Where do animals go when they die? If they’re lucky — or if we are — they end up at Atelier Thuet in Liberty Village, the latest outpost for culinary superstar Marc Thuet, where the big man will make use of every tasty remaining scrap of them.

The list of ingredients in his bistro-cum-bakery-cum-grocery-store may sound repugnant to even the most daring gourmand: his boudin noir, which appears in multiple menu items, is just a sexy name for pig’s blood sausage; and the more honestly named head cheese, served on an absurdly large butcher’s platter ($30), involves the boiling of a whole animal’s head. And while the steak tartare en verrine ($15) — just a fancy shmancy way of saying “in a glass bowl” — with its flourish of zippy mustard and cracked speckled quail’s egg, may conjure up images of Purina, it’s more like a fancy feast. Your tongue tingles; fat oozes and melts; saline slashes across the palate; texture and flavour collide, tugging at latent genetic memory strings — this is food your ancestors might’ve eaten, only better and pricier.

A salad of frisée with croutons, sweet and salty maple-cured speck, and a pair of duck eggs fried sunny side up ($10) hits all the pleasure centres, delighting with satisfying bursts of crunchy toast combined with the warmth of yolk-coated lettuce. A roasted Perth County capon ($32), sided with a mound of Thuet’s fabu parmesan-laden shoestring frites, could hardly be better, with crisp, golden skin crackling around magnificently moist meat. And the massive portion size lives up to its “to share” billing. And though you may balk at the price for sausages, bangers and mashed potatoes Lyonnaise ($18), it is entirely justifiable. A long, almost ebon-dark link of blood pudding swims alongside its light-coloured brethren in a texture-perfect pool of smashed taters, topped with one of the darkest, most purest demis ever sampled.
Pour dessert, a deconstructed lemon meringue pie served in a mason jar with short-bite cookie ($7.50) and a mug of French press coffee ($5, serves two) is the perfect way to cap off your meal.

Judged on the food alone, this cozy box of a boite, with the charm of a hunting lodge, is flat-out stellar. A few service glitches curb our enthusiasm, though: wait staff is certainly amiable and surprisingly knowledgeable (just remembering the names of all the cured meats on the charcuterie plate — venison, prosciutto, head cheese, a terrine of foie gras, game meat with duck consommé en croute, cured eye of round… you get the picture — is impressive); however, repeated forgetfulness and lack of communication between servers are a few trifling missteps that need tending to. And though we don’t mind waiting for perfect eats, it takes close to an hour before our first course arrives. Then again, there are worse ways to idle away 60 minutes than chowing down on baskets of Thuet’s famed artisanal breads smothered in Mennonite butter.