Brocante Baleze

Brocante Balèze
2116 rue de Bleury
Montreal, QC
●●○○○○○○○○
2 out of 10

I'm sorry, but when I want to be treated poorly, I'll become a telemarketer. I certainly won't walk into a café I've been curious about for weeks and try to cause trouble. I swear I don't even know how to make trouble. I know how to be an inconvenience because of my intolerance of lactose, but that doesn't justify rude treatment. I'm a potential customer, and those need to be treated with respect.

This had always looked like such a cute cafe, and having found no reviews of it online, I figured it was time to check it out myself. I wasn't hungry, just curious. There was a grand total of five people in the restaurant, so it certainly didn't appear busy, and I felt it would probably be okay to ask a few questions. I walked into Cafe Baleze and stared in awe at the stunningly beautiful desserts.

There was a selection of marzipan fruit, or I assume that's what they were, a wide selection of Middle-Eastern style baklava (less syrupy than Greek versions), a home made chocolate layer cake (your guess is as good as mine what was in it, but you could tell it didn't come from the Cheesecake Factory by the simple icing style), and a fresh dessert loaf of some sort, properly wrapped in plastic to let the flavours combine as it sat waiting to be desired.

I didn't ask the cook/owner to come out of the kitchen, where he was obviously busy, but the girl at the counter pulled him when she didn't have the answers to my inquiries. Once distracted, he apparently thought my questions about who made the desserts and what was in them were inappropriate. At a cafe? Really?

Maybe my first mistake was asking in English, but the people who had just been served at the counter were all English, and I couldn't yet hear the French accent of the counter server. She didn't know where the cake came from, she said, it was a friend of the cook. She didn't know what kind of loaf it was, and quickly asked if I would like to talk to the chef. You always talk to the chef if you can. You get the best information and the most interesting conversations that way. "I'll smile and be polite because I know he's busy and stepping out of his kitchen just to satisfy my curiosty", I actually thought.

No amunt of smiling got the sharp resentment out of this man. I even switched to French because the server spoke to him in French. "They're not from a company," he bellowed, and tried to move back toward the kitchen, despite my apparent follow-up question. They're home made? Yes! You don't get cake like that from stores. Yes, I see. What kind of cake is it? (Mumble of anger). Sorry, what did you say? "You could try a piece" (Not the nice kind of offer...More the "stop asking me questions, annoying girl, and buy a piece of cake so you leave me alone). "Unfortunately I can't eat milk or cream or butter. I'm lactose-intolerant". "No milk in the pastries," he says...right...but LOTS of butter. You can get phyllo pastry made from vegetable oil but I didn't get to ask that question before he stormed back into the kitchen. I tried to say a meek thanks, but he certainly didn't hear it through the thick cloud of irritation that muted the sound of my voice around his head. Well I certainly wasn't going to have a piece of cake or pastry and get sick if I don't respect the place that served me the cake. Why would I want to support that kind of cafe?

So I left...and thought about this experience for the next hour while I had errands to run. On my way back I had to pass the cafe again, and I had debated on my walk between never stepping foot in there again, or intentionally going back in to ask more questions, to give the cafe a second chance.

Well I'm a sucker for second chances apparently. It was after lunch now and, again, the cafe was not busy. I wanted to ask about the sandwiches and soup. The sandwich was grilled chicken with pesto. Pesto with cheese? No. Pesto with...? No parmesan? "No cheese" was all I got. The soup, then. What kind of soup? Vegetable puree. Was the broth home made? Yes. No powders or cubes? No, made here, I'm not lying (as if I didn't believe her). I saw the cook peering out from the kitchen angrily at me.

"Okay, thanks..." I said. I didn't exactly feel welcome. At least I escaped un-yelled at...

Well, no, actually. He yelled from the kitchen that you turn the top knob of the door to get out. Translation: "Get out!" Really, in French or English, I could tell he disliked me, and I'd had enough.

So if you go to this place and have a great time let me know. The food could be good, but this man is a modern-day soup nazi. I didn't have the heart to try the sandwich or soup. It was certainly not made with love. I would have gotten an answer to what was in the bread, but it was not worth the trouble (See, I avoid conflict. How very Canadian of me). The soup may have been nice, but I couldn't ask if there was dairy in it (Avoid, avoid). And the desserts looked spectacular, but there's certainly no ingredient list and the cook doesn't seem to know or care what's in them. They just look pretty. At least 3 people had eaten a piece of the layer cake, so at least I know that's really edible, not just a pretty display that no one actually buys because the cook just yells at you when you ask anything about it. I wish I could favourably review the baklava, but no, I don't trust it to be dairy-free. If I don't know the origins of my food I don't like to eat it. Too bad.

