Interculturiosity

Sweet Lee's Rustic Bakery at the Loyola Craft Fair

2011-02-04T18:15:00.000-05:00

Do you want to eat this dessert? It and other sweet and savoury treats from Sweet Lee's Rustic Bakery will be available for purchase this Saturday and Sunday at Concordia University's Loyola Craft Fair.
The fair will feature crafts from local artisans in addition to the affordable snacks from Sweet Lee's Bakery. If you got excited about Sweet Lee's baked goods being available for purchase at Café Saint-Henri, you'll be even more excited to see a wider selection of her sweets at the craft fair. PLUS you'll get to meet the woman behind the addictive (but all natural) goods. There is no crack in her chocolate-mint cookies, but when you can't stop eating them you start to wonder...

Seems as though this baker is nurturing quite a few Montrealer's sweet tooths (sweet teeth?) with her carrot cake, fruit crumbles, cheesecakes, gourmet cookies and slightly healthier sundried tomato, goat cheese and cheddar savoury scones, muffins, and cheesecakes.

You can also grab a coffee or tea to dilute the sugar in your system while you peruse the other un-baked (but also exciting) crafts at the fair.

Loyola Craft Fair
Where: Loyola Campus (Concordia University), 4455 West Broadway
When: Jan. 29th-30th, Saturday 10am-5:30pm, Sunday 10am-2pm

Resilient Food Systems: Interview with Jon Steinman of "Deconstructing Dinner"

2011-01-28T12:06:00.000-05:00

One of my favourite food journalists, Jon Steinman, is in town this week to give a talk at McGill on Resilient Food Systems. He was kind enough to do a live phone interview with me on CKUT 90.3FM on the Friday Morning After Show. You can download the interview here.

Jon will be on McGill campus at the Leacock Building, room 26, on Monday, January 31st at 6pm. Following his speech the McGill Food Systems Project will unveil their sustainability plan with McGill Food and Dining. The meal at the event will be offered by McGill chefs and will feature local grains and other sustainable products. The sustainability plan is still in draft form (and not all residence food is considered sustainable...yet) so now is the chance to understand where the organization stands now as well as how to become involved within the campus and within the greater community. All are welcome.

J Korean

2011-01-22T15:24:00.000-05:00

J Korean

194 Duckworth Street

St. John's, NL

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8 out of 10

Korean

Korean cuisine and I get along. Ever since I lived in Koreatown in Toronto I've made a habit of scouring Korean menus and church bazaars in search of home-made, high-quality, spicy marinated vegetables and meat. Meals in even the cheapest and most humble Korean restaurants are served with a side of steamed rice, a true comfort even when your meal is a soup.

Korean food generally breaks down into beef (or seafood and sometimes pork or tofu) in the following forms: Grilled, soups, stews, and noodles. Kimchi and assorted banchan (side dishes - mostly pickled or marinated vegetables) are served on the side and are brought at the beginning of the meal, usually with a clear broth miso soup.


House-made kimchi (fermented cabbage, below) and marinated root vegetable (sweeter than a potato) of some kind in a sticky sweet sesame sauce

Most places re-fill them for free, like an empty water glass). Korean BBQ is hugely popular in Canada's major cities, and the only reason J Korean in St. John's hasn't adopted the concept of setting a DIY-barbecue down on every table that orders grilled meat (or building one into the table itself) is because of fire codes in old downtown heritage buildings.

And the city is better off for it, because give a Newfoundlander a chance and he'll char his $25 marinated galbi beef ribs to a crisp, and that's a sin.

St. John's Galbi Jeonsik: Barbecued marinated beef short ribs on hot plate with special sauce, lettuce, and rice

For the Korean food novitiate start with the bulgogi (if you like beef), the pork bone soup if you like spicy, and Haemulpajeon korean-style pancake if you like seafood, and the bibimbap if you're vegetarian (go with the kimchi jigae vegetable version if you're vegan). I vote for the bulgogi over the obviously delicious marinated ribs simply because of the price. The bulgogi is $8 less than the ribs ($27.50, though somehow marked down to $16 at lunch, while the bulgogi only drops $4), so if you don't like the special sauce that comes with it, you'll be less disappointed. If you like sweet and spicy, however, you'll love the sauce. It basically makes the dish. The bulgogi is also BBQ-ed marinated meat, but it's cut up finer and served with green peppers and onions on a very heavy hot plate that continues to cook the items after they're placed on it. The trick here is to take some (or all, if you like) of your rice and put it on the hot plate. the rice then browns and gets a crisp crust. In Korean food (and Asian in general) texture is very important, so you just added an extra texture to your otherwise chewy and soft meal. You might be staring at your plain lettuce leaves and wondering if the kitchen forgot the salad dressing, but no, just pour the sauce on top of the beef, mix it up, and wrap the lettuce around pieces of the beef to create little parcels that you can pop in your mouth.

The bibimbap ($15.50) was the best thing I ate here, all thanks to the sauce. It wasn't too spicy but had real depth and a balance of sweet and almost verging on smoky (and tasted almost meaty). You can see the bottle of rooster sauce in the kitchen (Sriracha hot sauce - the kind in the big plastic bottle that's red with a green tip at the top) but the sauce tasted much fresher than that. The rice-based dish comes in a stone bowl (get the stone bowl version, not the stone-less version - it's just more fun this way and you'll end up with some crusty rice without even trying), and is topped with marinated vegetables including carrots and cucumbers, and either topped with meat and then a fried egg, or just the egg. The egg will be soft and you can break it over the vegetables and rice and stir it around to let the stone bowl cook it into the dish, kind of like a do-it-yourself fried rice but with a much, much, much better sauce. The chicken version didn't really add much to the dish, as it had no real flavour, but in Korea bibimbap is known as a healthy, even diet meal. That's all relative to the huge amount of beef, though.

Other lighter options are the soups. Soup is served with most meals, but a meal of soup is a satisfying specialty. Most are spicy broths laced with crushed chili powder or Sriracha sauce (often you'll have a bottle on the table to add your own, but not here as plastic definitelry does not match the fine-dining decor). Above, julienned vegetables hide a mountain of homemade udon noodles (thick wheat-flour noodles) and are topped with mussels, squid pieces, and shrimp. Squid is a very common Korean seafood choice (you won't find a whole lot of traditional salmon or white fish) and they're also very affordable (as are the mussels). The broth was perfectly warmed but not boiling, so the noodles never got to the mushy, over-cooked stage. The noodles themselves were a good texture, but I couldn't really taste them in the spicy soup. Next time I'll try them stir-fried. The broth here was just fine but just couldn't be as intense as the sauce for the meat dishes and bibimbap because the broth dilutes it. Maybe you should request some sauce on the side for your rice. It's not traditional Korean to eat it that way, but that's what my tastebuds wanted.

The vegan option I gave above of kimchi jigae ($15.50) is a large soup served in a traditional silver bowl of broth flavoured by the pickled, fermented cabbage (the flavouring seeps into the soup and the cabbage becomes very mild), soft cubes of tofu, and mixed vegetables. I originally tried the version that was just a bean paste broth (Doenjang Jigae - $15.50), but it was pretty bland. So I poured in some of the kimchi from the banchan (don't tell...) and suddenly there was flavour.

So what do you do if you don't like spice? Get out of a Korean restaurant!

No, just stick to the sesame-oil based dishes like the seafood pancake and the japchae ($14.50). Japchae is ridiculously easy to make. You take potato starch noodles (or sweet potato or yam noodles - perfect for those with wheat and gluten problems), warm them in hot water with some dried mushrooms (not even boil) until they're translucent (the noodles, not the mushrooms), add some carrots, onion, green onions, spinach and sesame seeds and toss it all with a slightly salty, sweet and savoury sauce of soy, sesame oil, sugar, and maybe some pepper. The trick is the get the ratio of salty, sweet, and savoury in the sauce correct. You can also make it better by toasting the sesame seeds and using a toasted sesame oil. It also needs to be made fresh so that the noodles don't harden or get soggy and cover the flavour of the sauce. So japchae for $14.50 is a bit overpriced unless you get it with beef. That will also add some more "savoury" to the dish, but it's often vegetarian for a "light" lunch ("light" meaning simple, quick, and easy to digest, not "low-fat" - there's a WHOLE lot of delicious sesame oil in there).

Korean sushi isn't exactly like Japanese sushi (or what we think of as "Japanese" maki rolls, but are really North American inventions, ie the California Roll). It's not better or worse, just different. Sushi from the Korean grocery store near my Koreatown apartment in Toronto consisted of pickled vegetables (spinach and carrots and cucumber, not always the standard ones your'd find in Japanese sushi) combined with sweet egg, so that all the rolls were huge and sesame-flavoured and sweet before you even thought of adding soy sauce. They were also dirt cheap because there was no meat in them. At J Korean there are some standard North American-type rolls, the kinds of rolls you'll find at Sun Sushi, but there are some other options. And that's great because variety is the spice of life. In fact, spice is the main difference. Well, that and beef. The J.K.K. Gimbab ("gimbab" - or "gimbap" - means Korean sushi) contains vegetables and beef and most of the other rolls are served spicy, from the kimchi option to the salmon option. You will also find standard volcano, dynamite, spider, and dragon rolls of deep-fried shrimp, avocado, cucumber, and fish eggs ($15.50). You can splurge on the lobster gimbab ($19.50) that's basically the same but with breaded, fried lobster instead of shrimp. So the rolls are pretty expensive, though at lunch they're about on par with Sun Sushi.

So this is a special occasion place, or a nice lunch place. A big bowl of soup will get you through the rest of the afternoon, and a plate of ribs or beef with rice and side dishes will warm you up on a cold evening. The endorphins (and romantic decor) from the chilies make it the perfect place for a date as long as you don't have a runny nose, and that heavenly special sauce on the bibimbap will bring you back when you want a healthy meal served in a giant stone bowl and all the marinated and sweet pickled side dishes you want. The perfect ending is the traditional tea with pine nuts and dates, served with ginseng candies (soft, miraculously savoury-sweet bites) and crisp, airy rice cookies that start to become chewy once they hit the warm tea...

Congratulations, St. John's. Another restaurant winner.

J Korean
Where: 194 Duckworth Street
St. John's, NL
709-579-1133
When: Mon-Fri noon-10:30pm, Sat-Sun 3pm-10pm
How Much: $20 at lunch, $35-$60 including an appetizer, main, tax and tip at dinner

Montreal Highlights Festival en Lumière: Interview with Spokesperson Jean-Francois Demers

2011-01-21T12:44:00.000-05:00

From Feb. 17-27 Festival en Lumière (the Montreal Highlights Festival) takes over the city. From workshops, to samples, to lunches, brunches, happy hours, dinners, and culinary tours, there's something for everyone and every budget.

You can download the interview I did with M. Demers on CKUT 90.3FM here, and see below for his recommendations for the "best of the fest". For my recommendations, check Midnight Poutine starting January 24th.

Complexe Desjardins Festival of Quebec Cheeses (Free! Plus tasting coupons for wine – optional): Cheese from Quebec and wines from the wine-makers you will find at the Festival’s Finest Tables Dinners at the city’s top restaurants. A very affordable way to try the best wines of the festival.

Jean-Talon Products of Charlevoix workshops (free, with samples) – Jean-Talon Salle Mandoline (upstairs)

Happy Hour at L’Accords Restaurant

Dinner at La Fabrique

Dinner at Laloux

Lunch at Le Restaurant de L’Institut

Brunch sponsored by Lebanese restaurant, Zawedah

$13 multi-course lunches at Byblos, Rumi, or Mogador

And, M. Demers’ take on the city’s best cannoli:
Alati-Caserta
vs.
Cafe International (but do they serve Alati-Caserta’s cannoli??)

Montreal "Raw" Potluck

2011-01-19T11:41:00.000-05:00

Montreal's "Raw" Foodist Potluck was the first thing I did when I got back to Montreal from Newfoundland. This wasn't some kind of New Year's Resolution to eat better or meet new, interesting people, but it just seemed like a good opportunity to learn more about "raw" food. I learned a little, but mostly I was overwhelmed by salads. I was expecting lots of heavy, interesting, nut-based dehydrated desserts that resembled cooked pastas and lasagnas, but for the most part the wide array of colourful vegetables were not dressed up as something they weren't (my biggest complaint with vegetarian restaurants and vegetarian food in general).

The pictures speak for themselves:

Nut-Paté Sushi with beets, carrots, and sprouts

The potluck took place at the Crudessence loft, an absolutely gorgeous kitchen and living room area with warm, wood decor and floor-to-ceiling glass windows where Crudessence teaches its raw food cooking classes. The colours of the food and the view from the window was the same feeling of visual rapture as walking into an impressionist art gallery.


Fruit Salad with Nut Milk, Honeydew melons, and green smoothie with banana

The fruit salads were served with dinner, while the "true desserts" (raw cakes and treats) were served after the meal. I don't think this corresponds with the raw food concept that fruit shouldn't be eaten with the meal. In fact they handed up a juicing guide at the even when you entered the room that explained that juicing is sometimes better than blending because the nutrients are much more easily absorbed and your digestion isn't slowed down by the fibre in the blended vegetables or fruit. Mostly it was referring to vegetable juices, though, as the sugar content of fruit juices is much higher than the pamphlet recommended to be having regularly. So if these fruit as going to be sitting in your stomach, fermenting while they wait for their turn to digest, they should probably be eaten 30 minutes before the meal. But that's no fun.

Beet salads, sprouted lentils with lemon and nama shoyu, carrot slaws. Plain shiitake mushrooms with lacklustre tomatoes were my only disappointing find

My favourite salad (on the bottom) with fresh pomegranate seeds. I never buy them because organic pomegranates (and even non-oranic ones) cost a fortune and have a ridiculous carbon footprint...though every "raw" dessert I love uses imported Medjool dates, and my pecans certainly weren't local...or my lemons in the pecan-cranberry spread. I'm a "raw" food, locavore cheat...

Later in the evening the cakes came out. There weren't enough, and the ravenous
hordes of mostly not-"Raw" foodists stood in line for tiny spoonfuls of deliciously tangy "cheesecakes" and coconut soy ice cream. Fortunately, a spoonful of those cashew-rich concoctions is basically a whole serving. There were even daifuku (Japanese sweet bean desserts with cooked rice flour, beans, and refined sugar!). That's like bringing a meat dish to a vegetarian. Why would someone do that? Then the soy ice cream...everyone loved it, but seriously? I really don't think it was made from milk from soaked and blended soy beans...

Still there was more than enough food to go around (though a lot of dishes disappointingly ran out before everyone had tried some...A lot of people were surprisingly not into sharing). A late addition of zucchini pasta in pesto was more in line with what I had expected. The noodles were beautifully spiralized but the dish unfortunately tasted like nothing but water and fibre.

My biggest disappointment was how packed it was. You couldn't move and I felt a little xenophobically claustrophobic. I'm not really xenophobic and I'm not really claustrophobic, but something combines a feeling of being trapped in a suffocating crowd of people is the gist of it. I don't know if the potluck was full of people with New Years resolutions to eat better, but just thought it would be fun to come to a "raw" potluck, but it seems like the Montreal community of people who are actually "raw" is very small. most people had taken a cooking class from Crudessence once and either ate partly raw, mostly raw, or just vegetarian. There weren't enough seats and the waiting in line for food was as bad as the running out of certain dishes.

When I mentioned to someone I eat some kinds of meat and fish depending on how they're raised, where they come from, ho they're killed, etc. she said, "I don't know if we can be friends anymore," BUT SHE WAS KIDDING! (Mostly). Honestly, the people here were VERY nice and it was fun to speak with people who at least think about the benefits of eating healthily but enjoying quality food. It was not culinary nirvana and it would not convert a carnivore to serious lifestyle changes, but you eat with your eyes first, and my eyes were full. My stomach quickly followed.

