One night last May, about a week after Conviction opened, Cyril the server spilled a brimming glass of ice-cold beer onto a customer’s lap. I was having dinner at the next table, and I saw it happen. As did the TV cameraman who was prowling through the dining room, filming material for an eight-part documentary about the new restaurant. The show, called Conviction Kitchen, starts airing on CityTV in the middle of September: no doubt the lager tsunami will be a highlight.

The customer was surprisingly civil about it. And his wife felt so badly for Cyril she called the next day to book a birthday party, insisting that he be their waiter. She wanted to show her support for the idea behind the restaurant, where a dozen or so ex-convicts, almost all with a background of substance abuse, trafficking and petty crime, are employed as waiters and cooks. She is not alone in her sympathy.

Ever since publicists started spreading the word, half the city has applauded chef Marc Thuet and his wife, Biana Zorich, who owns the business and runs the front of house, for giving these former felons a second chance. The other half has taken a more cynical view, assuming Conviction to be not so much a compassionate social experiment as a made-for-TV gimmick, a way of attracting attention during the recessionary doldrums.

My own jaded opinion has changed in the weeks since it opened—but my field is food, not ethics. Now that the TV cameras have gone and the stardust has settled, a more important question remains: Is Conviction any good as a restaurant? I know that for some, the whole incident of Cyril and the beer would automatically damn the place. Stern arbiters in the press and the more ferocious bloggers have already waxed huffy about the inevitably amateurish service. To them I say, please. Get over yourselves. It’s a restaurant, not an emergency room. I’m much more interested in what’s on the plate.

Marc Thuet is one of our finest chefs, the nonpareil where game or foie gras is concerned, a master of charcuterie and baker of the city’s most delicious breads. Over the years, his food has often thrilled me: even when he was working at Centro in the early ’90s and constantly complaining about owner Franco Prevedello’s preoccupation with pizza and Italian food; especially when he was chef at The Fifth between 2002 and 2004 and owner Libell Geddes provided sophisticated editing to his macho style; and also since 2005, when he and Zorich set up their own restaurant on King West, with Preve­dello as landlord.

The restaurant has gone through several iterations in the past four years, starting out as Thuet Cuisine with haute tasting menus and sumptuous dishes that reflected the chef’s Alsatian background. When that didn’t soar, they changed it to Bistro and Bakery Thuet, with a more relaxed ambience and serious bistro cooking at prices that were reasonable, given the days of work that went into his delectable cassoulet and choucroute garnie. Last fall, in answer to the recession, Thuet and Zorich reinvented the place for a third time, calling it Bite Me. It seemed the chef had finally found a menu that would appeal to Torontonians (four pastas and seven other relatively conventional main courses, all under $30) and satisfy his own rustic-artistic tempera­ment (pig foot with sauce grand-mère, terrine of wild Scottish pheas­ant and foie gras). Dinner there was not for the faint of heart—so unremittingly rich that one longed for a salad—but damn it was good.