This is certainly not how to treat clients when you're in the food service industry. I hope he was having a horrible (Yes, I hope), because at least then he has some excuse for his unacceptable behavior.

Expect to Pay: With your self-esteem

Olives et Epices

Olives et Épices
7075 Casgrain Avenue, Jean-Talon Market
Montreal, QC
●●●●●●●●●○
9 out of 10

When I first moved to Montreal, I fell in love with three things:
1) the blueberry jam at Première Moisson,
2) The Chocolat Chaud a l'ancien (also Première Moisson)
3) Jean-Talon Market.

In Toronto I went every Saturday to the St. Lawrence Market, the home of an enormous collection of butcher stalls, fishmongers, cheesemongers, a farmer's market, and specialty shops like Kozlik's Mustards (24 samples to try), Moustachios (sellers of the biggest veal parmiggiana sandwiches in the city) and St-Urbain Bagels. Moving to Montreal I figured Jean-Talon would be about the same. I also figured I could wander up St-Urbain and find the best bagels in the city.

I was a little wrong on both counts (let's leave the bagels out of this for now).

Yes, they're both huge and have some of the freshest meat, produce, and cheese in the city, but where I loved St. Lawrence Market for the samples of fresh pasta, my first cabbage roll, the slightly creepy old man who taught me to shuck an oyster, and the nice Japanese young man who gave me one for free while I waited for sushi, I love Jean-Talon for the fact that the gourmet sea overflows into streets surrounding the market itself, so shops like the Marché des Saveurs du Quebec and the Fromagerie Hamel can actually be called part of the market. St. Lawrence is overwhelming, but Jean-Talon is...well, beautiful chaos.



I needed chilis. I've been here a year and a half and by now I believe that any culinary problem can be solved by Jean-Talon. For example, I want to make a Spicy Sweet Potato Soup. I needed 2 dried New Mexico Chili Peppers. I knew I could wander up St-Laurent and find an Epicerie specializing in Latin American products that may or may have exactly what I'm looking for, or I could stumble upon a wall of dried chilis at Jean-Talon's Olives et Épices. $4 later I had a small bag of dried New Mexico chilis.

Olives et Épices is actually two stores in one. It's a collaboration between Épices de Cru and Olive et Olives. Épices de Cru, run by Philippe et Ethné De Vienne, specializes in importing "location specific" spices, a label that classifies spices by the area and conditions in which they're grown, like AOC refers to French wine classifications and DOC to Italian, and only wines of a certain quality can qualify. You can expect to pay a little more, but you pay for quality.


One of the best things about Olives et Épices is that, like the name implies, most of the spices are brought to Canada whole, so freshness is preserved. This way the walls and walls of ground spice mixes are much fresher than what you can find at grocery stores. You can choose from Mediterranean lamb rubs, tandoori blends, fish masala, and pre-assembled bouquet garni for whatever's getting roasted. Plus full shelves of salts and herbes de provence.


Did I mention the make-your-own vanilla vodka (or rum...or extract)? A wall of vanilla sticks in small bottles invites you to choose between specialty sticks like Madagascar or Tahiti. Take a bottle home and fill it with vodka or rum. Three months later you have either the most aromatic vanilla extract for the next time you make panna cotta...

...or a cocktail party. Your choice...


...and that's just half the store.


Olive et Olives also deals directly with producers and growing cooperatives, and imports only high quality (AOC) cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oils. The standards are all controled by the International Olive Council. Seriously, that's a real council. All they do is think about olives and olive products. I suppose they're less alcoholic than the AOC wine people, but personally, I want to start a Vanilla council.


At Jean-Talon you can sample a lot of the oils for sale. Certain oils are recommended for salads, some for grilling meat or fish, some for vegetables, and some as a finishing oil for soup or a cooked dish. This shop is the best opportunity to taste the difference, especially since a good bottle (and they're all good bottles) will cost you anywhere from $12 for Andalusian Boromeo to $56 for Nectar, so will hopefully last you long after you forget which kinds you sampled the first time, and therefore need to go back and try them again.