Buying Natural Wines in Newfoundland: Joseph Drouhin et al

2011-01-19T10:25:00.000-05:00

It IS possible to find a decent selection of natural wines in Newfoundland!

The second time I went to the liquor store (time # 2 of 2) this Christmas, it was to buy the wine for the 3rd Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza. It was so much fun! I wasn't sure if I was going to buy a few of the same wines or buy a bunch of different ones, but I wanted them to all be natural (organic and then some, to put it simply, but listen to this to find out more). I knew no one at the liquor store was going to know what a natural wine was, and the best-case scenario would be that I'd just be pointed to the organic ones (that often aren't natural, and the natural ones are often not labeled organic, which they also are. Complicated, I know). So I looked at every wine-making region and read the back of bottles, and recognized some names. Here's what I came up with:

Joseph Drouhin's Morgon, Pinot Noir, and Saint-Véran, and a Bouchard Père et Fils' Pinot Noir.
I had also planned to serve two Quebec white table wines since they're supposed to be used for musical parties ("La Musicale" from Quebec honey farm and honeywine-makers Les Trois Acres) but they were left in the fridge by accident and are awaiting a new musical party at which to be opened.
On a piece of cardboard next to the bar at the party, I wrote:

About the wines:

The whites and reds are natural wines; they are produced organically, hand-harvested, and have no extra yeasts, enzymes, sulfites or other chemicals added. Many come from the same producer but are made with different varieties of grapes. By not adding any of these extras ingredients, natural wines are supposed to allow you to taste the "terroir" - the land and true flavour of the wine - since nothing is chemically-masking it.

The Honey Maple Dessert Wine and the Honey Ice Wine from Miel Nature are examples of what Quebec does best. They're a little sip of heaven. I also used them in the cinnamon apricots and figs for the angel food cake, so the cake and wine should go well together.

I couldn't tell anything about the champagnes at the liquor store, so I just bought an affordable prosecco for the zabaione and stuck with wines I trusted for the party. The prosecco was perfect for the Italian custard-like dessert.

Raymonds

2011-01-11T10:39:00.004-05:00

Raymonds

St. John's, NL

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9 out of 10

Contemporary Newfoundland Cuisine

In an old cable building with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out partly onto the St. John's harbour and partly onto a deserted part of Water Street, chandeliers hang from the ceiling, Ron Bolts paintings of raging seas decorate the walls, and well-dressed young servers choreograph dinner. This is St. John's newest dining destination.

There are not many tasting menus in St. John's restaurants, mostly because the clientele isn't there, but this one is worthwhile and it's going to last, even as the courses change. The night I went:

Grouse consommé was simple, sweet, and rich with cold-curing, flavourful fat. The diced tomato garnish complemented the sweetness perfectly, and wasn't the usual acidic but otherwise flavourless imported version of what Newfoundlanders call tomatoes in the middle of winter. A very sweet (though "brut") Henry of Pelham Niagara sparkling wine was paired with it.

Then a beet salad with finely chopped candied nuts and deep-fried slivers of jerusalem artichoke - savoury and sweet with an nicely biting vinaigrette and cooling crème fraiche. The artichokes were earthier, more flavourful versions of potatoes whose tendrils whirled artistically around the top of the beets. The white wine accompanying made the beets taste even sweeter without getting in the way of the vinegar on the greens.

A tomato, fennel seafood soup saw perfectly cooked cod in a warm (but not hot, so as to not continue to cook the fish?) broth that was full of fresh vegetables. The local (south-west NL), hook-and-line-caught (I think that's what was said. A more sustainable method than bottom longlined or trawled anyway) cod was well-seasoned and enriched the broth, and the sustainable BC rock shrimp on top, though fairly flavourless, twisted around itself like a soup sculpture. The fennel seeds in the dish gave your mouth a surprise from time to time, but they weren't as explosively fresh as I would have hoped. The white Chardonnay accompanying seemed too sweet for the mild cod.

The Chardonnay with the scallop, however, was perfect. My favourite pairing of the night. Sure, it's classic, but it works. It made the scallop seem more buttery (though there was no butter to be found in the dish, a real joy for a lactose-intolerant person). The lone, enormous, Newfoundland scallop was perfectly seared and tender, topped with some more pieces of diced tomato, and sat atop a mound of shaved brussel sprouts cooked with bacon, the salt sinking into the slaw, and the sweet parsnip purée the perfect amount to enjoy without becoming sickening candy-like.

So far, everything had been on the sweet side, and fresh seafood had shone naturally. The next dish was more cod, this time a small, simply-grilled portion on top of a cassoulet of white navy beans with zucchini and bacon for a slightly salty, deep flavour. Said Jeremy, the Sommelier, not the Chef, some fishermen can tell where a fish was processed just by the look of it, as some plants do a much better job of it than others. This was, apparently, a very well-filleted cod, and the thick piece on each plate fell apart slice by slice. The beans were cooked, but the dish just didn't have any single flavour to get excited about. Cod is a pretty bland fish, and even when cooked perfectly, in this case, it was just cod. I found the accompanying Chablis too sweet, as nothing in the dish could stand up to it.

Then a red: A Pangaea Syrah from Chile to go with the best filet mignon I've ever had. Even medium-rare filet mignon I usually find chewy and not worth the effort, but this meat was very, very tender and succulent. It was made with a Red Heart Shiraz reduction of the pan juices ("like the Hey! Rosetta album") and the very dry sauce/paste/reduction of rich meaty flavour was a generous, intoxicating serving of rich depth for the meat. The sweetness of the meat came out as you chewed, so instead of feeling like you've got to swallow to get the dry lump out of your mouth, you can savour. I had a little Chablis left, which actually brought out the butteriness of the fat of the meat, though it couldn't stand up for itself the way the Syrah could. The dish came with fingerling potatoes (or a purée for those who can handle dairy) and an over-salted asparagus, my only negative comment of the dish.

Finally, dessert. An almond-citrus sponge cake (naturally dairy and gluten-free) with mandarin orange confit, a sprinkling of crushed pistachios, and a scoop of the most amazing pineapple sorbet (I would swear it was ice cream, but no, it's also dairy-free). The sorbet melted quickly next to the cake, but that just helped eliminate whatever iciness would have been left after the sorbet-making process. So melt away. The ice cream wasn't acidic at all as under-ripe pineapple can be, but at the same time the sugar didn't seem too present in it until you tried it with the Hungarian muscat that tasted slightly bitter by comparison. The muscat seemed to be more bitter orange zest-based than sweet orange juice. Or maybe it just seemed bitter because the sugar syrup from the orange confit soaked into the bottom of the small, circular sponge cake like an accidental (on purpose) sauce?

Sublime. Just sublime. The highest quality, mostly local (forget about the pineapple, but it's worth it) ingredients you'll find placed on pedestals in a St. John's restaurant. Vegetables from Lesters Farm, Scallops from Placentia Bay, and grouse, for goodness sake...I wouldn't be surprised if the Chef had hunted it himself. I could have eaten a bowl of grouse soup and been satisfied. The scallop, the beef, and the pineapple sorbet were icing on the very sweet cake.

Just In Time for New Years: Xavier Burini from Montreal Restaurant Les Trois Petits Bouchons Talks Natural Wines and Champagnes

2010-12-31T13:06:00.001-05:00

Click here to download the interview I did for CKUT with Xavier Burini of Montreal Wine Bar Les Ttrois Petits Bouchons on natural wines and champagnes. These are not just "organic" wines.

Here are the links to the wines Xavier recommends and contact info for the restaurant:
At the SAQ:
Champagnes
Drappier Champagne: Pinot Noir Brut Zero-Dosage ($43.50)
Drappier Carte D’Or Champagne ($40.75)
Jacquesson Cuvée No 734 Brut Champagne ($60.25)

Other Wines
Chateau Le Puy Bordeaux Cotes de Francs 2005 ($24.45)
Chateau Le Puy Bordeaux Cotes de Francs 2004 ($17.15)
J P Amoreau

Private Importation:
Champagnes
Vouette et Sorbee Fidèle Vintage
Marcel LaPierre

Prosecco
Casa Coste Piane
Trois Petits Bouchons is located at 4669 St-Denis
Le Comptoir Charcuteries et Vins is located at 4807 St-Laurent

And here's the script of the interview, in case you can't download:

AW: You may have heard of organic wines or biodynamic wines, labeled “agro-bio” at the SAQ, but natural wines are in a league of their own. As Xavier Burini of Montreal natural wine bar Les Trois Petits Bouchons explains, your choice of reds, whites, and bubbles this New Years could make more of a difference than you think on how resolved you’re going to feel the Saturday morning after…

Xavier Burini: “My name is Xavier Burini. I’m a sommelier originally, but I’m a restauranteur.”

AW: At Trois Petits Bouchons wine is an integral part of the meal.

XB: “We believe that wine is ‘alimentaire’, that is to say it’s a social part of the meal. Everything you don’t actually want to find in meat – you’ll maybe avoid buying too much meat at the supermarket, you buy direct from farmers, you buy local, you maybe want an organic vegetable basket. You make an effort. Not everyone does it, because yes, it’s more expensive than the normal price at the grocery store, but all of that effort you make, most of the time because you’re not aware of it – no one ever told you - you buy wine that has all the products in it that you don’t want in food. And you’ll drink them and say, “I don’t feel well. I ate something that didn’t agree with me, etc.” People tell us. They come on a Wednesday night, they really have a good time at the bistro, at Trois Petits Bouchons. Then the next morning they get up at 7am and they feel fine. They’re a little tired because they celebrated the night before, but they’re fine. They don’t have a headache, or a stomache ache from what’s in the wine. Heartburn - often the sulfites do that. Not that it’s hard to breathe, but it burns a little. “

AW: So if you’re getting pounding headaches the morning after one or two glasses of wine, when you know you should be fine, natural wines might be something to try. All wines have sulfites, but natural wines don’t have any added sulfites. That’s an important differentiation when shopping for non-head-ache inducing wines. You may think that everything in the agro-bio section or everything marked “organic” is fair game, but “organic” wines can have as many sulfites added as your average $10 Australian Merlot, your $15 Californian Cardonnay, or your $35 Alsatian Reisling.

XB: “But you need to know that “natural wine” encompasses everything. That includes the culture of the vine and most importantly the wine-making process. So a vine culture that has to be organic or something very close to it, so as to have the most beautiful grapes possible, with the best balance possible. So that you can skip all the chemistry – all the chemical products that are currently allowed in the wine-making process – all the sulfites, different acids that permit acidification, the de-acidification, the yeasts, the enzymes. There’s an insane pharmacological arsenal used to make wines these days.

Biodynamic refers to the culture of the grape, as with organic wines. Biodynamic wines are also organic, but it’s the culture of the grape that’s organic. But after that, everything I just mentioned could still apply for how it’s made. So how is it actually made? Did they just press the grapes? The grape started fermenting, then was placed in tanks or barrels, then add just a very small amount of sulfites when putting the wine in bottles, and that’s it? Or are you instead going to take average grapes? Then since the grapes are average you’re going to start to add products to hide the quality of the grapes? So you add a little yeast so the juice starts fermenting. Then you add enzymes to select the right yeasts. You add some sulfites to stop it from oxidizing. After, if there’s more or less acidity or no acidity then you’ll add potassium bicarbonate. They’re chemical products, but they’re products that are found a lot in wines. 98% of the volume is made - manufactured I mean, not let evolve – people don’t have a hands-off approach to making wine anymore. They manufacture it. It’s human intervention that takes place.

But we go against that (at Trois Petits Bouchons). We want to have clean wines, wines that reflect a terroir, a place, according to the enzymes, according to the types of grapes used, whether they’re red or white. So that’s “natural wine”, to not use all these products that mask the terroir, the expression of a vintage, and the taste, simply.

After having sulfites in high doses, that’s what’s responsible for your headaches. The big headaches where you’re not well on the next morning, “Oh I’m not well. I didn’t drink that much!” That’s sulfites….Legally, wine makers are allowed to use 200mg per litre for white wines and 170-180 for reds.

AW: “Why the difference?”

XB: Because whites are less stable, they’re more likely to start re-fermenting because they often have a little more sugar. There are no tannins, so they’re more fragile even though they’re more acidic. The more you go towards a sweeter wines, the more sulfites it will contain. A little overly-sweetened cheap wine can have 350 or 400mg. The World Health Organization set the recommended daily amount of sulfites per average person at 25mg per litre. Any more than that is dangerous. So if you do a simple calculation really quickly, if you drink a little sweet wine every day that’s full of sulfites, you’ll easily hit your limit.”

AW: In a country that drinks a lot of cheap sparkling wine, New Years can be a bit dangerous. A way to hide the flaws of a lower quality sparkling wine or champagne is by adding sulfites and by adding sugar, but sulfites also stabilize the wine, and make transportation less risky. That’s why the SAQ requires a minimum amount of sulfites to be added to all wines. Because of this regulation you actually can’t find any wines in the province’s stores that have zero sulfites added. You can find them in private importation through several of the city’s wine agencies, however. Still, many producers that sell to the SAQ do keep to the bare minimum of sulfites required. In champagnes, Xavier explains that producers really don’t need to add as much sulfites to champagne as they do, because of the properties of the champagne itself.

AW: So if you’re going to be drinking champagne at midnight this New Years, you may want to consider the amount of sulfites in your cheap bubbly for health reasons, but you may also want to consider the amount of sugar. Any wine that leaves you dehydrated can give you a headache, despite your best natural wine, no sulfur-added intentions. You may want to look at the sweetness levels of the wines. A Brut champagne or brut zéro has less than 3 grams per litre. Extra-brut means less than 6 grams. Brut is less than 15 (the standard for fine champagne), extra sec or extra dry is 12 to 20 grams, sec or dry is 17-35 grams. And a demi-sec or crémant can be 33-50 grams of sugar per litre bottle of wine. 50 grams. A “doux” champagne, more like an ice wine, can have any amount over 50 grams!

XB: “There aren’t a lot of sec, demi-sec, and doux champagnes. What there are a lot of at the SAQ are bruts and extra-bruts. There are one or two doux champagnes, but it’s rare.”

AW: Now the important question for all those in Quebec: What champagnes would you recommend for New Years partiers?

XB: “Something that’s really nice at the SAQ is Domaine Jacquesson. It’s a big producer and it costs somewhere in the $60 range. Champagne Drappier. It’s a brut, natural, zero-dosage. Zero-dosage means that no sugar is added after the disgorgement, so it will be dry, crisp, right from the start, perfect for an aperitif.”

AW: So these aren’t cheap, but you definitely pay for quality. You probably won’t be drinking bottles and bottles of the stuff all night. There are other natural, or almost natural wines at the SAQ that will get you through the rest of the night at a much lower cost (in the $20 range) such as Domaine Le Puy Cotes de Francs 2004 for $17.15, or the 2005 vintage for $24.45. There is also a large selection from J. P Amoreau that runs from the low $20’s on up.

For less expensive bubbly options, there are also Italian Prosecco and Spanish Cava, made following the same traditional champagne-making method, but the terroir – the climate in France, Italy or Spain where it’s made - and the kinds of grapes used to make the wines are different.

XB: Yes it’s different. It’s like comparing a merlot from Venezia, Italy with a merlot from Bordeaux and a merlot from South America. They’ll be completely different. There’ll maybe be one – the wine-making process comes into play. You can have merlots that are really easy to drink. You can have merlots that are tannic, concentrated, or somewhere in the middle. There are really no rules. The truth is really in the glass. You need to taste. You can never say that’s like that, this is like this. There are so many factors that make a difference. There are no general rules.”

AW: Xavier mentions that Prosecco and Cava have the same ups and downs with sulfites as champagnes, but if you choose carefully you can find a good bargain.

