all tasted this and found it delicious.

We finished with coffee ($1) and a Galliano coffee ($3). The entire evening for the four of us, not counting drinks, cost a very reasonable $71.80. The Dux de Lux is licensed, and is adjoined by a charming tavern with a student-type atmosphere, which proves an excellent meeting place for pre-din-ner drinks while waiting for friends to arrive.

Although licensed, and serving a variety of wines and beers, the restaurant also allows customers to bring their own bottles — while we decided to bring our own beers, gin and tonics and orange juices with us from the tavern.

Restaurants serving “alternative” foods, such as vegetarian, are often associated with a bare-footed, long-haired, casual life style. The Dux de Lux, however, manages to transcend this, presenting a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere acceptable to even the more conservative members of our society.

If anything is too relaxed it is the service, which was sometimes slow. Also, the orange-chocolate dessert was presented in a metal ice cream dish, without a plate underneath and a big dessert spoon. The next table had the same served (by a different waitress) with an accompanying plate and a smaller spoon, which was easier to handle in a small dish. In such a friendly, relaxed atmosphere, however, one tends to happily overlook such slips. Over all, we had a most enjoyable evening, with everyone else — particularly the people with funny hats at a nearby table — obviously also having a good time.