For the convenience of being able to find that one bizarre ingredient when you really want it, this is a wonderful and unique company. It's a little expensive, but you support good producers and high quality products.

Expect to Pay: $13-$25 for olive oil, $8 for a container of spices, $3-$8 for chili peppers

Hours: Mon, Tues, Wed, Sat: 7am-6pm, Thurs-Fri: 7am-8pm, Sun: 7am-5pm

Olive et Épices
7075 Casgrain Avenue
514-271-0001
http://www.oliveolives.com/en/
http://www.epicesdecru.com/en/company.php

Aux Vivres

Aux Vivres
4631 boulevard Saint-Laurent
Montreal, QC
●●●●●●●○○○
7 out of 10

Vegan

Coming from Toronto, all I think when I walk into Aux Vivres is "Why is everything in French?" because it feels exactly like the chain "Fresh" that in Toronto has become about as mainstream as vegetarianism can get this far east of Vancouver. Choosing downtown Toronto take-out has become a debate between Fresh or Springrolls. When you can compare those two on an equal playing field there's something wrong with the concept of healthy food. So I never really liked "Fresh". Congratulations, you took a big bowl, put about 3 servings of brown rice on the bottom and topped it with steamed green things, two pieces of heavily marinated tofu (because how else are you going to convince the carnivores to eat it?) and served it with a high-fat, thus delicious, sauce (To be fair, a good sauce, for example a good-tasting peanut sauce like at Aux Vivres, not Fresh, takes the right balance of salty and sweet, not too thick, not too thin, but you can make good peanut sauce at home for cheap, or buy it...La Vieille Europe would be happy to point you to a good one in their shop...and encourage you buy some sausage while you're at it...and some cheese. Some meat-lovers are incorrigible). So what are you paying for at a vegetarian restaurant like Fresh? Convenience and the fun of sitting in a bohemian-chic (hipster?) restaurant and feeling morally superior to all the people in some other restaurant eating morally inferior meat and meat products, and supposedly less-healthy food.

Breathe.

Okay I'm done. I like Aux Vivres a whole lot more because it's got a whole lot less of the pretension that distracts me from the good aspects of Fresh. Oh, and it's vegan, not just vegetarian. Sure, it gets really busy and under-staffed like Fresh, but you don't see unhappy workers like you do in Toronto. Aux Vivres has a more community atmosphere. Like all the servers are looking out for each other, the food, and the overall experience of the people they're serving.

The menu is almost the same. You can start with a selection of dips, usually an olive tapenade and/or a hummous, then choose between an enormous salad, a sandwich, a burger or a rice bowl. Fresh has Pad Thai, yes, but it's better if we don't talk about that. I did just calm down.

Anyway, I was trying to talk about Aux Vivres. Don't have the dahl soup ($3.50) to start if you've ever had a good dahl soup. Not that it's bad, but you're better off going to La Faim du Monde on St-Denis, or better yet, a maybe a good Indian restaurant. It's home-made here and probably made with good intentions, but it doesn't taste like anything. Lentils aren't that exciting unless you do something with them...

Thai Bowl ($11)

The bowls here are very respectable. Instead of offering a million choices and combinations, they keep it simple with only a few sauce + vegetable combinations. That way they can actually focus on using good ingredients, like the pickled daikon and delicious carrots. You really don't expect that hit of sweetness from a radish that sits along the side of the bowl. At most Asian restaurants you'd call that garnish and probably leave it on the plate after you ate the pig or cow part of the dish. Basically with these bowls, besides the pickled vegetables, you're paying for the sauce. The peanut or miso-tahini sauce really holds the whole bowl together. And there's lots of it, and it's tasty, but it's just covering everything else up. If the bowl's ingredients were all tasty like the daikon you wouldn't need to cover it up. It's disrespectful to the food that you need to suffocate the vegetables in sauce to sell the bowl, and that's definitely something you're supposed to take into consideration in a vegetarian restaurant.