XB: “We have a Prosecco here at Trois Petits Bouchons – Casa Coste Piane, that’s a private importation. Prosecco that’s not too acidic, not too sweet. Very balanced. Unfiltered. Almost no sulfites. We have that open right now. We’re really enjoying it.

AW: As Xavier said, there are so many factors to what makes a good wine, from the grapes, to the terroir, to the wine-making process, to personal taste. So what’s the perfect New Year’s wine?

XB: It’s the one you like, I think anyway. It’s up to your own tastes. There are people who love huge Bordeaux, big Bordeaux, some people love big Burgundies, some people love South African, some people love Australian wine.”

AW: And, of course when you’re speaking with a sommelier, you have to ask what they would drink. So I asked Xavier what he’ll be sipping on New Year’s Eve.

XB: “Personally I like whites, I really like bubbles. So for me, sparkling wines – vibrant, bright. I love champagne. Vouette et Sorbee, the Fidèle vintage from Bertrand Gautherot. It’s magic. It’s very affordable. Drappier, it’s very good. Jacquesson, I mentioned before. It’s really good. In the SAQ , there’s Domaine Valette. The Macon-Chaintré is sublime.”

AW: So if you’re at the SAQ looking for something to drink this New Year’s Eve, or any other night of the year, really, since you should be able to wake up bright and early without a pounding headache after a bottle of natural wine, make sure you do your research first. It’s rarely indicated in the store or even on the bottles if a wine is natural. And natural wines may not be placed in the “agro-bio/organic” section. Also, notes Xavier, you may have concerns with the more well-known, larger producers of organic wines. One person can look after 4 to 5 hectares of vines. Two employees maybe look after 8 or 10. But the big vineyards, the kind you see in the southern hemisphere, they have 600 hectares and they say they’re organic. It’s less expensive to produce per hectare because there’s more land, but it’s still a little peculiar.

Still, it’s all about taste. So enjoy your last night of 2010 with whatever you choose to drink. Then maybe in the New Year your best bet would be to go to Trois Petits Bouchons for a few glasses of what they have open at the moment and let your tastebuds guide you.

Trois Petits Bouchons is located at 4669 St-Denis, just north of Mont-Royal. Another natural wine bar in Montreal with a sommelier as passionate about healthy wines as Xavier is Comptoir Charcuteries et Vins, located at 4807 St-Laurent, south of St-Joseph. Links to the wines recommended by Xavier are on the CKUT Friday Morning After blog at ckutmorningafter.wordpress.com. For CKUT, this is Amie Watson.

Christmas in Newfoundland: Jiggs Dinner and Peas Pudding

2010-12-25T13:48:00.000-05:00

This is the last radio segment I did for CKUT 90.3 FM on Newfoundland Christmas traditions. I interviewed a few Newfoundlanders to find out what their families do (eat, mostly) during the holidays. Thanks to Ed, Phil, Erica, Andrew, and the two friendly people at Coffee Matters in St. John's for letting me interview them. Thanks, also, to The Mountains and the Trees for the Music at the end. On the CKUT report the whole segment came out of the song as well.

Download to listen!

Amie

Mochitsuki 2010: Traditional Japanese Rice-Pounding

2010-12-21T09:21:00.000-05:00

A legion of volunteers rinsed, soaked, steamed, pounded, shaped, and packaged (and ate...) these rice cakes. This is what they looked like in the end:

...and this is what they looked like in the beginning:

From 6:30am-4:30pm it seemed as though the entire Japanese community came out to the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Montreal for this annual event. The fundraiser offered packaged bags of the steamed rice cakes to hungry guests who didn't even look into the enormous room where all the work was taking place. Here's the behind the scenes look.

First the rice was soaked in a large buckets. I don't want to think about how much rice was there. First we had to strain the rice and measure it into this wooden steamer. The bottom of the steamer was a bamboo mat, like a sushi-rolling mat but the pieces of bamboo were wider. So steam could still get up into it from below but the rice wouldn't fall through. The soaked rice water was collected and thrown out into the snow. About half the weight of the huge metal and plastic buckets was water.

Someone else had to wash the bamboo box bottoms in hot water and remove the sticky grains of steamed rice before they could be re-used.

In the bamboo steamers the rice had to be shaped into a donut so that steam could rise easily in the middle and in the corners. Then with a long wooden toothpick the rice that ahd fallen in the spaces between the wooden piece of the bamboo mats had to be scraped out.

Then out to the steamer:

Heated from below, a wooden steamer system was set up with just one box in an outside shed. After 4 minutes a second box was added. Another 4 minutes later another box. Another 4 minutes and a fourth box. Finally, 4 minutes later the first box was removed and a new box added. So 16 minutes total rice-steaming time for each box. This kept the production line-style system going.

It was pretty cold outside...So from 6:30am onward these guys sat and waited in 4 minute stretches before standing up, removing a box, hefting up a new box, and waiting again. It's a tough, tough job. Fortunately they had sake to keep them warm.

There aren't really any easy jobs in a mochitsuki, though:

The next part of the process involves pouring the steamed rice into this rice-grinding machine with some sea salt. Traditionally a giant machine isn't used, but you'll see why the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre invested in it in the next step:

The machine-ground rice turns into a dough. A rhythm is set and one after another a group of 3 people hammered the dough ("One!" "Two!" "Three!" "One!" "Two!" "Three!" "Ich!" "Ni!" "San!"). Then after maybe 15 seconds someone yells "Stop!" and that person steps in and flips the dough. "Go!" and they start again. 15 seconds later: "Stop!". Flip. "Go!" 15 seconds later the same caller takes the dough to the dough cutter and the hammerers start in on their next batch. Imagine people actually using their hands to work this dough! It would take forever, and it still takes forever if you only hammer it. that's why they use the machine, to expedite the process. Then the hammering doesn't have to be amazingly efficient and powerful but you keep the tradition alive.

Then a dough cutting machine spits out blobs of rice. You've got about 10 seconds to pick up that dough while it's still hot and shape it into a slightly flattened sphere. It can't be oblong. It can't be too flat and it can't have any creases. If you wait too long and it cools off the dough gets grainy on the outside where it should be smooth. In that case you throw it back into the cutter to be reheated a little and then you try to shape it again.

You can see the shape the machine spits out (just to the right of the wooden box on the left) versus the shape of the finished mochi in the boxes. I it takes you more than 5 or 6 seconds to shape a mochi it's not going to happen. Improperly shaped ones that got slipped into the boxes were sent back by the packagers.

Then the mochi had to cool on tables. They would cool on one side and then be flipped over to cool on the other. Finally they were weighed and packaged into plastic bags, about ten apiece. Then into paper bags and stapled. Done. $4 a bag.

The Timesheet: Every time a batch of dough was made it was written down on this chalkboard. 6:30am to 4:30pm. 149 batches. That's a lot of hammering...and a lot of sake.

These aren't even stuffed with anything. These are the easy ones! The mochi are served simply with soy sauce, sweet soybean powder, or wrapped in seaweed. They can be frozen and reheated by toasting, grilling or broiling. They'll never be the same as when they're fresh, but I wouldn't want to spend too many days hammering dough, so it's reasonable to enjoy it while it lasts and then dream of next year...

Longueuil Christmas Market, December 17-20

2010-12-19T07:27:00.000-05:00

The Longueuil Christmas Market is about the quaintest Montreal Christmas activity ever. A 5-minute bus ride from Longueuil metro drops you off in front of a little wooden Christmas village filled with home-made caramel, ice ciders, Quebec chocolate truffles, tourtiere, pear cider, goats milk cheese, mulled wine, a big choo-choo train and a Santa Claus. Did I mention the alcohol? Isn't that what Christmas is all about?

The sign says "hot wine", but I'm willing to bet this is mulled wine full of cloves and cinnamon. If you're not a fan of spice, stick with the Christmas Market's reds, whites, and ports
Or try the white or rose honeywines from Les Trois Acres. They're not actually sweet, so don't be scared off by the word "honey". the white, La Musicale, will fit right in with any musical evenings you're planning during the holiday season. You could also just try the un-fermented honeys from the farm.
You may recognize these wines from the Plateau Farmers' Market. You may also recognize some of the Ruban Bleu cheese. At the Longueuil Christmas Market, however, they have a lot more options, including spreadable things and frozen tourtiere that you don't even need to worry about spoiling or melting on the way home in the summer heat. It's so cold outside that you could grate this stuff (the essentially frozen cheese, not the tourtiere...)! I wouldn't, but I'm just saying it's possible.
If your interests are meaty, you've got a few other purchasing options including the lamb (antibiotic and preservative-free) from Ferme Lochette and 'everything duck' from legs confit to breasts to fois gras from L'Artisan
The fois gras was even affordable, as you could buy two small pieces of duck fatty joy, say, to top your steak in pure gluttony for about $7.50. All you do is dip them in cornstarch and saute them (in duck fat, of course) for 1 to 1 1/2 minutes per side, said the friendly man. There are recipe sheets for those in need. Also info on how to grill the duck breast and how to heat the confit legs. Basically Lochette has you covered duck-wise, and you can feel free to ask about how the ducks were raised as the man at the booth will actually be able to tell you.
Moving into sweets, you've got to try the caramel with fleur de sel.
There are also jams of local berries (blueberries) and less local fruits (figs), marmalades, jellies, mint sauces, marinades, vinaigrettes, and everything sweet that your little heart could desire...

...including cranberry shortbread cookies and dark chocolate covered cranberries...
...and hot crossed buns from my all-time favourite LaPerle and Son Boulanger. We were reunited again! Well, the hazelnut sourdough and I were reunited for a short affair, but my usual vendor was not there. The (relatively) new, younger generation had taken over the selling of cranberry chocolate sourdough and olive fougasses. As it should be, I guess.
The chocolate truffle and fudge Christmas gift bags: A La Truffe...local, beautiful, etc. You can even get hot chocolate made from their melted chocolate
Then there were the muffins, packaged in steamed up containers so they didn't dry out in the cold. I wished I was as well-insulated.
So for insulation you head back to all the alcohol vendors. The pear cider doesn't hit you with a hammer of booze; instead it's a mild, sweet flavour that warms you up from the inside.
After you've sampled a few spirits, make sure you watch out for the train that gives free rides to kids through the little Christmas village. It'll knock you over if you're not careful. This thing is chugging. It doesn't take the kids to the North Pole, unfortunately, but the view is scenic and the ride ends at Santa Claus.
Finally, watch the kids sit on Santa's lap. You're probably a bit old for the sitting yourself, but it's pretty cute to see all those little ones lining up. There's music, it's festive, there are Christmas lights everywhere. I'm not reconsidering kids, though. I'll stick to my laurels and say that as long as the kids are lining up for Santa and riding the speedy little train, there's less competition for you for the caramel samples. I'm always looking out for you, Poutiners and Poutineuses.
Longueuil Christmas Market
When: Thursday to Sunday, December 17-20, 2010
Where: Parc St-Marc, Longueuil (take the 8, 88, or 17 Bus from Longueuil Bus Terminal on the yellow Metro line. It costs $3 one-way for the bus in Longueuil, but it's better than wlaking the 20 minutes over the kind of confusing highway, even though the bus really goes straight down the main road. Get off when you see little kiosks with Christmas lights on your right. It really is a wooden, multi-coloured Christmas village (about 5 minutes on the bus)
How much: Free! (plus $6 round-trip bus fare from the end of the yellow metro line)
Why? Because it'll put you in the Christmas spirit??

Cuisine Bangkok: Best Pad Thai in Montreal? In a Foodcourt?

2010-12-07T08:51:00.000-05:00

"What's in the sauce on the pad thai?"

...Blank stare from the man behind the counter at Cuisine Bangkok in the Faubourg foodcourt...

"Is there ketchup? Tomato sauce? Tamarind? Soy? Lime?"

...more waiting...then: "There's no lime in it. Yeah, soy, fish sauce. I don't know."

I look hopefully back at the people actually making the dishes in the half-open-kitchen behind the cash, trying in my polite Montrealer way to convince this guy with my eyes that perhaps he could ask them. No such luck.

What I did find out was:
1. There's MSG in the fish sauce, but probably no additional MSG added to the pad thai. My headache, flushed face, and anxiety attack-style reaction proved at least the first part of that was true.
2. I should have listened to my friend who told me only to eat here when the woman or the tall man was cooking. I'm not 100% convinced, but if I'm going to have pad thai, I want it to be at its best, and the best was when I went at lunchtime two weeks ago, not when I went for dinner last week. Sure enough, a woman was manning (pardon the pun) the wok at lunch, and next to her, a tall man.

Montreal's best pad thai is in a foodcourt? There was no way I could believe that, so for two years I never came here. Then, finally, I decided to go see what all the fuss was about, and see if Montrealers' opinions on pad thai were more apt than their opinions on "good" sushi. Thank goodness they were.

I had one of the best pad thai's of my life. I ordered the chicken version and it was the perfect balance of hot, sour, salty and sweet, the general rule for Thai cooking. There was tamarind in the sauce for the sour, it didn't taste like commercial ketchup-y sweetness in the tomato flavour, the fish sauce and soy were just enough without giving me dry mouth for the rest of the day, and the chilies were hot without taking away from the flavour of the dish. It was perfect. And if it hadn't been perfect there was extra soy and chili sauces next to the cash to adjust to your adjust. I always adjust. I always want it hotter or saltier because it's generally too bland or too sweet, and I always have to squeeze the lime over top and still I'm never happy with the sourness, but here...here I didn't change a thing.

I ordered the "XXXX" extra-spicy version. You can ask for one to four X's for your order, one being mild and four being extra-spicy. It was actually extra-spicy. Not a "she can't really handle it that hot" cop out. Here they figure if you order it you can have it, just don't complain afterward because they gave you what you wanted. I didn't complain.

So the sauce was perfect and plentiful (finally, no more dried-out take-out thai!), and really, it's all about the sauce, but what else made this the perfect pad thai?, The egg and tofu, believe it or not. The egg was fluffy and not overcooked for once because it came straight onto the plate from the wok. 15 minutes later it had kept cooking just enough to make it less perfect, but the first half of the meal was heaven. I never wax poetic about tofu, but these were little pillows of soft fluff that melted in my mouth a lot like the egg and were the perfect textural balance to the crispy bean sprouts. Actually, the dish was all about textures, from the softened but not mushy rice noodles to the crunchy peanuts and the chewy chicken. The chicken was the only let down. It was just big hacked-up pieces of meat whose only purpose was to add body to the sauce through its melted fat. Which is did nicely.

It was SO much pad thai. For about $7 you'll be full for the rest of the day. There's a lot of oil in it to balance the heat with the rest of the flavours and keep the noodles from sticking together, so it's maybe not wise to eat this all the time in its entirety, but it's tempting because you know it's not going to get better by sticking it in your fridge overnight. The foodcourt is the perfect place for this, believe it or not, since the wok-ing guarantees freshness (well, hotness...). No waiting for all your table's items to be ready and then having them sit under heat lamps until they're picked up by the server. The lunchtime rush here ensures everything comes out piping hot and you'll probably burn your mouth, which is ideal.

So, yeah, a foodcourt. "Not Cuisine Bangkok 2", the restaurant on Ste-Catherine just a little west of the Faubourg, as my friend had also advised. This time I'll listen to her advice, since her reason was that the same people aren't cooking, and that made all the difference in the world, as I found out.
See, I went back for supper. The foodcourt stays open into the evening, so you can get your pad thai fix for lunch or dinner, except when I went back with Greg Bouchard, my fellow Midnight Poutine podcaster and self-proclaimed Montreal pad thai afficionado, it just wasn't the same. I got the tofu pad thai because I'd loved the small amount of tofu on the chicken pad thai so much that it was time to see if a whole meal of the stuff was as good. Again, I got it extra spicy.

