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What’s on the menu at Vinoteca Pompette, the Italian(ish) transformation of the previously French Pompette

Including house-made pasta, a steak au poivre burger and a pistachio negroni

By Erin Hershberg| Photography by Jelena Subotic

| November 26, 2024

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Name: Vinoteca Pompette Contact: 597 College St., pompette.ca/vinoteca, @vinotecapompette
Previously: Pompette Owners: Maxime Hoerth, Martine Bauer and Jonathan Bauer (Bar Pompette, Bakery Pompette) Chef: Martine Bauer Accessibility: Not fully accessible

Maxime Hoerth, Martine Bauer and Jonathan Bauer launched Pompette, their Michelin-recommended French restaurant in Little Italy, in March of 2020—not an auspicious time, to say the least. “We shut down before we opened,” says Hoerth.

The restaurant tried multiple pivots before fully launching. “We went through about seven different concepts—depending on what restrictions were in place—before we officially opened. We were always French, but first we did burgers to-go, then we were a patio, then we were a wine shop, then we did a snack menu, then we bought a one-tonne pizza oven for the patio—but it was stolen, so we scratched that and did an après-ski menu, and so on,” says Jonathan.

The Vinoteca Pompette team — Chef Martine Bauer, Jonathan Bauer and Maxime Hoerth

Signs point the way to Bakery Pompette and Bar Pompette

When restrictions were lifted for good, Pompette finally became a sit-down French restaurant offering items like pan-fried sweetbreads and pâté en croute. And while it was successful enough to allow them to open up two other businesses (Bar Pompette and Bakery Pompette) nearby, things weren’t working out the way they had hoped. “We had reservations in the books, but we weren’t always full. We had become a special-occasion spot, not a neighbourhood spot, and the latter is what we wanted,” Martine says.

With Vinoteca Pompette, the team is making one last pivot—to house-made pasta, crowd-pleasing antipasti and surprising special additions like a steak au poivre burger, one of the original items from their pandemic-times takeout menu. “We want this to be a date-night spot, a dinner out with the family spot and a place for regulars to come every week for a glass of wine or cocktail and a snack,” says Hoerth.

A spread of dishes on a table at Vinoteca Pompette

The Food

Though Martine’s rustically elegant dishes are predominantly Italian, she doesn’t shy away from infusing them with flavours from around the globe—as long as they’re close to her heart. House-made pappardelle features a duck confit ragu of warm spices (clove, allspice) that point to Martine’s upbringing in Mauritius. Her ravioli is presented in the French style of Dauphiné, as a sheet of many attached pockets, each stuffed with creamy comté cheese, in a sauce of brown butter. And Canadian maple syrup lends some sweetness to otherwise tangy eggplant caponata.

Seared cabbage — Cabbage is cooked sous-vide then seared and served on top of a creamy, rich almond purée. It’s finished with a drizzle of house-made Tamarack Farms espelette pepper oil. $15

A person pours sauce over a dish of mussels — The mussels ’nduja is an appetizer of shelled mussels cooked in a sauce of shallots, white wine and parsley. They’re topped with a lightly spicy ’nduja butter and flashed under the salamander to create a quick beurre blanc sauce. A sprinkling of toasted Bakery Pompette sourdough crumbs and cilantro garnish the dish. $17

A dish of mussels in ’nduja sauce — And here’s the finished dish

Vegetarian cavatelli with truffles — The vegetarian winter cavatelli is finished with mascarpone, black truffle paste and shaved truffles. $25

Pappardelle in a duck ragu — For the pappardelle à la ragu, local duck legs are seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg and clove and confited for four hours in the oven, then deboned. The bones aren’t tossed—they’re used for stock, which is cooked down with preserved local tomatoes for the sauce. It’s all finished with grated parmigiano-reggiano and parsley. $29

Ravioli Dauphine — For the ravioli Dauphiné, Martine combines ricotta and comté cheeses with Madagascar black peppercorn and stuffs it all into tender pasta pockets. Olive-oil-and-honey-roasted delicata squash is gingerly placed overtop. The whole dish is unified in a nutty sage and brown butter sauce and garnished with fried sage. $29

A burger and fries — Classic French flavours of steak au poivre find themselves in burger form for this deep cut off Pompette’s 2020 takeout menu. (Covid did have some upsides.) The beef—a blend of chuck and brisket—comes from either Enright or Tamarack farms and is ground in house so Martine can control its fat content. The burger is covered in gruyère cheese, then grilled and stuffed into a house-made bun that’s slathered with green peppercorn mayo, dolloped with a maple syrup and shallot compote, and freshened up with a little spinach (so you can say you ate a vegetable). Fries, black garlic mayo and house red onion–shallot ketchup come on the side, because French. $28

The Drinks

A selection of Italian wines shares the list with a robust collection of French bottles from Pelican Wines, the Bauers’ own agency. All are natural, organic and biodynamic. The cocktails, meanwhile, are all Italian. Hoerth pulls from some of the boot’s heavy hitters, adding intense (and unanticipated) flavours: burrata makes its way into a gin-based cocktail, pistachio lends itself to a less-than-classic negroni and parmigiano-reggiano lands inside a twist on the espresso martini.

An espresso martini — Not your typical draught drink, the kegged Caffé Corretto is like a boozy cold brew with a little bit of funk. It’s a blend of parmigiano-infused vodka, Ithaca espresso syrup, cold brew and amaro. $20

A pistachio negroni — The pistachio negroni starts as your typical gin-based negroni with Campari, but that’s where the similarity ends. Into the base goes three types of vermouth and pistachio paste. Then it’s all blended and sits sous-vide overnight. The mixture is cooled, then put into a centrifuge to remove the solids. The pre-batched drink is served over a giant ice cube branded with the Pompette swirl. $22

The Aranciata Negroni — A blend of two types of gin, vermouth and Campari, the Aranciata Negroni is based on Hoerth’s memories of travelling to Italy as a child and eating pain au chocolat that tasted of oranges. “I wanted to recreate the memory of bringing orange to a place where it didn’t necessarily belong,” he says. To achieve this, he adds orange zest to the negroni base and distills the concoction, then pre-batches it. To make the orange flavour more potent, he adds a hint of orange blossom. $19

The Basil Smash cocktail — For the Basil Smash, Hoerth sous-vides basil and gin together, then distills them to create a herbaceous base, which he mixes with a house-made simple syrup of fresh burrata, whole burrata, water and sugar. Next, he adds a bit of lime juice and a saline solution to offset any sweetness. It’s shaken, strained and served in a coupe. $19

The Space

The unpretentious Parisian bistro setting is filled with warm wood, oversized spirit decanters and framed cocktail-recipe posters that look like vintage ads.

Inside Vinoteca Pompette, an Italian restaurant in Toronto

The bar and champagne cart at Vinoteca Pompette in Toronto

Bar and table seating in the dining room of Vinoteca Pompette

Vintage posters of cocktails decorate the walls at Vinoteca Pompette

Old-fashioned bottles filled with Cognac sit on a bar counter

Shelves behind a bar are stocked with bottles of wine and liquor

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Erin Hershberg

Erin Hershberg is a freelance writer with nearly two decades of experience in the lifestyle sector. She currently lives in downtown Toronto with her husband and two children.

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