Tempeh Burger Plate with Chipotle Ketchup and Creamy Coleslaw ($11)

The burger...Okay, how can you possibly put all that rice in the bowl and then put a tiny chunk of tempeh on a little bun, plus a measly handful of potato wedges on the side and call it fair? Maybe another vegetable? Sure the chipotle ketchup takes up room on the plate, but the little container of nayonnaised coleslaw does not pass muster(d). Then when you actually have a bite of the burger...it tastes like...well, nothing. Because it's dry tempeh. Okay, vegetarians. What do carnivores like about their burgers? They're big and JUICY. If you're going to make a vegetarian version of a traditionally non-vegetarian food item, you have to do it a little better than that.

Chana Wrap ($11)

Aux Vivres gets this right with the Chana Wrap. A beautiful chickpea and potato curry wrapped in freshly-made chapatti with a very sweet, generically named chutney (it's actually tamarind but apparently the cooks here have never been to Parc Ex where Indian chutney comes in multiple varieties (mango? coriander?). Anyway, it works very well, though I'll always prefer the Mango chutney and old cheddar crepe at Hibiscus in Kensington Market. Sorry again, vegans...and for all lactose-intolerant people: Sometimes it's worth it...

Continuing with the good news, Aux Vivres has a huge smoothie and juice menu. The fruits and vegetables they use are nice, and they know what goes well together. It's hard to mess up the simple ones, like strawberry and banana, but once kale and beets are involved things get dangerous, and they do a good job here.

Maybe I'm just disapointed with Aux Vivres because the first time I went there I left the happiest person in world. I had their carrot cake. A towering piece (as it should be) of moist layer cake with enough cinnamon, nutmeg, dates and sugar to satisfy any sweet tooth. The icing is what knocks me over, though. It was thick and smooth (May they never change to vegan cream cheese), not like most grainy or seven-minute-fluff frostings that have more air than creamy goodness. This one made the whole cake worthwhile.

But the second time I went back, after dreaming for days about the cake, it was dry because it had been sitting in a fridge waiting to be bought, and the icing suddenly was swimming in orange zest, and oh I hate orange zest in vanilla frosting...


So when I went back a 3rd time I felt like I was testing the waters of my relationship with the carrot cake. I could forgive it if it could give me what I wanted (Gigantic layers enrobed by dense sheets of orange-free icing. No compromise). All of a sudden (with no change in price) the carrot cake had shrunk in half, the icing was more like a peasants' whisper of white than a respectable royal onslaught of frosting.


So I cried a little inside and tried the Choco-Banana Pie instead, unable to bear more disappointment. For a tiny slice of tarte, I don't think the pie is worth the high price tag (over $5), but it was very good. Somehow the chocolate and banana became perfectly smooth, like a chocolate cream pie...without the cream, apparently completely soy-free.

It didn't make up for the ongoing carrot cake heartbreak, but sometimes it's just not meant to be. There are more fish in the sea, but unfortunately there are no more amazing vegan carrot cakes in Montreal restaurants that I know of. It was fun while it lasted.

Price: Appetizers $3.50-$9, Entrées $8-$14
Expect to pay $18-$30, including tea or a smoothie and dessert
Hours: Everyday, 11am-11pm, including Saturday and Sunday brunch
Phone: 514-842-3479

Soupesoup vs. Soupe Café...

....Hot Comfort for a Cold Winter Day




Soupesoup
Montreal, QC
●●●●●●●○○○
7 out of 10


Soupe Café
Montreal, QC
●●●●●●○○○○
6 out of 10

A good soup is a tricky thing. I'm not talking Lipton and Campbells. In culinary school, one of the first sections is on stocks. A good stock makes a good soup. So I set off on my first Midnight Poutine culinary adventure in search of extraordinary soup.

What I found was Soupesoup and Soupe Café working so hard to improve the days of all those Montrealers who, like me, think winters here need an emergency exit.

Are the soups extraordinary? Sometimes they are.

Soupesoup originated as a quaint little café on Duluth and has since expanded to not 2, but 6 locations in Montreal. The atmosphere is relaxed, welcoming and chaleureuse. Except when it gets busy. Then it seems under-staffed and over-crowded.

Soupe Café has just one location right next to the Atwater Market on Notre-Dame. A completely different atmosphere from Soupesoup, this restaurant is cute and retro, with a few chairs around circular white tables. Refridgerators on the side of the restaurant hold fresh and frozen soups for convenient take-out, or you can scoop your own choice of the 6 daily hot soups into small, medium or large bowls, or take-out containers.