This time there was heat and no flavour balance. The sourness was gone. There were no condiments to adjust for that. It was a little dry, too. Turned out it was because it was the vegetarian version since Greg's version of the chicken pad thai (just XXX - "spicy") was almost as good as my lunch pad thai had been. I think it was because the fat from the chicken made it juicier, but it was also more sour, thus better, which you wouldn't think would be dependent on the chicken or tofu choice.

The other most popular item on the menu was the chicken and eggplant, said the server. So I tried that too. Huge let-down. The same hacked-up chicken pieces couldn't fix this sauce. I got it extra-spicy again, but it just tasted like heat and salt. There's no lime or tamarind involved in the plate, so it's not supposed to be sour like the pad thai, but it was just a bit...boring. Eggplant sucks up oil like an vacuum, which is what makes it so delicious, but these big pieces were just bland since the sauce didn't really add much to the vacuum effect. I also think this dish had a ton more MSG, since my lunch pad thai hadn't given me a crazy headache like I got after this second meal.

Verdict? Come here for lunch, but only when the "woman or tall man" are working. It's easier to tell when the woman is working than figure out who the "tall man" is, so maybe just stick with her. I'm sure everything else on the menu is decent, but it's all about the pad thai. The green curry is also popular, but it's made from a jar of green curry paste, as it is everywhere, so it's just not going to be as unique as the flavour balancing act of the pad thai. Sure, every meal of pad thai you get here is going to be a little different since it's made individually to order, and the wok-er doesn't taste each one to adjust the tastes. And it's not a McDonalds where everything is pre-sized, pre-mixed and pre-packaged, so if you're looking for cookie-cutter Thai, I can't believe I actually have to say DON'T come to the foodcourt. Weird...

By the way, Greg says the pad thai here has nothing on Cash 'N Curry, a Malaysian BYOB on the Plateau...I feel a throwdown coming on.

Photos: "Chicken Pad Thai (medium spicy, please)" by Mister Sleep from the Midnight Poutine Flickr Pool

"Cuisine Bangkok Reborn" by bopuc from Flickr

Cuisine Bangkok (the foodcourt, not the restaurant)
Le Faubourg, 3rd floor
1616 Ste-Catherine West
Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-9pm, Sun noon-5?
Cost: About $7, plus a quarter for a large take-out container. Small ones are apparently free...so you could get your meal on a plastic plate and then a mall styrofoam take-out container for the leftovers and kill the environment even more but save some money...
514-935-2178

Interview with Atigh Ould of La Khaima Restaurant: The Montreal Nomad Festival - Oct. 12-17th, 2010

2010-12-06T08:03:00.000-05:00

Here's a link to download the interview I did on CKUT 90.3FM a ways back with La Khaima Restaurant owner Atigh Ould. In a city of festival's, his was one not-to-be-missed. When else could you learn to make traditional Mauritian bread or participate in a slow-food Bedouin brunch complete with a mindful-eating exercise courtesy of Myrite Rotstein of TastyLife. You could probably expect a similar experience to the one I had at the blindfolded taste test workshop at the Concordia Sustainability Fair - savour the nigella and the baobab...

www.nomadefestival.com

Basmati Rice, Biopiracy, and Geographical Indications

2010-12-05T16:18:00.000-05:00

Basmati Rice, the “queen of fragrance”, the “perfumed one”, "the only thing my Indian engineer roommate knew how to make". When you eat rice every day, as most people do in South-East Asia, the preparation becomes an art form in itself. My Indian former roommate didn't cook very often. When she did she always made rice, perfect rice, the kind where each individual grain was tender, fluffy and stayed away from its neighbouring grains as if it had a cold. It was never over-cooked and there was never a rice cooker involved, just extensive stove-top experience to the point where making rice became second nature. To make it poorly would have been difficult for her. We got along very well, she and I, but this expertise was not something we shared. I coveted her rice skills.

So why did she grow up with these skills and I didn't? Somehow I was never taught to wash the polish off the rice under several changes of water, or to let the rice sit in water for at least 30 minutes before letting it touch heat. Sure, I was taught not to peek and to let it cook with the lid on, but I've burned far too many pots of rice by following that rule to call myself a firm believer.

My roommate grew up in the right environment to learn perfect rice skills. Basmati has been a cherished food staple and cornerstone of Southeast Asian food and culture for thousands of years. My European roots mean my family has been eating it for only a few centuries. So my roommate really did have a good head start on me. In my family rice was just rice, no matter what kind it really was, but in India this is definitely not the case. While Southeast Asian farming communities have developed and conserved over a thousand distinct varieties of rice, the foothills of the Himalayas are the world’s veritable basmati breadbasket. Though at-home cooks and restaurants alike often substitute less expensive jasmine rice for basmati, to rice connoisseurs there are differences in smell, taste and texture. Jasmine, for example, will try very hard to cling together after cooking. My roommate would have given me a very disappointed look if I'd suggested she borrow some of my jasmine rice for dinner if she'd somehow made it through her ten kilogram bag of basmati before being able to lug her rice-toting grocery cart to the store for more.

In India, as I learned, rice is eaten as the foundation of almost every meal, either served on the side, or as a bed for the rest of the meal. It's often served in addition to breads; there is nothing French about the amount of carboydrates in a traditional Indian meal. Rice is also found in many Indian dishes, like biryanis (elaborate mixed meat, vegetable, and yogurt dishes) and pullaos. It's pulverized or used whole in Indian rice pudding, dosai (crepe-like wraps for spicy potato mixtures), and idli (small steamed disks to be dipped in coconut and chutney and sambar), and it can accompany just about every curry, masala, and pulse (a lentil or bean dish).

Rice is so important to everyday life in India that it's intertwined with religion and happiness. Long before North Americans threw grains of rice over newly-weds post-wedding ceremony, Hindus believed that a similar act of pouring rice over the heads of the young couple would bless both the married pair and the pourer. No need to get married yourself to ensure a life of rice and happiness, since you could just bless other happy couples and give yourself a blessing at the same time.

So if you ate rice every day, even with all the variety, wouldn't you get sick of it? How much flavour can rice possibly have? It’s all relative. Compared to the sticky short-grain rice used in Chinese, Japanese, and Thai cooking, basmati is actually considered bland, but the mild nutty flavour and the aromatics in basmati - the smell of popcorn - are completely unique. Besides, can you ever get sick of popcorn? Like rice, you certainly don't eat it plain all the time.

India’s easterly neighbours like it when their rice sticks together, and it’s true that the stickiness makes it easier to pick up with chopsticks. How many times have you been frustrated by all those grains that sit in the bottom of your bowl covered in sauce, refusing to make the journey to your mouth via chopsticks? Indians got around this problem by eating without utensils, using only their right hand. Meals may be messy operations, but each grain remains separate despite miraculously fluffing to twice its length while cooking instead of staying short and sticky. Practical considerations aside, basmati is so intrinsic to Indian food culture that no amount of arguing would convince a woman from the Punjab in Northern India to switch to sticky rice if given the choice, just as my former roommate would scoff at jasmine.

More than being a local staple, basmati is one of India’s best-known exports, and is more common in North American markets than other prized Indian varieties of long-grain, aromatic rice found throughout India, like ponni, hailing from the south, or maharashtra, from the west. Unfortunately, because of its international popularity, basmati has become the victim of biopiracy and intellectual property theft. A basmati knock-off first appeared in supermarkets in 1997 when an American company called RiceTec Inc. was granted a patent to label and sell their rice as “Basmati”. Suddenly Indian basmati had to compete for the stomachs of consumers around the world who may have only noticed the difference in price between two basmati options (RiceTec's costing less), not the difference in origin. India argued to the World Trade Organization (WTO) that based on the Treaty on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which the US and India had both signed, the US should recognize the Geographical Indication (GI) of basmati and not sell what India viewed to be a basmati impersonator. This meant that India had to convince the WTO that basmati was a good whose "quality and reputation were attributable solely to India". To be called “basmati”, the rice should have to be produced within a particular area and achieve a particular standard. As champagne is to France, they asserted that basmati is to India, and just as American producers are not allowed to label their wine as champagne, Americans should not be able to label their rice as basmati. Unfortunately, even though RiceTec did lose its patent, the same rice is still sold to consumers as "Texmati" and "American Basmati". Each country that signed the TRIPS is allowed to administer its own Geographical Indications protection, making it difficult for India to protect its products from other countries playing with different rules. In Canada, based on our country's Trade-Marks Act, it's illegal to pass off a product as something it’s not, but Texmati is still available in supermarkets, so it seems that it's legal to import products from other countries that produce these products, even if the production itself would be illegal in Canada.

Being a basmati rice producer is not all fun and games. It's actually a little easier to produce basmati than sticky rice, since the long-grain basmati is more tolerant of drought, insects and disease, but basmati is more resistant to the use of chemical fertilizers, making it hard to produce on a large scale. It's also much harder to harvest basmati by machine than by hand because it grows over five feet in height and tends to fall over into the mud, making the job a little messy. More labour is required to produce less rice than other varieties would yield, so basmati is a costly product. "American basmati" is actually a hybrid of Indian rice and a more disease- and insect-resistant variety that can be machine harvested, making it less expensive to produce, but the hybridization, the nontraditional production methods, and the different area of production area mean it's not exactly basmati anymore. This is where the importance of Geographical Indications comes into play, since consumers may be willing to pay more for products that have a certain known quality, like splurging on champagne instead of buying a cheaper but less prestigious sparkling wine. A Chardonnay from Australia, for example, would never be thought of as the same wine as a chardonnay from France. In India's case, if the term “basmati” can refer to both the traditional Indian product and the mass-produced, less expensive American product, it may be hard to tell the products apart, and more importantly, to tell if Indian basmati is worth the extra cost.

A double standard also exists for GIs of wine and spirits. While countries are permitted to label rice as “basmati-style” or “American-grown Basmati”, no wine can even be sold with the word "champagne" on the bottle. No wine can be sold as “Champagne-Style Sparkling Wine” without having baguette thrown at his or her head.

So if anyone can call their rice “basmati”, more "basmati" rices will appear on the market, and competition will increase. What happens then to the Indians who suffer from the loss of the market for their product? There will always be consumers who seek out the heirloom variety, the highest quality, or the luxury item of any foodstuff, but this clientele alone can't sustain the small-scale basmati farmers and their unique, indigenous and culturally important food. Indian producers stand to lose their incomes, their traditional cultures, and their way of life, and consumers stand to lose the quality guarantee that comes with a purchase of true basmati.

There is hope being offered by the EU, which in cooperation with developing countries like India is rallying to implement a registry system for products with recognized Geographical Indications, like basmati. Affluent countries like Canada, China and Australia are very much on the “against” side of this debate. There is as yet no resolution in sight and all the while India’s basmati rice farmers continue to suffer through competition with America’s more affordable, mass-produced, basmati-labeled rice.

The next time you're looking for traditional, quality-guaranteed basmati, check for an indication of the country of origin. If it says Texas, put the rice down and look a little harder for another option. Traditional basmati should be aged, and it should smell like popcorn, even before you cook it. It will probably be more expensive than the other available types of basmati, because of the cost involved in the traditional, small-scale production, but it’s the real, traditional, culturally-rooted deal.

"Kidnapping the Queen: Basmati and Biopiracy" - My Basmati Rice Article in Spezzatino Magazine

2010-12-05T16:13:00.000-05:00

Click here to download "Kidnapping the Queen: Basmati and Biopiracy", an article I wrote for Spezzatino Magazine in Toronto on the champagne of India - Basmati rice.

The article has everything you need to know on why you should never buy "Texmati", "American Basmati", or anything from a company called RiceTec. If it's not from India, it's not Basmati.

Boulangerie Guillaume

2010-11-18T10:02:00.001-05:00

Montreal, Canada
November 13, 2010

Dear Guillaume,

We've never met. To be honest, I wouldn't even recognize you on the street. If we happened to be in the metro together I would avoid your gaze like every other polite Montrealer is instinctively supposed to do when riding the metro, except I imagine you're the kind of person who would turn to me and offer his seat when he saw how many groceries I was carrying, as I'm oft to do. The only change in my grocery-laden life is now that I'll have less back pain because bread is lighter than watermelon, and all I want to buy is loaves and loaves of your bread. Fruit is an over-rated food group, except when it comes stuffed inside your baked, slightly-fermented delicacies.

So you don't know me, but you've already done me the ultimate kindness, whether or not you give up your metro seat. You've saved me the trouble of making my own sourdough bread. When summer ended I lost my baker. Well, really, he always belonged to LaPerle (the lucky woman), but she was good with sharing. Bread-less, I resigned myself to growing my own sourdough starter so I could have a little of the tangy flavour of LaPerle's Boulanger's bread all winter. I'm not a maternal person, though, so keeping something in my house alive indefinitely is intimidating. I'm not even good with houseplants, and those need water even less regularly. It's disgraceful.

So when I found you, the weight lifted from my shoulders. I loved you instantly. I saw the list of ingredients in all your breads so I didn't even have to spend 10 minutes of my or your salesperson's time asking what was in each loaf. No milk, no butter, no additives, and half the loaves used sourdough instead of yeast. Oh, Guillaume, it was wonderful. My favourite LaPerle loaf was a hazelnut sourdough, and when I saw your walnut loaf I knew I'd make it through winter in one piece. The walnuts, like LaPerle's hazelnuts, were perfectly toasted. The second time I had this loaf the nuts were softer, a little less intense, but the bread was sponge-y, light, and chewy. I don't know if it's better than LaPerle's Boulanger's, but I consider myself an equally lucky woman, along with the rest of the Montreal population that should get to know your bread and your boulangerie.

Bear with me, Guillaume. I just finished reading a book by the Wall Street Journal's wine columnists who started something called "Open That Bottle Day", where readers would plan a special occasion to open a bottle they'd been saving for whatever reason. After the day passed, they received tons of letters from readers who had participated in the event with friends, family, or by themselves. The thing was, Guillaume, that most of the readers' letters weren't about the taste of the wine itself, but about the experience of opening and drinking the bottle - the story of the bottle, the memories. Sometimes the wine wasn't even very good, but it didn't matter. The wine often transported them back to a special moment when they bought it or received it - a wedding, a trip, a conversation, a last family Christmas, a first job celebration, the family member whose bottle that had inherited from a long-hidden collection.

Your bread, for me, was like a bottle of wine. It brought me back to the summer's sunshine, Sunday mornings of heat, abundant fresh fruits and vegetables, music, and calm. It brought me back to the last farmers' market of the season when the man from LaPerle's Boulangerie at the farmers' market said to me, "Thank you for coming back all summer," as he looked straight into my eyes with a profound, sincere expression on his face. "No," I smiled and laughed, "thank you for coming back each week. It makes my Sunday." What do you say to someone who becomes such a part of your life's routine? Maybe it's silly. I barely knew this man, but maybe you, Guillaume, can understand how important this bread was to me.

I'm loyal, Guillaume. I love your bread itself and I love where it transports me.

In respectful friendship,
Amie

Boulangerie Guillaume
17 Fairmount East
Montreal, QC
Hours: Tues-Sat 7am-7pm, Sun 7am-2pm
514-507-3199

Don't Have a Baby, Have a Market: Marché St-Jacques

2010-11-11T08:40:00.000-05:00

Wait! That's not the series name! Haven't I spent the summer and fall extolling the value of markets over babies? Well, the world got a little turned upside down when I walked into the muzak-playing, sterilized air-pumping, recently renovated and re-opened Marché St-Jacques, and suddenly babies, by comparison, didn't seem like such a waste of space.

When I first heard about the new Marché St-Jacques, I thought someone on high had heard my plea for more markets and opened (well, re-opened) a new public market in the Centre-Sud at rue Ontario and rue Amherst, but no, turns out that in 2006 the Ville-Marie borough sold the over 100-year old market to the private sector, to a company called Rosdev for $2.3 million. The Montreal Public Market Management Corporation (CGMPM - it's in charge of the Jean-Talon, Atwater, Maisonneuve, and Lachine markets) couldn't afford the price tag, and neither could the previous ground floor tenants of the Marché St-Jacques building afford the new rent.

