It's a few hours before the start of dinner service at Le Pigeon last Thursday and the restaurant is already packed, each chair filled with someone talking, laughing or wolfing down a slice of pizza taken from the bright red boxes perched on the restaurant's famous chef's counter.
"I learned a lot opening Little Bird," says Le Pigeon chef and co-owner Gabriel Rucker, referring to the downtown Portland bistro. "Early on, it was like the two staffs barely knew each other."
As you might recall, Canard began with a burger. Last year, Rucker, 36, sober and more energetic than ever, was experimenting with a slider-sized, White Castle-style "steam burger," this one with French onion soup blended into the beef.
"I was originally going for something simpler, but then I got really excited," Rucker says. "First it was oysters and steam burgers. Then it just became like small and more singular plates. A swordfish Oscar with some crab salad and asparagus. Petite steak with steak fat fried crostini, melted Swiss cheese and French onion soup sauce."
Over the past few months, Rucker and chef de cuisine Taylor Daugherty have let their imaginations run wild. On our visit, cooks were prepping a dozen fat rolls of ducketta, a ducky take on porchetta that might become the restaurant's signature. Uni-topped "Texas toast" and foie gras dumplings offer gentle reminders of why the left side of the Le Pigeon menu has been a consistent delight for for more than a decade. That dry-aged New York steak with French onion soup sauce and the dry-fried chicken wings with truffled ranch call to mind the fun French-American mashups happening at Little Bird Bistro. (Good company, as each of those restaurants earned The Oregonian's Restaurant of the Year honors, Le Pigeon in 2008, Little Bird in 2012.)
Approachable is the word of the day. About a third of Canard's menu is vegetarian. Nothing is priced higher than $20. During the afternoon and late-night happy hours, that steam burger falls from the usual $6 down to $3. Minors are allowed deep into the night. And that soft-serve machine hiding between the bar and open kitchen isn't just for show.
As expected, Canard dials in Paris right up front, with a tightly curved, marble-topped bar that will serve as the new home for Little Bird Bistro barman Aaron Zieske. Avian wallpaper, smart banquettes and a blue half wall separating the bar from the dining room also bring Little Bird to mind -- unsurprisingly, architect Mark Annen designed both. Only Canard has a bit less polish, with a few dents and divots left over from the former occupant, a steampunk boutique. For Rucker, that means more room for the restaurant to evolve. Keep an eye out for the tiling in the bathroom, the vaguely steampunk-y light fixtures above the bar and the birds in flight inlaid on some of the tables.
The leather-bound wine list offers wines without borders -- lots of Loire Valley, plenty of Burgundy, some beaujolais, Italian, Spanish, German riesling and both Oregon and California. Fortgang echos the food menu with his own high-low mashups. Glass pours range from $8 up to $20. The cheapest bottle is $25. Much of the wine list costs less than $50. But the 14-foot-tall temperature controlled wine room has some high-end stuff as well. Serious oenophiles take note: Canard's $30 corkage is waived for bottles 15 years or older.
Behind that marble-topped bar, Zieske has devised a cocktail menu with something for everyone, from low alcohol refreshers to foie gras-fat washed bourbon. For an extra $3, The Breakfast of Champions, a dirty martini riff, comes with an oyster. On my visit, Zieske was prepping a seasonal daiquiri made with strawberries and dark rum.
"I want to make sure that the drinks fit with the food -- fun, playful, approachable in not just flavor profile but in price," Zieske says.
Canard opens with dinner service only. But the restaurant was pitched as an all-day affair, cafe by morning, wine hangout by night, with oysters and French fries available as early as 8 a.m.. Those expanded hours are coming, Rucker says, perhaps as soon as late May. That's when the steam burger will be joined by a maple sausage breakfast sandwich, in-house muffins, scones, quiche, a pie of the day and the long-awaited return of weekend brunch service, not seen in these parts since the earliest days of Le Pigeon.
As a nod to the famous foie gras-everything profiterole next door, Canard will feature another famous choux pastry, a Paris-Brest, with seasonal accompaniments including strawberries and toasted coconut. There's also a chocolate butterscotch pie, though right now Rucker seems most hyped on the soft-serve machine. Vanilla is permanent. The second tap is a rotating flavor, currently a banana toffee road tested by Rucker himself. Each is available solo, as a swirl or in a cone with peanut butter magic shell and Funfetti. Boozy milkshakes have been promised. Rucker even teases a secret menu item, a bowl of soft-serve with the works: chocolate sauce, whipped cream and sprinkles.
Unlike Enoteca Nostrana, the new Nostrana wine bar we visited last week (and which also opens Monday), the kitchens at Le Pigeon and Canard have been kept apart. "Not to get all hippy on you, but I'm very protective of the energy at Le Pigeon," Rucker says.
Just after 2:30 p.m. that Thursday, Rucker heads next door, trailed by the staff of all three restaurants. Once gathered, Rucker tells a funny story about prepping 300 boiled eggs for an event at a restaurant and yoga studio in New York owned by the actor Richard Gere. People laugh, but before anyone has a chance to wonder what the point of the anecdote was, Rucker turns around, reaches up high and tears down the brown paper covering the windows. Canard is open.
Canard's opening-day menus:
Canard opens on Monday, April 16 (tonight!) from 4 p.m. to midnight at 734 E. Burnside St. Expanded hours will roll out later this spring. For more information, visit canardpdx.com.
-- Michael Russell