FIRST, DESSERT: I had wanted to try Soupesoup for months. After stumbling into the location on St-Viateur last year late one afternoon, when all the soup was gone, I found the pouding au chomeur...and that was such a good day. The maple syrup and brown sugar in the warm butter sauce soaked perfectly into the soft pudding cake.

Simple decadence.

When I finally got back for soup, my expectations were high. Sure, it was the middle of summer. A 30+ day, but I ordered a hot soup. Not a room temperature soup. It was clearly called a "hot soup" on the board. After seeing it sit on the counter for 10 minutes while my fellow diner's sandwich was made, I knew it wasn't going to be what I wanted. The server was nice enough to take it back and heat it in the microwave for me...but then forgot about it and left it in the microwave. I went to the counter and asked for the soup back...they stared blankly...the soup in the microwave?? Oh, right.

By then it was, again, not hot coup. I gave up.

By the way, the soup was okay...sweet potato and red lentil. There was nothing to surprise the taste-buds, no cayenne or chipotle pepper, no fresh herbs that stood out, and each spoonful was monotonous and starchy. To be fair, maybe I should have tried the cool soups as it was summer, but the hot ones were on the menu, and they should be treated with the same culinary respect.

So I went back to Soupesoup with a grudge, I'll admit. The second time, it exceeded my expectations. I sat at the bar (that way if my soup sat for awhile because the server was too busy, I could rescue it from its cold fate) and was treated like royalty. It was a slow afternoon, but water miraculously appeared in front of me, seemingly of its own accord. My soup was in front of me in less than 2 minutes, with grilled bread nicely placed on the side.


THE SOUPS: La Bruxelloise: I was skeptical. Brussel sprouts, parsnip and potato. Wow, a great soup-maker put their thinking cap on for this one. They managed to make a believer out of me. The broth, all home-made here, had a sweet vinegar flavour (the server suggested it could be their often-used white balsamic vinegar) and was swimming with fresh parsley and whole coriander. The sprouts themselves weren't even bitter like they can be when boiled. The potato and parsnip added a good chewy texture and made the soup filling and substantial.My only complaint was the vegetables were too soft after sitting in the cauldrons for a long time. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the soups change daily, so the odds of finding this soup again are slim. The soups are dependent on what's fresh, mostly organic and available at the market on a given day, so as long as brussel sprouts remain abundant, there may be a few more days of variations on a brussel sprouts theme.


Curly Vegetable Soup was a bit disappointing. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but it was basically the same soup as the Bruxelloise, minus the sweet and sour fun of the broth, plus cabbage and tomatoes.

Grilled fennel and carrot soup took overly-salted carrots, grilled them with fennel and stuck them in a broth that I couldn't taste because of the excess salt. Fennel is about the most delicious thing you can grill or roast but this soup needed some lemon. Maybe it was hiding under the salt. Small mistake. When a restaurant doesn't have a fixed recipe for its soups it can be hit or miss and this was a bit on the fence. Maybe if the vegetables were chopped smaller? Oh, the great thing was that the vegetables were actually chopped by hand! They were all inconsistent sizes. This is not factory soup. Someone put a lot of effort into making this. That's something to appreciate.

On to Soupe Café...


The unique thing about Soupe Café is that the owner and chef, Jeannine Scott, is a Nutritionist, so the soups and baked goods (banana bread, cranberry loaf and pumpkin bread (A slice for only $1.45! Alas, no pouding au chomeur...) are listed with their nutritional breakdowns. You know exactly what you're putting in your body, and it's not the MSG-filled, high-fat instant soups and broth you find in grocery stores, most Pho places, and more restaurants than you really want to know. So I asked about their broths. They're not homemade like Soupesoup's. They come from a powder and they have a lot of sodium and preservatives. Like I said, broth is tough, but a restaurant that specializes in soup should have enough vegetable trimmings to make a ridiculous amount of broth.


THE SOUPS: The Spicy Seafood Chowder at Soupe Café was the best deal around for a filling meal. It was full of tiny shrimp, and loaded with clams, and a large bowl only set me back $4.99 at lunch (A roll is extra?). It was way too salty, and left me dying of thirst, but was delicious at the time.