Who could afford the rent? Gourmet food stores.

Who can't afford the market? A good chunk of the people who live in the area, a generally low-income neighbourhood that includes the Habitations Jeanne-Mance, one of the country's largest subsidized public housing units. There is a big upswing in condo building nearby, though, and Rosdev is probably banking on their business.

There's nothing wrong with a specialty store. In fact, I love Olive et Olives who have an outlet in the new space, but the mandate of a public market (which this originally was before the 2006 sale) includes providing accessible, affordable food purchasing options for local residents. That usually means being able to buy staple goods directly from local producers and discount sellers (think those enormous $7 bags of Quebec carrots at Jean-Talon. Organic they're not, but well-priced and local they are). Compared to Marché Jean-Talon and even Atwater (which recently did its annual winter down-sizing, getting rid of most of the outside vendors and leaving residents and market-goers with fewer local, farm-fresh options), Marché St-Jacques feels like a private club...you know, one where you have to wear all white, never smile, play lots of tennis, and pay a ridiculous membership fee, which is what you essentially will be doing by buying anything here (the money part, not the tennis. The smiling is up to you I guess).
If you read French check out the Rue Frontenac article by Marie-Eve Fournier on le Marché Claude Plouffe, one of the former market stores, now moved across the street to rue Amherst south of Ontario. Ever had a lease that was supposed to run until a certain date and then you get notice that you have a year to get out? Sucks when it's your apartment, but it also sucks when it's your business. Moving fees are not included in the less-than-polite upheaval.

So should you shop at this market? Well, it's a tough call. The coffee and tea shop is beautiful, the preservative-free fresh pasta sauce shop (the pasta itself was ambiguously not described as "preservative-free" by comparison) is run by a very nice man and offers an incredible looking lamb sauce made from something ridiculous like 12 lamb shanks, there's a Poissonerie La Mer outlet (but it's better to go to the original shop down the road at René-Lévesque and Papineau for selection and a wealth of fish knowledge from the staff), a fruit and vegetable place with a smaller and only slightly less local selection than Marché Claude Plouffe down the road, a Fromagerie Atwater outlet (guess they couldn't really change the name), and a Première Moisson, with several empty shopping mall-like slots in the building for future businesses (definitely not local farmer stalls).

BYO-headphones though, because I've been in elevators with better music than this place.

Montreal Oyster Throwdown: Le Club Chasse et Pêche, Joe Beef, L'Orignal, Maestro SVP

2010-10-28T08:15:00.000-04:00

Criteria: Freshness, Variety, Price, Atmosphere, Accompaniments, Drink Pairing, and "Because Sometimes All You Need is a Good Shuck". A grand total of 13 different kinds of oysters, 4 glasses of wine, 3 days, and 1 very, very long night of oyster crawling later, here are the results...

Humour me for a second. I'm a little obsessed with sustainable seafood, to the point where I won't take a free sample of Atlantic salmon at Jean-Talon market, I'm freaked out by BC's "naturally raised" Creative Salmon, and I get in fights with fishmongers over the origins of the halibut they're trying to sell me. So to help us all navigate the confusing world of sustainable fish and seafood, I'm going to do a series of throwdowns about it. As it turns out, oysters both are pretty sustainable and, compared to a lot of other seafood, surprisingly affordable.

Fish are going through tough times, "just like oysters did about 150 years ago", says Daniel Notkin of L'Original, but oysters made it through. Well, some kinds did, and now oysters are generally considered to be sustainable. They actually clean the water where they live, but you want to be careful about whether they're farmed or wild, what's in the water, and especially whether or not they're fresh.

Why This is a Horrible Throwdown: You should also know that as much as this is a throwdown, it's probably the most docile one ever. Think instead of "throwing down the gauntlet", these restaurants are all getting together in a ring and gently placing a pillow down each to create a sharing circle so they can chat over tea.

I'm not really pitting these restaurants against each other, since when it comes to oysters in Montreal there's a fair bit of inter-restaurant support and amity. Places in the city such as Joe Beef, Liverpool House, L'Orignal, Lucille's Oyster Dive, and Garde-Manger all shuck high quality product and work with each other very closely to spread the oyster-related good word. Think of them as shellfish preachers, the kind that sells something better than encyclopedias. Joe Beef, for example imports Carr's Family oysters directly from the cultivator and sometimes supplies these other restaurants, so Carr's Family oysters could end up at Lucille's Oyster Dive thanks to Joe Beef, and along the same vein Chopper's Choice oysters from Massachusetts could end up at Joe Beef thanks to Daniel Notkin from L'Orignal, etc. Chef David McMillan of Joe Beef stresses that, like him, representatives from these restaurants are the ones going out and importing their own oysters, which is a sure way to guarantee freshness and quality. If you're working with a distributor there are a few more stops along the way to the store shelf and there's no guarantee you should want to eat those oysters. Midland Transport ships oysters to Joe Beef and their tea party restaurants, leaving PEI on Friday, arriving in Montreal on Sunday, and getting oysters to the restaurants Monday. McMillan says Joe Beef will serve oysters for an entire week but it's not like fish where the quality degrades substantially each day, so whether you eat oysters there on Tuesday or Friday is not a big deal. I wouldn't eat sashimi that had been sitting in a crisper for a week, but I would definitely eat an oyster that had been placed between two damp towels in that same crisper, as long as the fish wasn't in there too.

Money: But then there's the money issue. Oysters aren't cheap, right? Actually, they're not bad, despite how chichi they seem. Even at the heavy-weight Montreal restaurants that I'm "gently placing"-down, the average oyster cost just $3.50. So you can have a light meal or an appetizer of oysters and a glass of wine to start your night (special occasion or not) at one of these high-quality establishments for about $30. Yeah, it's more expensive than a pizza or nachos, but it won't cost you the $100 a head that you'd expect to spend on a four-course dinner at these restaurants (though I do encourage a good splurge sometimes) and your guest, friend, or significant/insignificant/slightly less significant other will probably be pretty impressed.

I'm getting there, I swear, but there are a few things you need to know about oysters if you're just starting out:

1. There's nothing fancy about an oyster, really. It's a piece of flesh sitting in a shell that gets cracked open and slurped into your mouth. It's packed with protein, low in calories, and high in aphodisiac zinc, you know, for the entire "others" category, independent of their significance...

2. There's no "right" way to eat an oyster. If you've never had one before, try your first plain. Just pick up the oyster half-shell that's been opened and loosened from the shell (shucked) for you, and pour the oyster juice (called "liquor"...but it's not alcoholic) into your mouth. Let your tongue absorb the salty flavour before biting into the meat of the oyster. Please chew your first one since the sweetness of the meat generally increases the more your chew, and it might take some chewing to overpower the saltiness.

3. Words to describe oyster flavours include fruit (ex: melon), floral, vegetables (ex: cucumber), mineral, nutty, metallic, or mushroom flavours in addition to the briny hit of sodium you get upon first slurping since they come from saltwater. It all depends on the climate and the water - how warm it is, where it is, what's in it - and if the oysters are farmed or wild. Since farmed oysters are cultivated on trays at different depths in the water, the depth also makes a difference. Pacific oysters grow much faster than Atlantic oysters, McMillan explains, and PEI oysters have tougher lives in the Atlantic ocean than say BC oysters over in the Pacific. Atlantic and Pacific are also two different kinds of oysters altogether (Atlantic: "Cassostrea virginica", Pacific: "Cassostrea Gigas") so you can expect different qualities.

4. "Where oysters come from, lemons don't grow there," says John Bil, oyster shucker extraordinaire, but some people like to squirt a bit of lemon, horseradish, or mignonette (traditionally a mix of red wine vinegar and shallots) directly into the half shell of oyster, and as I said, there's no "wrong way"...there are just less good ways. Purists either don't like these accompaniments at all, or like them more as palette-cleansers, to remove the taste of the last oyster from your mouth before the next one. Basically that's so you can taste the next one better by contrast. My oyster crawl partner made fun of me for biting into pieces of lemon after having an oyster and then taking a sip of wine, kind of like a backwards shot of tequila, but in very slow-motion since I would never shoot an oyster. The lemon made the wine taste sweet by comparison. Then I'd have to have more lemon before the next oyster to get the sweet wine taste out of my mouth. All this meant was that I could take a dry wine and turn it into a dessert wine by sucking a little lemon first, so two wines for the price of one and a full course meal: appetizer (bread), main (oysters and wine), sides (lemon and mignonette) and dessert (wine). Almost.

I also would caution you about the lemon and horseradish since too much can overpower the flavour of the oysters, and probably they were traditionally only used because they're antimicrobial. Oysters are most often eaten raw, but you shouldn't really need any of these things if the oysters are fresh. It's the same way wasabi makes it less dangerous to eat raw fish in sushi, but still, better safe than sorry. And wasabi, like horseradish, is an acquired taste. Unfortunately, also like horseradish, you can add too much wasabi and wreck the food.

5. Traditionally you think champagne and oysters, but that's half a practical idea and half just an elitist thing. The bubbles are refreshing and shouldn't mask the flavour of the oyster, but champagne is unnecessary and also generally pricey. A dry sparkling wine (a good prosecco or cava), or even a dry white wine (a chablis or a sancerre - though sancerre is a bit pricey too) works perfectly. Don't drink? That's fine, since the reason sancerre works is generally because of its mineral qualities, so I say mineral water or sparkling water is okay too...and cheaper...though maybe not as fun.

6. About taste and freshness: Taste is completely subjective - you'll like what you like - but freshness is something you really want to be careful with; an oyster shouldn't look dry, and you actually want to see some green algae outside. It's a living thing until it gets shucked, after all, so something growing on it is generally good.

7. "A bad shuck": Well, this can best be described as kind of rough since there's no liquid inside, and 'KY' doesn't have a solution for that. It's also bad when the oyster meat gets gnarled by the knife and you lose the flavour of the oyster. That one's not really meant to be a metaphor...but think as you will.

Okay, I'm done.

Variety: Maestro SVP
There were 12 kinds of oysters on the menu here. Lucky Limes, Malpèques, Peasant and Raspberry Points from PEI; Beausoleil and Chippigane from New Brunswick; Chef's Creek and Marina Gold from British Columbia; Merigomish from Nova Scotia; Glidden's from Maine, Mystic Rivers from Connecticutt; and Galway Flat's from Ireland. If you're looking to sample different kinds, this is where you want to come. Just make you ask which are the freshest, though (when they came in and travel time - ask to see the box to check the packing date if you're really skeptical), since oysters have a relatively short shelf life and there's no way they can keep all of these stocked at their peak. So variety is maybe not what you should be after in the first place, but it is the spice of life, so it's a tough call...and it's your digestive tract.

Price: Maestro SVP and Le Club Chasse et Pêche
You can get 12 Beausoleil oysters at Maestro SVP for $13 any day from 5pm to 7pm, and all evening on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That's hands-down the best oyster deal in town and it means that the Beausoleils at Maestro SVP are probably among their fresher offerings because of the higher turnover. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Beausoleils are the best bang for your buck, but Beausoleils ($2.00 a piece) are actually really good right now. At any given time of the year they could be good or less good since the water environment is constantly changing. Maestro SVP also happened to have the most expensive oysters, with the Irish Galway Flats checking in at $8 a piece and the rest averaging around $5 an oyster, so choose wisely. Joe Beef and Liverpool House will have the Galways later in the year too, which probably means so will a few other places in town with whom they'll share a cup of tea...

As for the rest of the oysters at Maestro SVP, I liked the Gliddens from Maine, but at $6.00 a pop you'd be better off having the $3.50 Colville Bays at L'Orignal or the $3.50 Carr's Family oysters at Joe Beef.

Then there's Le Club Chasse et Pêche where you get 6 oysters for $20, which noses in just slightly under $3.50 an oyster. Though there's only one kind of oyster offered (Caraquets from New Brunswick when we were there) they're served them three ways:

Best Accompaniments or Presentation: Le Club Chasse et Pêche
Here you order "oysters with personality", says the menu. That evening "personality" meant you could mix and match your half dozen oysters from the following options:

1. Mignonette (cute?)
2. In matsutake mushroom broth (slightly bitter?)
3. With basil oil and champagne foam (Um...I wish I knew what a basil-y and champagne-y personality was, but I would never argue with the Chefs of Le Club Chasse et Pêche)

You can also get them au naturel, and there was, of course, lemon (though I don't see any lemon trees 'round these parts...), but this was the best mignonette (a)round. Well, the first one was. They brought out a new dish of mignonette for the second half dozen oysters we ordered, and that time the vinegar was more pungent - a fresh batch. I preferred the muted crunch of the shallots and the mildness of the acid the first time and hope that mellowness was intentional, but it's just a matter of personal preference.

The matsutake broth was the most unique option. It wasn't a hot broth, since that would cook the oyster, but the slightly bitter, warm mushroom flavour complemented the caraquets.

The basil oil was way too overpowering, but if you want to taste basil and not oyster, this one's for you; say, if you're on a date and you figure it's a good idea to order oysters to seem posh but you actually hate the idea of pouring a barely dead thing into your mouth...but you really like pesto, then go with this kind. The champagne foam gets lost in the mouthful, but champagne goes with oysters, so it at least didn't get in the way of any of the oyster flavour.

Runner-Up: Horseradish at Joe Beef
Yeah, I know it's weird I'm singing the praises of horseradish, but it was better here. It was freshly grated in front of us, sure, but I think it was just that the horseradish itself was a little sweeter, a little richer. Can horseradish be richer? Maybe it can with glass 3 of wine...

Atmosphere: L'Orignal
If I was going out for an evening and wanted to find an unpretentious restaurant for oysters, this is where I'd come. The place isn't cramped like Joe Beef, the whole room seems warm and inviting, sitting at the bar felt like being around a big group of friends I'd just met, and service was warm and so very much not "Old Port stuffiness".

But I'll be honest, Le Club Chasse et Pêche completely surprised me. Again, we were treated with the utmost respect. I mean, I don't look like a person who knows the first thing about oysters, but I felt comfortable enough to ask questions, and by the end of the night my oyster crawl partner and I were speaking with the Maitre D', the sommelier, and a server about oysters, fennel, and dry white wine...not together necessarily, although...

Then there was Melissa at Maestro SVP who walked us through the entire menu and described each oyster without sounding the least bit pompous about it. She was honest, clear, and respectful, and her own curiosity and education about the oysters shone through. This isn't really fair to Joe Beef, though, since they were packed the night we went and it really wasn't the time to make friends with the obviously friendly, though busy, oyster shucker/bartender. Liverpool House next door is also owned by McMillan and there's more space and a relaxed atmosphere that seemed much more appealing. You might not get the furry buffalo or the Newfoundland fishing boat door in the bathroom, but next time I'll reserve a highly-coveted seat at the Liverpool House bar instead and hope for some other decorative whimsy in the washroom.

Drink Pairing: Le Club Chasse et Pêche
While I prefer the sancerre you can get at Maestro SVP, $15 is a lot to pay for a glass of wine. The only other decent option there is a glass of prosecco that goes for $11.25 and tastes like it should cost you no more than $5. Alcohol is where these restaurants are going to suck your bank account, so you need to be choosy. Prices were around the $11 per glass mark everywhere but the best deal was actually at Le Club Chasse et Pêche where a $9 Muscadet was plenty dry enough to stay out of the way of the oysters. I wouldn't want to drink it on its own, but it's funny that myself and other foolish people like me will pay $9 to have a drink stay out of the way.

