Cafe Velo Quebec

Cafe Velo Quebec
1251 Rachel East

Montreal, QC

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7 out of 10

Café Velo Quebec is a perfect location, just on the north side of Parc Lafontaine. In addition to a café, the Velo Quebec building is the place to go if you're planning a cycling trip either in Quebec or abroad. It houses a boutique full of guidebooks and maps (in addition to the café's lamps which are actually maps of the Montreal bike paths), a bike travel agency, as well as the offices of a whole lot of the city's bike-related companies, including the publishing company Velo Quebec Editions. Probably these offices have stationary bikes instead of desk chairs.

The café part of the building is a huge draw for the loyal clientele of obsessed cyclists, neighbourhood locals, and anyone looking for an affordable, homemade meal. It's not all delicious, but it's certainly made with good intentions.

The sandwiches all look amazing. The bread really is as good as it looks - freshly heated in a panini press to give it perfect grill marks and bring out the melted butter taste of the flaky dough - but the homemade vege-pate tastes a bit like textured nothing (I also really hope I'm wrong about there being butter in the bread since it's used for one of only a few vegetarian sandwich offerings. If you're vegan, you may be stuck with the ubiquitous hummous option).

Turns out the pate is mostly potato, and, well, therein lies the cause of the textured nothing problem. Maybe they should try sweet potato next time, or some spices. The spinach and tomato inside are very fresh and flavourful, but can't save the sandwich.

Other options with things that have a taste, like cheese, are bound to fare better. Choose your sandwich wisely.

Or choose a muffin. The muffin options change daily, but the day we went there was an incredibly moist pear and chocolate chip version. It was still a little warm, and the chocolate made it feel like dessert for lunch.

The sandwich by itself is a little expensive for the size, but add on a side salad and beverage and you get a nice little lunch deal out of it. Just make sure you don't get over-charged. The staff didn't know anything about the sandwich/salad/beverage special, which was printed on the board outside on the terrasse. Also skip the beet side salad if it looks like it's been sitting there too long, like it did when we went. You should probably also ask for the salad dressing for your organic greens on the side, since it's just bland oil with a tiny bit of watery raspberry puree. Fortunately the organic lettuce actually tastes like something, so there's hope for the salad if the dressing was just having an off-day.

The desserts (the actual ones, since muffins don't count, even if they have chocolate), like the sandwiches, look incredible, but after the let-down of the vege-pate I didn't want to get my hopes up. The chocolate mousse turned out to be more air than chocolate, but it wasn't bad. Where the muffin had benefited from not being too sweet (the pears did all the work), the chocolate mousse needed, but didn't receive, a bit of an extra kick. The butter was pretty mild in the icing, so it wasn't particularly tasty, and while the cake was light and fluffy, it didn't shout "chocolate". The fruit tart fared much better. The butter in the crust was very nice and rich this time. It had a perfect texture and cracked nicely around the fluted edge. The blueberries were even Quebec blueberries, the tangy, sweet little ones, not the big New Jersey ones that taste like nothing (a different kind of nothing than the potatoes, mind you, but nothing none the less). After getting excited about how good the blueberries were it was really sad to find that the raspberries were still frozen (it's neither raspberry season nor blueberry season quite yet), and the cherries were pretty bland. At least they weren't bottled maraschinos.

Still, I like this café. You can get Bierbrier, a good Montreal micro-brew, as well as a few other local micro-brews, you don't have to even think about preservatives since it's all fresh and homemade, and it's not really expensive. I'd stop here for a muffin, or maybe a tart in the middle of summer when more fresh fruit is available. I'd also cross my fingers and hope that the other sandwiches are better since it's harder to mess up meat and cheese. Those aren't made from potato.. It's a fun place to hang out - very relaxed - and there's free WiFi.

Hours: Mon-Thurs 8:30am-7pm, Fri 8:30am-8pm, Sat-Sun 9am-8pm
Expect To Pay: $12, including sandwich, salad, a drink, tax and tip
www.velo.qc.ca
514 521-8356