The Mesquite Chicken Chili was a very nice balance of sweet and spicy, like a fruit-and-tomato salsa...Does it have pineapple? A combination of sweet red peppers, corn and mild chili flavour make this my Soupe Café top pick. It'll even stick around for awhile in the soup rotation.

The Chicken Gumbo suffered by comparison. Plain rice, tomatoes and chicken with a little red pepper...Basically it is the Mesquite Chili with half the spices, but if I'd tasted it first maybe I would have liked it, the same way I might have liked the Curly Vegetable soup more if I'd tried it before the Bruxelloise at Soupesoup. I think it's a little too simple. People from Louisiana will shake their heads sadly at the Canadian version of gumbo. BUT! It did follow tradition and use fresh okra. I just wish it had been chopped, instead of left whole. The gumbo might have thickened better. Trouble is it gets slimy when you cut it, so it's a hassle, but also very necessary.


The Black-Eyed Pea Chowder with Turkey was pretty good. The beans were perfectly cooked and actually had a taste. The soup was very dense and filling. You definitely get you money's worth and you won't leave hungry. My only real complaint is that the processed turkey bacon came in oddly-sized, unappealing pieces, but it added a lot of salty flavour to the broth.

The Winter Vegetable soup was bland, because it was actually low in sodium and didn't have much to fall back on. The vegetables aren't organic, so don't pop with flavour, especially the canned tomatoes.

The restaurant's heart is in the right place. None of the soups here are gourmet. They're not served with a drizzle of crème fraiche, topped with melting Gruyère, or fresh herbs, as it's hard to garnish a self-serve soup cauldron, but there's nothing pretentious about the soups. They're honest, simple, and home-made enough to make me want to pick up 3 litres for my freezer. The prices are very respectable ($6.99 for a litre of soup, $9.59 for stews, chili and chowders), and as soon as the restaurant starts making their sandwiches on better bread, those will be a bit more respectable too.

WINNER: For quality of ingredients and soup innovation Soupesoup wins hands-down. I love the variety of fresh, mostly organic, vegetables and the best combinations of home-made broths with creative and most-often delicious fresh herbs and whole spices. It may seem like a lot to charge $4.99 for a small bowl of soup, but that's just a dollar more than the inaccurately-titled "large" portion (because it's the same actual size) of non-organic soup at Soupe Café. At a decent bistro that's what the soup starter will cost you anyway. At Soupe Café you can get a smaller, an even smaller, and a taster-sized bowl of soup for even less, so for a lot of soup you really get a good deal at Soupesoup, and they'll give you a taste for free. Keep in mind that soup is their bread and butter, and when you pay $2.95 for a standard bowl of soup at a restaurant, it's either because it's not home-made, it's not good for you, or everything else on the menu is more expensive so the restaurant doesn't need to make their money on soup and can afford to price it lower.

RUNNER-UP: For a very, very affordable, simple, and heart-warming meal, Soupe Café is definitely my choice. I know I won't have to worry about service and the soups are exactly what you expect. Maybe that's not so adventurous, but both resturants have their time and place. Where I'll go to Soupesoup with my fingers crossed, hoping for a good-to-great soup experience (and definitely the sight of warm pouding au chomeur), I'll go to Soupe Café more regularly to fill my poor, cold bones, and my freezer, with some warm comfort.

Expect to pay: $7.00-$10.00 at Soupesoup inc. tax and tip, $4.00-$8.00 at Soupe Café.
Hours: Most Soupesoups are open Monday to Saturday from 11-4, but check the website. Casgrain location is open everyday. Soupe Café is open 9:30am-8:30pm weekdays and 10:30am-5:30pm weekends.

Soupesoup
2800 rue Masson; 7020 rue Casgrain; 2183 rue Crescent; 174 rue Saint-Viateur Ouest; 8 rue Duluth Est; 649 rue Wellington
http://www.soupesoup.com/

Soupe Café
2725, rue Notre Dame Ouest
514.932.3053
http://www.soupecafe.com/menuoftheday.html

Aix Cuisine du Terroir

Aix Cuisine du Terroir

711, Côte de la Place d'Armes
Montreal, QC
●●●●●●●●●☺○

9 1/2 out of 10

Regional

Some nights are just wonderful. The whole meal is an experience. The atmosphere is good, the service is flawless, and even if it weren't so, this would be forgiven by the incredible quality and flavour of the food. This is Aix Cuisine du Terroir, a Vieux Port gem.