I personally think the Chablis they offered was too sweet for the bivalves, but

1) that's just me, and
2) they probably want you to go with the $25 glass of champagne, so it kind of makes sense. And really, it's considerate of them to have the less expensive option.

Because Sometimes All you Need is a Good Shuck: Joe Beef (Liverpool House) and L'Orignal
This is an oyster video. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Really you want to have your oysters shucked by John Bil but nowadays you can only catch him working at Liverpool House when he's in town. Bil now has his own place in Darnley, PEI with mussel-grower Stephen Stewart but fortunately for Montreal the restaurant is closed for the rest of the season, so word is that for the next two weeks, Bil can be found at Liverpool House.

Why should you go out of your way for him? Bil is a three-time Canadian oyster shucking champion whose record is 18 perfectly shucked oysters in 1 minute and 26 seconds. Still, Daniel Notkin of L'Orignal is a very good shucker, and I've been told that Garde-Manger and Lucille's Oyster Dive have their own employees who are skilled with a shucking knife. I have it on good authority that McMillan and Ryan Gray at Joe Beef are no shucking novices either, but would they get in a shucking throwdown or just a sharing circle with Bil?

Speed is important, but so is quality (remember the gnarled oyster imagery in point 7 above). At Maestro SVP we waited forever for our oysters. We did order quite a variety, and we were entertained during our wait, but they weren't even shucked in front of us, and that's really part of the appeal. Le Club Chasse et Pêche's oysters came quickly but they had extra preparations to make with the basil oil and foam business so they also weren't shucked in front of us. So Liverpool House if Bil is spotlighting, and L'Orignal when Notkin is working.

You've never tried a...?
My personal favourite oyster was a British Columbia oyster called Marina Gold from Maestro SVP. That doesn't mean Maestro SVP is the best place for oysters, just that it was the only place serving this one kind of oyster that I loved. Just one cost $4.50, but it tasted like risotto - a creaminess that's characteristic of Pacific oysters. McMillan says they'll be getting them at Joe Beef in January, February and March, once they can't get the Atlantic ones anymore. They're not the kind of oyster you maybe want to eat 6 of, but they're a real treat. As a lactose-intolerant person I dream about cheesecake and mousse, but now I'll dream about the creamy tang of a Marina Gold. Ridiculous, I know, but they won't make me sick...unless I get a fourth glass of wine and start thinking about that horrible episode of Mad Men. There's a reason I stopped watching that show.

My second favourite oyster was at Joe Beef. That night they had Carr's Family Oysters which come from Stanley Bridge, PEI where Carr's Wharfside Market, oyster bar, and seafood restaurant sell about 500 raw oysters and ship about 1000 daily. These oysters were the perfect, simple, sweet, salty balance with a full meaty flavour. They didn't have the shock value of the Pacific oysters since they taste like what you probably think an oyster should taste like (all the Atlantic oysters are actually the same species, but take on different flavour characteristics based on where they're cultivated - PEI, NB, NS, Maine, bays, inlets, etc.). The half dozen we got was a mix of bigger ones and smaller ones, though, so you've just got to hope your order gives you the big ones.

Overall Winner: Maybe this is a cop-out, but I wouldn't turn down an offer to go to any of these places, and neither would I turn down an offer from a good shucker/ami(e) who invited me over to try a whole variety from Poissonerie La Mer on Papineau, or Aqua Mare or Poissonerie Atkins/Les Délices de la Mer in Jean-Talon market. But I would check the packing date on the box and want to know where the oysters are coming from. Still, you're not going to find the Pacific creamy oysters I loved at J-T, at least until later in the year, and you're definitely never going to find the Carr's Family oysters there. So I'd go to Le Club Chasse et Peche when I want to sit in a crazy fancy restaurant and feel as though I can afford it, get great service and learn about oyster personalities, I'd go to Joe Beef when it's less busy and I want to feel like I'm in one of the city's hippest places (but like I said, next time Liverpool House, especially if Bil is shucking), and I'd go to L'Orignal to feel welcome, at home, and in good company at the bar with amazing and well-priced oysters.

Wow, we made it. Now, completely bombarded with information you can stop being intimidated by oysters and go explore some of the city's most exciting restaurants. Ask questions, enjoy the experience, and most importantly, find yourself a good shuck.

For more info on how to buy, store, and shuck oysters at home, check out Bil's advice here.

Le Club Chasse et Pêche
423 rue St-Claude
Hours: Tues-Sat 6pm-10:30pm
Expect to Pay: $20 for 6 oysters plus tax, tip, and a glass of wine
514-861-1112

Joe Beef
2491 Notre-Dame West
Hours: Tues-Sat 6:30pm-close
Expect to Pay: $21 for 6 oysters plus tax, tip, and a glass of wine
514-935-6504

L'Orignal
479 Saint-Alexis
Hours: Daily from 6pm
Expect to Pay: $21 for 6 oysters plus tax, tip, and a glass of wine
514-303-0479

Maestro SVP
3615 boul. St Laurent (at Prince Arthur)
Hours: Mon-Wed, Sun 4pm-10pm; Thurs-Fri 4pm-11pm; Sat 4pm-midnight
Expect to Pay: From $13 for 12 Beausoleils to $27 for a mix of 6, plus tax, tip, and a glass of wine
514-842-6447

POP Montreal Advice: Energy Bars

2010-10-02T20:26:00.000-04:00

POP Montreal has already started, and while Midnight Poutine will be looking out for your musical interests, you also need to be food prepared. Think of me as a bartender not letting you get drunk (on music) and then drive yourself home (without proper nutrition in snack-form). So, here are some store-bought and DIY-energy bar recommendations to keep you on your feet...you know, just in case you can't figure out how to package up a hot, gooey poutine and keep it warm (and un-eaten by friends) from the start of your night to the end.

Choosing the right bar is tough. So I went to a new store in Griffintown, Marché Bleuet, to check out the options. Here's the run-down:

Protein Bars:
Clif Bars: Are you a rock climber? Unless you plan on climbing the sides of the stage to rappel down onto the bass player, you don't need this bar. It's heavy on soy products and sweetening syrups, and is a deceptively dense meal replacement. There are, however, a lot of flavours to choose from.
Elevate Me!: Way too much whey protein, though it seems like it would help get you above the bass player. Less equipment involved in the elevation process, so it's a little more stealth...
GenSoy: Another soy-based option packed with protein, but also packed with sugar and dairy. Again, probably overkill, though in this scenario the bass player doesn't get knocked over.
Soy-Free Bars:FitSmart: This could work. The marketing implies that you will be both fit and smart after eating this bar, or perhaps you already are for choosing to eat this bar. The "fit" part is important for dancing. The "smart" part is important for choosing the right show. It's high in fibre, though, and waiting in line for the washroom is not what you want to be doing when Little Scream is breaking your heart.
Vega: This is actually an interesting option. It's vegan, soy-free, features sprouted grains, and has agave nectar and dates to sweeten. The thing is, originally this company sold their protein in powder form that you add to water. It tasted awful. The bar isn't as low fat as the powder, but it tastes better. The hardcore will go with the powder smuggled into a show in a waterbottle (do not mix with alcohol...), but people who have taste-buds will go with the bars.
Larabars: Definitely not protein bars, but Larabar is the easily-found "all-natural" option. Seems like they're everywhere. There are usually a grand total of 2 or 3 ingredients in these bars (Pecan Pie Bar: dates, pecans, and almonds). Heavy on non-refined sugar from all the dates, so plenty of energy to keep you moving, but high fat from the healthy nuts.
Raw Bars:
Earthling Goji Bars: These are great, but they're tiny. It's just a snack, and you'll be hungry again in no time. The nuts are soaked and dehydrated to reduce enzyme inhibitors and ingredients are all simple and delicious (coconut, almonds, goji berries, figs, raw agave nectar, sea salt, cinnamon, vanilla bean), so if you only need a tiny pick-me-up, this is a good choice.
Oskri Coconut Bars: You can go the fruity way or the chocolate way with these, but while they're super healthy for you from the coconut, you probably want to eat about a quarter or a half of it per act you see at POP Montreal. Eating more than a few of these (or any of these bars, really) will lead to you wishing you'd just held out for poutine. These aren't actually raw, but imagine raw poutine...Dehydrated potato, cashew cheese, and miso gravy...hmm...this is something to try.

The Straight-Up Granola Bars:
Everyone's Organics: Traditional oats and honey without the preservatives and oils of the granola bar aisle in your average grocery store. They're Canadian, so if you aren't making your own at home (see below), and you want to eat a few bars in the evening instead of rationing one of the more intense bars above, these are a good option. Dancing burns a whole lot of calories, but a dance marathon is not a road-race marathon, so these will do you just fine.Nature's Path Organics: Everyone knows this cereal brand. Now they have organic granola bars too. A little heavy on the syrups and soy oil, but this falls somewhere between dessert and a snack. Not quite as wholesome as Everyone's Organics, above, but more affordable than all the other bars in the list. Big company = lower prices, but you could also choose to support the little grassroots guy. Maybe these guys were grassroots once too, though.
Or you can save some money and make your own.

DIY Granola Bar Recipe
1 1/4 cup blanched almond flour (you can make almond flour by toasting almonds and grinding them very fine. You can also skip the toasting)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup oil (grapeseed, safflower, or olive oil, but any will do. So will softened butter or margarine)
1/3 cup honey or agave nectar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup shredded coconut (optional)
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds (optional)
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (optional)
1/4 cup almond slivers (optional)
1/4 cup raisins
1. In a small bowl, combine almond flour, salt and baking soda.
2. In a large bowl, combine the oil, honey or agave, and vanilla.
3. Stir dry ingredients into wet. Mix in coconut, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almond slivers and raisins, if using.
4. Grease an 8x8 baking dish with oil (or butter). Press the dough into the baking dish, wetting your hands with water to help pat the dough down evenly.
Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes.

DIY Raw Larabar Recipe
1/4 cup dates, pits removed, roughly chopped
1/4 cup dried fruit (dried cherries, cranberries, blueberries, raisins)
1/3 cup whole nuts, toasted or untoasted (pecans, almonds or walnuts. Whole is fresher but chopped is fine too)
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice or a few thin slivers of lemon zest (optional)
Basically you could throw all this stuff in a blender and then make it into a bar shape and cut it in half (the un-cut bar serves two people, and the cut bars serve one each), but then you'd lose the texture of the nuts and you'd probably also destroy your blender. A food processor will do a better job, and if you only roughly chop the nuts (with a knife, or in a food processor or blender) you can add it to the dried fruit purée and end up with something closer to a cooked granola bar.
If you can find Iranian dates that come in a box (P/A supermarché has them, as well as Les Douceurs du Marché at the Atwater Market, and La Vieille Europe on St-Laurent, to name a few) they're fresh, so they'll blend well. If the fruit purée is too liquidy to combine un-messily with the nuts wrap the puréed and chopped ingredients in plastic wrap to shape into a bar. If it's still too liquid put it (not in the plastic wrap) in the oven on the lowest possible temperature with the door slightly open to dehydrate it (for approximately an hour. It will still be raw, but a little crunchier and firmer).
You can also find fresh dates this time of year at some of the fruit vendors at Jean-Talon. You'll have to let them ripen a few days, so buy them now in preparation for POP Montreal. Those alone could get you through the night on a natural sugar high. You probably wouldn't sleep after 10 of them.
If you can only find dried dates, just soak them in room temperature water for 2-3 hours to soften them up. Then drain them and purée with the other dried (unsoaked if they're small, soaked if they're large and you think they'll get stuck in the blender) fruit. If you use too much water you'll just need to mix the purée with the nuts and other ingredients and leave it in the oven on the lowest possible temperature with the door slightly open for a bit longer. Not the end of the world.
Oh, and if you're a podcast listener and hate me because we were eating angel food cake for Gabby's birthday, here's the recipe so you can make your own: Almond Angel Food Cake with Cinnamon Amaretto Figs and Amaretto Cream

Marché Bleuet
2733 rue Notre-Dame West
Mon - Tue 9am - 7pm
Wed - Fri 9am - 8pm
Sat 10am - 5pm
Sun noon - 5pm
514-507-2404

Rawlicious

2010-09-26T18:39:00.001-04:00

Rawlicious

3092 Dundas St West

Toronto, ON

●●●●●●●●○○

8 out of 10

Raw Food

This is not the best raw restaurant ever. Still, I loved it. What it does have is an amazing location in the heart of the junction where a loyal clientele of people trying to healthy and happy come into the most sublime setting for a meal or a smoothie or a juice. The restaurant is a group of rooms winding from the front of the restaurant to the back, with a private room, different seating options (cushions at low tables for a lush eating experience) or high round tables café-style. Or more standard tables next to the middle room fireplace. So you can have an intimate dinner, a casual quick bite in the front window, or somewhere between the two. The other cool thing is it's an open-kitchen. Not a great design since the kitchen is the cash register area as well, but it's really nice to see the (non-)cooks putting the dishes together. So it's a beautiful space. Oh, there are all sorts of beautiful art work on the walls.

The juices? Great. the smoothies? Good. Mine had too much of an empty banana taste that I find happens with agave nectar and dates. So not as good as LIVE Organic Food Bar, but it's still very good. I also agree with the fact that here they don't have alcohol. Raw food seems a bit of a gimmick when you sell cocktails with alcohol. What about the whole "not polluting the body" thing?

So we've established they have good intentions here. My dining companion (who figures he doesn't like raw food) liked his smoothie a lot. He'd also liked Crudessence in Montreal. But then the Pad Thai came (pictured at the top). He didn't like that so much. It was really nothing like Pad Thai. It was actually still pretty good, but it wasn't pad thai. If you call a dish something and that's associated with certain flavours (sour lime, crunchy peanut, spicy sweet tomato and/or tamarind, slightly sweet egg) you need to live up to it. Mind you, Toronto does not have super Thai in the first place, but this version was just not pad thai. Just call it pasta and you'll be fine. I liked the creamy, nut-based sauce, though I asked for some kind of tomato hot sauce (ANYTHING!) to turn it into something that remotely resembled pad thai. I think the biggest problem was that there was way too much of the gloopy sauce. A lime please! Come on! Lime is even raw! Couldn't find any tamarind lying around? I'm being harsh, I know. Keep in mind that I like this place.

The springrolls were another Thai disappointment. There wasn't enough mint, they were soggy since there were marinated vegetables in there, and no crunch. the dipping sauce was even bland. Lack of lime again the problem, I think. In a restaurant specializing in nuts you'd hope they'd get the peanut sauce better.

Side salad? Excellent. Delicious agave-based vinaigrette that was sweet and a refreshing after the pad thai. If a raw restaurant can't do a salad well, though, there's a problem. That's kind of the meat and potatoes of raw food, so to speak.

Raw restaurants usually do amazing desserts. It's the perfect way to end a meal since it really fills you up with healthy fats. No sugar-laden carbs made of fluff and air. It works the same way cheese works but without the salt - you don't need a lot of it to be full. Also, eat too much, and you'll regret it. You do not want a second piece of cheesecake. Trust me.

The cheesecake was lovely. Lemon. Very fresh berry sauce, I think. Cheesecakes are always good in raw restaurants because soaked nuts taste deceptively like cheese from the slight fermentation. I mostly use cashew but macademia is very good. I forget what this one was made of.

The brownie? Well, I liked the vanilla icing since it tasted like pure sugar from the dates (but it lacked same depth that my smoothie had lacked, and for the same reason). The brownie itself should have been richer. Usually raw chocolate mousses are very rich and so this brownie (much denser than a mousse) could have used some more raw chocolate-y taste. Still it was funny to see the walnut pieces in it (they actually tasted a bit bitter) and know that the rest of brownie was made from nut too, but that stuff was ground fine so you don't think about it. Kind of like stuffing a chicken with an egg stuffing (sorry to all vegans for the imagery). It's weird but then you realize it's all raw so it's just a little joke to me. Probably no one else thinks that's a good one...

So I left here feeling so light and happy, and full. My body was giving me a pat on the back (up there with the chicken imagery, I know) and even if the dishes that I'd had weren't amazing, I would happily go back for another meal. I love zucchini noodles. I love big bowls of sauces made from nuts that replace the cream I can't have. I love knowing I'm eating something rich and a little sinful but it's so good for me nutritionally. Vegan food should be delicious, and this almost is. Take that, soy!

Expect To Pay: $18-$35 (for main and a dessert to a juice, entrée, main, and dessert including tax and tip...and a happy soul)
Hours: Tues-Thu, Sun noon-9pm; Fri-Sat noon-10pm
416-519-7150

Concordia Sustainable Food Festival

2010-09-25T09:13:00.000-04:00

http://www.mediafire.com/?kcp5ql2if6o6n5c

Here's the audio from a radio feature I did on the workshops and organizations at the Concordia Sustainable Food Festival last week (September 2010). It starts with talking about the food justice organizations and farms present and works its way into talking about the canning and taste-testing workshops I participated in, as well as an interview with Myrite Rotstein from TastyLife. Have you ever eaten baobab? Now I can say I have.

Enoteca Sociale

2010-09-23T09:22:00.000-04:00

Enoteca Sociale

1288 Dundas West

Toronto, ON

●●●●●●●●●☺○

9 1/2 out of 10

Italian

Yes, 9 1/2, but that's only for the bread and pasta. Would that I could never eat anything besides these two things again. That's all that's necessary for happiness in life, I'm convinced - bread and pasta. In fact, if I'd passed out in my empty pasta bowl before the main course came my life would have been complete, except I wouldn't have gotten to try another half glass of exquisite Italian red. That's the other reason to come here - the wine list and nearly everything served by the half glass or glass.

This is the sister restaurant of Pizzeria Libretto on Ossington. Instead of pizza they do pasta. Sure they do meats and appetizers, but I don't care about those.

This place is going to be constantly packed. Apparently half the restaurant is given to those with reservations and the other half is left for neighbourhood foot traffic. So any given night you can get a table. Still, expect a wait, especially once the patio closes. Sit at the bar or at a table placed pretty close to your neighbour, and enjoy the trattoria experience. This is Italy. I never ate better than this in Italy. Never. Believe me, I tried.

So the thing is, I make a ton of pasta myself. I love my fresh pasta so much that after I'd made it for the first time I knew I could never go back to dried pasta, but I also thought I knew what good pasta was supposed to taste like. No, I was wrong, because Enoteca Sociale's pasta is what pasta is supposed to taste like. Their durum semolina is the most flavourful pasta-making miracle in Toronto. Better even than the pasta place at St. Lawrence Market. It's all about the flour/egg/oil combo and here they get it right. The thin, flat noodles of the pappardelle with braised rabbit were little bites of joy. The only mistake was that it came with a little bit of cheese (an unsalty parmiggiano I'd guess?) and I'd asked if there was cheese in the dish and they'd said no. But it's pasta. Of course there's cheese, and it's better for it. It makes something so simple into something sublime. The server begged to take the half-eaten dish back to the kitchen and get me a new one, but my main thought about that was that as much as I'd love another bowl of the heavenly stuff I couldn't possibly finish it and there was no way I was letting such a beautiful dish go to waste. There was a reason I'd eaten half a bowl of the stuff even though I can't digest cheese. Even taking leftovers is not the same. The cheese was perfect, anyway, and I think the rich wine cut through it nicely. It may have even been raw milk cheese because they have a lot of that on their cheese menu, and I didn't get sick. The rabbit gave a depth to the dish and brought out of the sweet flavour of the pasta itself. It was light, smooth, and every strand stayed separate. Better than a similar dish at Loire Restaurant on Harbord, but they're French, not Italian, so it's not their fault.

The other great thing here was the bread. It tasted like sourdough with a tangy flavour. Dipped in olive oil the earthiness of the cold-pressed fruit was heavenly with the tang. God forbid you eat this with butter. You could, but I'd be sad for you. It would be delicious, I know, but good quality olive oil is easier to find than good quality butter in Toronto.

The bread was not fluff bread, but it wasn't dense. The edges were crisp and the insides moist and pillowy when you chewed. I actually stopped the server and asked, "Excuse me, do you KNOW how good this bread is?" She packed three extra pieces in my to-go container of leftover cornish hen. I remember nothing about the cornish hen except that it was okay. I think the skin was under-crisp. I didn't care. I was still luxuriating in the memory of sourdough and semolina. I didn't need or want another piece, but just sitting there appreciating what I had just had was enough. It did remind me of a busy street on a Friday night in Milan, but that's only because I didn't make it that far south in Italy. This is not Northern Italian cuisine (Milan), though they do have wines here from all regions. Actually, their wines are offerings you won't find many other places. They're all exceptional examples of regional varietals. Have you ever had a gialla? A friulano? Not what you expect. I didn't order them but just the sight of them on the menu pulled me back to an afternoon in a wine shop (In Italy 'enoteca' can mean wine bar or shop or both. Usually a shop will have a bar where they may serve samples) in Pavia (south of Milan) where the owner opened a bottle of a local bottle of watery stuff while we listened to Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion, as well as other Italian standards. I'm sure the bottles here were of much higher quality.

I think I love this place because it's so very much Italian without any Toronto pretension. It's casual but with incredible service - so fast and efficient, but courteous and professional. It's affordable but with exquisite wines by the glass. There's a tasting menu but you could just get a simple pasta with a contorno (side dish) of squash with thyme, honey and butter (so rustic and autumnal) for a simple meal after work. It's more likely you'll end with some cheese (fresh local or specialty imported stored in the restaurant's own cheese cave at optimal temperatures, served on platters according to your own selections) from the enormous cheese menu than with one of the simple three desserts. A meal doesn't have to end sweet. At least not every day of the week. You're going to want to come here often, so at some point you'll not want chocolate. At that point you'll switch to cheese to add the final layer of the meal to your top of your stomach, like a layer of insulation against hunger. Now that's Italy. This is a reason to love Toronto.

416-534-1200
www.sociale.ca

Guru Lukshmi

2010-09-19T18:30:00.000-04:00

Guru Lukshmi

2555 Erin Centre Blvd. #3

Mississauga, ON

●●●●●●●●●○

9 out of 10

Best South Indian I've ever had.

My brother and I drove to Mississauga (from Toronto, not Montreal) to a little a strip mall by Erin Mills to experience this restaurant. Maybe Brampton has better (I have no idea) but Little India on Gerrard does not. Udupi Palace, for example, is good, but this place is better. It tastes fresher, there are more options (not always a good thing, but in this case it was), you can customize according to taste, and there are items I haven't seen anywhere else.

Most places, "South Indian" is synonymous with dosa - the thin crepe-like wrap made of slightly fermented lentils. That's all well and good, but with Indian food it's never about one thing. Dosa is also about the rasam, the coconut chutney, the coriander chutney, the sambar, and for me, the idli. You come to Guru Lukshmi for all these things, and the first thing on the list is not the dosas themselves, as wonderful as those are here.

Best things about this restaurant, in order:
1. The coconut chutney. Unbelievably fresh and sweet. Not metallic and dry. SO good for you and you just want to eat it with a spoon.
2. The rasam.

Sweet and sour tomato-tamarind soup. I've had lots of rasam before but never has the tamarind stood out like this. It was a little mouth-puckering instead of just oily tomato soup.

3. The dosa itself. Choose from paper-thin dosa, steamed thicker dosa, no oil, a little oil, regular amount of oil, your chili heat preference, and of course, two menu pages worth of fillings. Everything is there from the classic masala dosa stuffed with masala-spiced potatoes (masala is just a spice blend that depends on the chef. It really just means "spice blend") to all kinds of chilies or even chocolate...hmm...I wonder if they could put those together for me? Anyway, in mine I could taste the fenugreek and fennel seed. Oh, and the cumin. Whole cumin seed. If you've never seen one of these dosas before, here's another picture:

They can be rolled up into a burrito-like wrap or just folded over like a very large omelet (top of post). Here it didn't really matter because everyone was eating traditionally - with the right hand only. The left is used to wash yourself (well, traditionally. Probably not in Canada. Hygiene is a little different here). But try eating this messy thing with just one hand! You kind of need to break off pieces. Mine was helpfully sliced into four wraps, making it easy to lift one quarter at a time, but I don't think this was quite what is normally done. The folded over ones (from what I saw) need to be opened and the fillings swept to the side. Then you break off pieces of the crispy parts of the dosa and use them as utensils to pick up pieces of the fillings. This works fine when it's a potato, or a soft mash of some kind, but when it's pieces of things it gets tricky. Makes sense that so many dishes are soft mashes in Indian cooking since they've got to pick them up somehow. Still, no matter what you do, it gets messy. I marveled at how it seemed easy to everyone else in the restaurant (we were the only Caucasians. A good sign except I feel like I'm intruding without an invitation). It's probably like chopsticks where it just takes a little practice. Maybe it's also not great for me since I'm left-handed and I kept trying to reach with my left hand, only to stop myself. There is a sink in the open area of the restaurant to wash your hands even. That way you don't create a line to get into the bathroom just to maintain hand hygeine. Very smart.

I had the vegetable spring dosa with chettinad ($9) that you couldn't really get without oil even though it's supposed to be lower-fat. What they really mean is the insides have more vegetables and less oil, but it's still pretty sticky. The chettinad was a blend of red chilies, herbs and spices combined with crisp cabbage (I think) and some other crunchy vegetables that I had a hard time of stopping myself to loo9k at. I didn't find too hot at all, but I eat hot sauce by the spoonful. Every time I go for Indian I have to be very insistent that I actually want it spicy. I love the flavourful burn, and here the heat didn't overpower anything for me. Hurray!

So there are some limitations to the dosa selection, but there are two entire pages of options. Everything from onion to coriander, cumin, vegetable curry-stuffed, cheese, ghee (clarified butter), tomato, greens in gravy (I imagine like saag? Though they have another saag dosa with feta), chana dal (like chickpeas) and all kinds of different chili peppers ground or fried and stuffed in the various dosa shells. Two exceptional things you can get are chocolate dosas (with nutella - I think rarely found in Indian restaurants...but a brilliant innovation. If crepes can do it, so can dosa. Maybe that should be their motto. Just no ham and cheese, please. Gross).

4. The idli.

These are just fermented rice and lentil flying saucers that are steamed. I never think they're anything special, which is why I keep ordering them wherever I go. I want to find a place where they have a flavour and I can figure out why they're on South Indian menus in the first place. Indian food is all about spice (not necessarily heat) and more importantly, about flavour, so these things are generally horribly bland by comparison. Here they're a little more interesting, but I think it's because of the accompanying sides. You dip these guys in the sambhar or the aforementioned heavenly coconut chutney. The sambhar is kind of a soup whose contents vary from restaurant to restaurant, cook to cook, like spice blends. Usually it's tomato-based and is garnished with coriander. It was okay, but the interesting thing on this plate that I'd never seen before was the idli powder (top right corner of photo). The powder was like a concentrated form of the idli ithemselves. There was a real, slightly nutty flavour. Very savoury and like fine pebbles to be crunched. You eat them and you think "Oh! THAT'S what idli are supposed to taste like." But when they get steamed they lose some of that quality and the chutneys come to the rescue. I think of idli as Indian pasta. In the world of pasta there's really good kinds that have real flavour from the egg and durum semolina or high quality flour, and then there are generic boxed pastas from the supermarket that gets eaten by the pound. It's like inhaling air, but it's still beloved by so many people. It's a staple. Other people might try it for the first time and wonder why we'd put something so tasteless in our mouths. I'm sure hordes of foreign exchange students go through that when they come to Canada and buy the cheapest thing in the grocery store - pasta. Normally this flavourless confusion is me with idli, but not here. Here I get it a little.

Something else I'd never seen before was a page of options for the jain and swaninarayan communites. I didn't even know there was one or what that was. All those options are without garlic and onion. They're two religious communities that obviously are large enough to be catered to at a great restaurant. This would also be great for anyone with onion or garlic allergies or intolerances.

I wish I could have tried the South Indian desserts. They're hard to find, but as it stood my stomach was full (and happy). So another time perhaps I'll try the payasam. Though, maybe not, since it's like rice pudding (made with milk) and would knock me on my lactose-intolerant bum for awhile. That bum would like to stay un-sat on more often.

Mylys Restaurant

2010-09-15T09:21:00.000-04:00

Mylys Restaurant

738 Jarry East

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8 out of 10

Vietnamese

In search of Pho', I went to Mylys. I'm immediately interested in any Vietnamese restaurant that calls itself "healthy" because it means that maybe, just maybe, they don't use MSG. Their sign also said they had sushi, though, which doesn't bode well for an authentic Vietnamese restaurant, in my opinion. It's "bring your own wine", though, so that's definitely healthy, right? Can you bring just one glass of red? Who would even ask that? Certainly not a Quebecer.

I've been going all over the city in search of the best beef broth for pho' with Pho Lien the winner so far. After a meal here, I was impressed, but I still give the crown to Pho Lien.

Here the broth was rich without being greasy. The colour was good, so it was properly strained, and I could taste the star anise. My only real complaint is that I asked for raw meat and by the time the bowl got to me it was all cooked. It came really fast and the distance between the kitchen and my table was not that great (plus the restaurant wasn't really busy), but the previously raw meat had all shriveled up a bit by the time it hit my table. I did have the mixed bowl of well-done meat and raw, so you see the unfurled well-done stuff on top in the picture above. When the quality check came from the server ("How is everything?) I said it was good but explained that I really liked raw beef. He was very apologetic and said I should ask for it on the side so I could add it myself. What a novel concept. I don't know how I feel about it, though, because if the broth isn't piping hot I'd be worried about contamination. And then if you only add a bit of meat to the bowl at a time, by the time you get to the end your broth will definitely be cooler (not hot enough to kill off any bacteria on the meat). So basically you can never have an entire bowl of soup without being very concerned about contamination.

Hmm...well, takeout is 10% off from Monday-Saturday 4pm-10pm. If only I didn't live a good 50 minutes from this restaurant...

Oh, the spring rolls ($3 for 2) were disappointing. The peanut sauce was pretty much just processed peanuts (no pieces), which is better than adding a lot of fake things with ingredients you can't pronounce (aka preservatives/additives), but it wasn't very complex or rich. Just thick and oily. The crab stick in them was a bit weird and the shrimp was tasteless.

One added bonus of this place is you can get a mini-Pho' soup for $1.75, or if you can never decide if you want the pho' combo or the bun combo, or another combo, you can get the mini-Pho' as part of the ridiculously well-priced $12.50 lunch or dinner deal that comes with 2 imperial rolls, two grilled chicken (I assume skewers?), 1 beef (skewer, again?), rice or vermicellli and a cookie and tea. That's basically bun without the fish sauce to pour over it all. Or maybe it comes with that too? Anyway, you'll be VERY full. The best deals are the pho', though. A large for $6.75 was huge. $7.75 for the extra-large just seems like overkill. $8.95 for raw and well-done flank beef, and the well-done was pretty okay taste-wise, if you like chewy things.

Expect To Pay: $7.50-$15 to be completely stuffed
Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-10pm
514-279-1111

Chez Anas

2010-09-09T09:44:00.000-04:00

Chez Anas

552 Rue de l'Église

Verdun, Montreal, QC

This is not a review. This is a call to arms...well, in terms of restaurant-going. I walked in here and walked myself up to the owner and asked,

"Excusez-moi, est-ce qu'il y a terrasse en haut?" Is there a patio above?

You see, I was across the street about to go into Parisa for some Iranian food when I turned around and saw this cabana of a terrasse. If this were the middle of a desert I'd assume it was a mirage, but no, this is Verdun. There are no oases (plural of oasis...) in Verdun.