Montreal, and specifically its Old Port, are known for haute cuisine, most often a mix of French with local Quebec ingredients and traditional cooking styles. There's always fois gras in the appetizers, a duck confit in salad or entrée form, exceptional cuts of beef, and often wild game. Aix Cuisine is true to form. The restaurant describes its cuisine type as "regional". This is an interesting choice, because of what it insists NOT to be - French, Québecoise, or Contemporary. Here the chefs have mastered traditional French cooking techniques, gotten bored, and decided to use their skills to make something more, all without being pretentious. "Regional" implies that it incorporates the best of what's around. That may include local game, poultry, and vegetables. The classic cooking techniques shine through, but the creative, yet comforting, food is what makes this a restaurant to be enjoyed, savoured and revisited.

To start, a half dozen freshwater pearls. Try the first oyster without the red wine vinegar and shallot and taste the sweet meat and liquor. On the second, just a drop of red suffices, making sure to not overpower the oyster's natural flavour.

Then, smoked in-house salmon, arctic char and scallop with fennel and mango salsa.
This was the best home smoked anything I've ever had. It was fresh and not at all salty or sweetened. I think the best word to describe it is "clean". Not too smoky at all. If you've never had a smoked scallop before, ordering this entrée will be eye-opening. Even better than scallop sashimi. The mango salsa didn't add much, and only hid some of the flavour, but there was so much smoked salmon and char that had to be eaten that the mango salsa was a nice variety in the end. I would recommend sharing this appetizer. It is certainly not too big, but it is a lot of fish to start a meal.

Many of the appetizers had cream, so I stayed away, including the butternut squash soup of the day and the only other vegetarian option of quinoa, arugula, wild mushrooms and goat cheese gratin with red pepper coulis and balsamic reduction. This was a beautiful presentation, with layers of wilted green arugula stacked between earth brown mushrooms and quinoa. The balsamic gave the dish its necessary sweetness and contrasted with the red of the coulis. Not traditional French, but a good addition to the menu. Vegans are in trouble but vegetarians will not feel neglected.

At least until the main courses...If you don't eat fish or meat you're out of luck. Even the salad is a duck confit. Certainly the kitchen could create something for you, but a good creation takes time and thought, and this kitchen has consciously, and successfully, put its thought into its meat. A new menu had just started the week I attended. There were only two options without dairy, and zero fish options without butter or cream. Fortunately, I wanted the bison. Cooked two ways - osso bucco style and filet mignon. This is the way to fall in love with osso bucco and marrow. Similar to steak-frites, but served with woven potato chip-style local yukon and sweet potatoes, this dish far surpassed my expectations. The yukon fries had no taste, but the sweet potatoes were revelations, pairing well with the sweet flavour of the osso buco meat and jus. The marrow, saved for last, was...well, I'm speechless.

I've never been a fan of the chewiness of filet mignon, even when properly cooked, and only to medium-rare, but this one was not so bad. It was much more than a single person needs to eat, but is perfect to share with dining companions whose main course option is slightly less ample.

An example of "less ample" would not be the lamb. I actually said "Wow..." and stared on in wonder as it was served. That was the most enormous rack I've ever seen served. Slow-cooked for seven hours, the lamb was incredibly tender without losing the integrity of the meat. Whereas you can take a less expensive, generally tougher, piece of meat and slow-cook it for a long time to make it tender, here an already-beautiful piece of meat was improved upon by the simple cooking method. The pan jus was not overwhelming, and the flavour of the meat itself was really the highlight of the plate.

In going to this restaurant, my dining companions were told that they had to try the wild boar. So they did. Accompanied by the same fries, as well as some al dente obligatory greens, the boar was perfectly cooked. So if you want a fattier meat than bison and for some reason don't feel up to kamouraska lamb, the boar would be a good choice. For a true splurge on top-quality beef, the $45 filet triple Aix consists of a AAA filet, seared fois gras (the French tradition of coating fatty liver in yet more fat to make it yet more delicious), truffles, fried potatoes and grilled asparagus (you certainly don't order this dish for the asparagus. Ironically, you have my permission to order the duck main for the accompanying morel mushrooms...duck doesn't soak up pan juice quite the same way).

How could I forget the wine? We put our trust in our server. He was impeccably trained and knowledgeable. Good service is an art, and our server was an artist. We were treated with nothing but respect, with the perfect balance of attentiveness and distance. Wine service etiquette was precise and beautiful. Most importantly, the wine suggestion made was intuitive to what would work well with all our meals, as well as being suggested because it was micro-oxygenized. What does that possibly mean? Micro-oxygenation is a process of injecting fermenting wine with specific amounts of oxygen, replicating the process of aging wine in barrels. It is far less costly and time consuming, and is growing in popularity because of the results it may achieve. While the wine must be good in the first place, a young wine could quickly rival a beautifully-aged wine of equal quality. For example, a young Bordeaux could seem far older than it looked.

With sublime desserts including a lemon tarte encircled with crème anglaise, because they forgot I was lactose-intolerant, a winter-fruit gratin (again, cream) or various chocolate delicacies, and a choice of Quebec dessert wines, the evening ends beautifully. Even the sorbet and fruit, usually the restaurant cop-out dessert of choice, was thoughtful, balancing a raspberry sorbet on a tiny, uniquely shaped meringue. A sweet complement for the acid of the sorbet and accompanying fruit.

On a return lunch visit, however, I fell a little bit out of love with this restaurant...How quickly beauty fades. First the not-so-wondrous chefs used un-ripe fruit as garnish in the appetizer and in the fruit salad (a traditional dessert ploy, because they often assume if you're going for the fruit for dessert it's because you really care more about cutting calories than enjoying flavour). Sorry, I don't appreciate flavourless fruit as much as North America appreciates flavourless pork (ie calling it 'white meat' when there's absolutely nothing white about it, by sucking out all the taste), so my ground cherry was a sad experience (ground cherries are orange-coloured, but raspberry-sized fruit that are surrounded in paper-like yellow-orange skins. They're often unfolded to be bitten off the stem. There's no pit and there's a mild, sweet, un-cherry-like flavour. When ripe, a revelation). In other provinces maybe you can get away with a flavourless, or sour, ground cherry, but in Quebec, home of ground cherries, you have to expect better. Sure, it's not ground cherry season, but if you're going to serve it, it has to be good. Especially a restaurant that touts 'local' products...they wouldn't do well if their local kamouraska lamb tasted awful, even it just happened to saunter down the street into the kitchen, thus eliminating its own carbon footprint.

Then the not-so-local fig. I felt like a Greek person broke into tears somewhere with every bite I took. Like when a kid says they don't believe in fairies and somewhere a fairy dies. So I only took 2 bites - the first to try the fig, excitedly, and the second to make sure I had actually tasted what I tasted, in utter disappointment. The cooked jam of figs tasted beautiful, however, because they don't need to be as ripe for that. Add sugar and you're fine, but fresh is another story. If you've never had a fresh fig, don't have your first here. Stick to the meat, avoid the fruit.

Oh, also hope for my first server. Apparently all servers here do not receive the same training. The second was not as impressive with dealing with my table's food sensitivities (though it was mostly the kitchen's fault for thinking it's okay to send out an appetizer of 4 chipotle shrimp on salad when the dish is supposed to be chipotle shrimp with vegetable strudel on mesclun greens. Without the strudel you skip half the appeal of the dish. They certainly don't charge you half the price...and this AFTER saying the dish was dairy-free, and there was no problem ordering it. Of course I know pastry has dairy in it, but if you say yours doesn't and you're my chef idols, I'll believe you. Blind faith has lead me astray. In his defense, the server had actually not allowed my dining companion, who did not want the strudel part of the dish in the first place, to order the shrimp without the strudel, because it would ruin the integrity of the dish. So when my plate came out strudel-less after the kitchen had said not to worry, our server was a surprised, and appropriately apologetic. The duck was a better option. They do a more-than-adequate confit and a decent grilled).

Ah, the fickleness of love. This is a beautiful restaurant for classics dishes that are effortlessly blended with unique ingredients in the name of complementary flavours. From star anise pan juices with Québec duck, to avocado and wasabi sorbet accompanying seared tuna in buttercream, each plate is purposefully balanced. So despite the minor glitches...

...there will always be a place in my heart for Aix Cuisine du Terroir.

Price: $45 for a table d'hôte of three services and an amuse-bouche, $25 at lunch
Appetizers: $15 Entrées: $33
Expect to pay $50-$70 plus wine