...And yet, there is a second story straw and umbrella-topped patio. It belongs to a French-ish, Fusion-ish restaurant called Chez Anas. It's owned by one man, Anas, who is reputed to be very artist-friendly (and in general, not just to the the bohemian type). His menu is all home-made and the only online complaint I've seen is that it's a bit expensive for what it is. Soups, salads and sandwiches for lunch, and chicken, game and pasta for supper. Emphasis on the game (rabbit, bison), also apparently. If I remember correctly it's fusion-ish because of some of the sauces, such as some Thai-inspired pasta sauces and some Spanish tapas-like offerings. The rest seemed pretty standard French (duck leg and snails, even). You can assume that pan sauces get reduced and there's butter involved, especially in the menu items that end with an accent aigu. There's even a very Quebec tarte a sucre (sugar pie...diabetic nightmare but Quebecois dreams are made of these...). It's BYOB, so at least when you pay $30 for a home-made meal you're really getting your money's worth. Who's going to make their own snails?

Chez Anas
Where: 552 Rue de l'Église
Expect To Pay: $10-$17 for lunch, $20-$35 for dinner, including tax and tip (It's BYOB)
514-769-0658

Tehran Restaurant

2010-09-08T10:20:00.001-04:00

Tehran Restaurant

5065 Boulevard de Maisonneuve West

Montreal, QC

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6 1/2 out of 10

I biked past this place for a whole summer and never went once, despite looking it up and finding it had decent reviews. It just doesn't look like much from the outside but inside it's a giant dining room. when I went for lunch it was empty. Over the course of an hour and a half only one couple came in and one man ordered take-out (both were possibly Iranian, though).

The prices are pretty good, the servings are ample, and the food is again, pretty good, so there's no reason this place shouldn't be doing well. It's got nothing on Parisa in terms of quality and taste but it's maybe more convenient located across the street from Vendome metro.

A meal starts with the noodle, spinach, mint and lentil soup. the same one that started the meal at Parisa. The mint looks soup and tastes like nothing, I can't find a piece of spinach to save my life, but the yogurt is deliciously tangy and the lentils are fresh. the fried onions on the side look strangely breaded, so add crunch until they get soggy, but don't really have any of the delicious fried onion taste I'm used to from Indian cooking.

The fried onions show up on the side of the eggplant appetizer ($6 for the appetizer, $16 for the same thing served as a main course). It's a simple purée of tomato, egg and herb. I can't find the egg, though, and it's over processed so the texture is lost. There's no smoky flavour and the tomato overwhelms (maybe canned tomatoes?). The onions are piled high on the sides of the dish because they'd taste like nothing if you mixed them in. Really it was just too tomato-y but I love eggplant so much and it really wasn't bad. It just wasn't amazing. The pita bread you ate it with was cold (refrigerated), though, and the raw onion and little plastic packages of butter that came with them at the beginning didn't really help them shine.

Then a strange thing happened. I had ordered the chicken in a tomato sauce ($14) that came with barberrie rice. Out comes this platter of rice, enough for a large family. It's completely beautiful, arrange with so much barberrie (the small, red currant-like dried fruit) in layers with basmati and saffron rice. Then a second plate with this enormous chicken breast, again, enough for a large family. I am not a large family. I think I at about 5 bites of each. Not that it wasn't good, but it was just a LOT of food and the soup had really been delicious and thick and not lemony enough, but very oily and filling with chickpeas and beans. Really I could have stopped after soup.

The chicken basically fell apart when I touched it with my fork. I was so excited! Then, somehow, it was tough!!! How does this happen? The strands were falling apart in the pool of orange but it was overly chewy. I don't understand. After leaving it in the tomato sauce in my fridge for a couple days it relaxed a little and the rigor mortis eased off, but at the restaurant I was baffled. The tomato sauce was boring and fatty since it contained the juices of the chicken. If I'd come here before the pomegranate walnut sauce at Parisa I would have liked it more. The price was amazing though since the soup comes with that giant chicken and platter of rice.

The kebabs are generally what people judge any Middle Eastern restaurant by, and these are okay. Much better than fast food. They're marinated and pretty tender, but just fine. the Jooge Sulanti is a beef and chicken skewer for $22.50 and is a giant platter of rice with one skewer on each side to save having that extra dish. There's no sauce to get in the way. Just the chicken kebab and rice (including soup) is $18. The beef kebab had a strong aftertaste of dried garlic powder and it was too chewy, but if you like a tougher steak you will like it. It's a fair bit of meat anyway.

The chicken skewer was wonderful! It was SO tender and a little lemony and a little oily. It was very homestyle comfort food-y. the tomato on the side is to be squeezed over the rice but it isn't really charred very well, making it difficult to squeeze.

Then you get tea at the end. Traditional Iranian tea with sugar cubes on the side. Unfortunately the cubes had been sitting in the air-conditioned restaurant about 3 months too long and decided not to dissolve. How can you blame them?

So this restaurant is more casual than Parisa. It's definitely not trying to be a fancy restaurant. All the sauces are simple, the spices are simple ("soma" - a mixture of spices - is offered instead of salt, though I think it's made of mostly salt anyway). That's how the server told me it was spelled but I can't find too much info on it. Help? So come here if you want a lot of food for a small price, and get one of the chicken dishes. they also specialize in comforting stews such as Ghormeh Sabzi ($14) - a beef and vegetable stew with kidney beans and basmati and saffron rice. You'll be full for two days. On Thursday you can get the lamb shank special served with traditional fava beans and dill rice. If their chicken is any indication it'll be fall off the bones tender but you'll bizarrely have to chew it like jerky.

I want more flavours, more complexity, not just sustenance. Kind of like buying a ham and cheese sandwich at the grocery store. It'll never be more than ham and cheese, and you'll know you could have done it yourself at home for less money...but you didn't. There's the added part about this being "exotic" food that generally North Americans don't cook in their own homes. There's nothing hard about it, but come here once first, and find out what it's supposed to taste like with simple ingredients. then go to Parisa and learn how to make it gourmet. Then make it at home and go back to Parisa for special occasions and here to Tehran Restaurant when you don't have the heart too cook simple food at home and are about to buy a sandwich from the grocery store. This is much better than a sandwich from the grocery store or a kebab from Basha. I'm embarrassed to even make that comparison.

Hours: 11:30am-11:30pm, daily
Expect To Pay: $18-$30 including tax, tip and a full meal with soup
514-488-0400

Lola Rosa

2010-09-04T11:33:00.001-04:00

Lola Rosa Vegetarian Bistro

545 Milton

Montreal, QC

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7 1/2 out of 10

I'm convinced this is the best, most affordable restaurant around McGill. It serves real food using good quality products and a whole lot of care. The owner has no idea who I am but I think he's about the best restaurant owner ever. Good guy, down to earth, reasonable and efficient, but also laid back enough to create a casual vibe in the resto. You can tell he's in the business because he loves it. He respects every customer and I assume he respects every employee the same way.

Then there's the food. You know, I'm not really blown away by it, but I blame this on my lactose-intolerance. When you skip the cheese on the burrito you miss out on a complete, savoury dimension of an otherwise hot and sticky mess called a burrito ($11), nachos ($12, or $7 for half), lasagna ($12), polenta ($11 - cornmeal topped with ratatouille, cheese and salsa) or a quesadilla ($11). Then there are the ragouts, the chili ($11) where more tomato takes over and runs amok without being tempered by cooling cheese. When mozzarella isn't involved, there's feta to pick up the torch, as it does in the tomato pie ($12) or the Tunisian ragout ($11) of cabbage, tomatoes (again), bulgur, chickpeas and roasted almonds. Fortunately there remain a few good cheese-less options. The curry ($11.50) is made with coconut milk, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, raisins, and chickpeas, and come winter it's the kind of thing you crave. In summer, however, you're better off sticking with the hemp burger ($11.50). Skip the "Veggie Burger" ($9.50), the only thing not made in-house. The hemp burger is a Lola Rosa creation. A patty of mostly tofu and hemp seeds gets slathered with barbecue sauce and melted brie, to give you sweet and spicy flavours from the sauce, and a melty, oozing, tongue-cooling brie on a surprisingly convincing patty. I'm really tough on veggie burgers, but when you dress them up this pretty it's hard not to like them. Kind of like dousing your broccoli in cheese sauce. I hear kids are more likely to eat it when it's served like that. What do I know about kids? They're all crazy to me. Maybe it's just cheese that makes everything better. They certainly seem to think so here at Lola Rosa, and for the food they make, they're probably right. I wish there were a few more vegan options, and I wish everything wasn't tomato-based, but to be honest, one of the best thing I've had here was the salad ($11, or $7 for half). Black bean burrito was fine, but nothing to write home about, but the salad?

The salad was wonderful. I'm not the type to dance a jig over a salad, but good quality, fresh romaine lettuce was the base for chickpeas, amazingly freshly grated carrots, a few pieces of green pepper, tons of green onion, pickled hot peppers (the only questionable addition), crisp purple cabbage wonderful kalamata olives and two slices of sweet orange for garnish. This was all well and good, but the salad dressing made the dish. Maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, and a delicious grainy dijon mustard. It's true, I'm a little obsessed with dijon, but the dressing wasn't too sweet, it wasn't too vinegar-y, and it wasn't too oily. You could taste it on every bite and for awhile I was convinced it was raspberry, that's how fruity the balsamic was. Maybe they should do more with balsamic and less with cheese.

Then there's dessert. They do have a vegan chocolate cake ($4) but it's dry and certainly not the best in the world. if you're not vegan or lactose-intolerant you're going to want to go with the key lime pie ($4.75) or the cheesecake ($4.75) if you like pineapple. The really nice thing about the menu is it tells you right there what's vegan, vegetarian or can be made vegan (unfortunately that usually just means leaving out the trouble-making ingredient, thus making the dish less complete, kind of like cutting off a hand. You probably need that hand.

Expect To Pay: $12.50-$19 including tax and tip
Hours: Mon-Thurs 11:30am-9:30pm, Fri 11:30am-10pm, Sat noon-10pm, Sun noon-9:30pm
514-287-9337

Burritoville

2010-09-03T08:36:00.001-04:00

2055 rue Bishop

Montreal, QC

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7 out of 10

This messy, gooey thing is a Burritoville taco. You'd think I'd get the burrito at Burritoville but you can't get three different kinds of those for less than $11 tax in. They have almost the same fillings (add brown rice - not the most intense of flavour additions) so for $3.50 a piece they're the best way to figure out which burrito to buy next time.

Things of Note: The tomato salsas are half canned tomatoes and half fresh, the green tomatillo salsa would be incredible if it were fresh but it's all canned, though you can find the most amazing tomatillos right now at the Plateau and Mile End Farmers' Markets. The tacos are the only things served on corn tortillas and everything else is wheat, so if you've got a gluten problem go with the delicious corn version. You can sample the three types of corn tortilla chips they serve with salsa at the cash, or spend money to try some with their nachos. The cheese is probiotic "raw" cheese so if you're lactose-intolerant you will either feel less sick or not at all sick depending on how sensitive you are. You can also replace the cheese with guacamole or sweet potato at no extra charge in the burritos, tacos and quesadillas. I don't know what they'd say if you said you wanted the nachos without cheese but with sweet potato. You'd probably get away with a guac substitute.

When they write "garlic" as the second ingredient in the "original" taco and burrito they mean it. That's a whole lot of vampire-fighting kick. I personally thought it was delicious, though, because any strong flavour in a taco is better than smooth, bland mush. The three tacos all tasted kind of similar but the sweet potato version does stand out a little more because of its sweetness (remember you can add sweet potato to any of the others, though). Combined with the apples, raisins and optional cheese, it was a bit too salty-sweet. So "stand out" is not necessarily a good thing. It could have used a bit more 'hot', which is where the big bottle of hot sauce in the restaurant comes in. If only there was lime, this would be great.

The three-bean chili version (pictured above) is supposed to come with onions, carrots, celery, peppers and mushrooms in addition to kidney, pinto, and black beans, but everything got a little too puréed to really tell it apart. Still, I have faith that that the taco was better for including these healthful items (kind of like you're better off for having eating that salad with your duck confit or that one piece of lettuce on your hamburger), adding flavour through vegetables instead of excess salt.

You can bump up your taco ($3.50), burrito ($7) or quesadilla ($7-$8.50) to a combo ($10-$11.50) including a side (chips and salsa, a beautiful sprout salad, a quinoa salad, passable guacamole, or a soup of the day. Sometimes there's no soup, but when you're already melting that's okay), and guacamole. You can also keep bumping to that very Montreal term - a trio ($12.50-$14) - by adding a homemade lemonade (regular or raspberry) or a santa cruz soda or a 2nd side. McAuslan beer is also available, or red wine. The only menu items I'm not covering are the roasted vegetable quesadilla and the spinach quesadilla because they don't seem much like quesadillas to me. They're just protein-less bean replacements, so they kind of just seem like wraps with hot sauce. If you don't want beans, though, these quesadillas are an option.

For dessert there are homemade cookies. These are lovely. They're not the best in the world, but the ginger tastes like actual ginger and the lemon tastes like lemon. All is right in the world.

Expect To Pay: $11-$15 including tax and tip
Hours: Mon-Sat 11am-11pm
514-286-2776

Interview with Allison Ulan on Ayurveda and Cooking

2010-08-27T14:32:00.003-04:00

I'm so lucky. Here's an interview I did with the founder of Ashtanga Yoga Montreal, who invited me to her house to test recipes for an Autumn Yoga retreat she's offering. It's not all yoga. Actually, it's all about Ayurveda, but yoga's a part of that. So is great food. This is not "healthy", diet food, though Allison did subsist on ghee, mung beans and steamed vegetables for a few days as part of a cleanse...

Download my interview with Allison Ulan

Then I wrote an article about it for Midnight Poutine. It's copied below so you can see all the delicious pictures as you listen to the interview. The interview has a bit more info about Ayurveda and the article has a bit more about the food, so try both and tell me which you like more...kind of like the dinner party itself with analyzing two soups and two salads. I loved them all differently, each one a little more than the last, like children, right?

A Meal of Blueberries and Ayurveda

Allison Ulan, the founder of Ashtanga Yoga Montreal was kind enough to shatter my presumptions about Ayurvedic food by inviting me to a practice dinner for an Ayurvedic Retreat she will be offering next month. The last thing I thought it would be was seven courses of bread, fish, chicken, maple syrup, peaches, rice, apples, and blueberries.
The Menu:
Quebec goat cheese on Le Fromentier organic walnut bread with maple-caramelized onions, blueberry-maple broiled trout or grilled tofu, and blueberry chutney. It was composed in an assemble-you-own-appetizer kind of way:You could die happy after eating a meal of just this appetizer...
Then, the two soups: Blueberry gazpacho and blueberry cashew soup with mint and yogurtThe two salads: Organic greens with blueberry vinaigrette and carrot salad with dried blueberries (they were separate salads but I think they work well together too)The main course: Blueberry-marinated cajun chicken breasts with blueberry cherry tomato salsa, basmati rice, and green beans with lemonAnd, finally, dessert: Purple Thai maple-coconut rice with blueberry-maple sauce on blueberry honey-cooked peachesDo you sense a theme? Do you also sense that this is very much not vegetarian or Indian, two things I thought had to do with Ayurveda? Do you also think that this would fit right into the menu of one of the many good Quebec restaurants offering table d'hote tasting menus based on seasonal, local ingredients at $60 a person? I'm glad we agree on all these points. And yet, here I was in the home of a yoga instructor learning about where to find local blueberry juice (all over the place, from your neighbourhood health store to weekly farmers' markets, to the Marche des Saveurs du Quebec at marche Jean-Talon) and how to cleanse your body to do the best backbend of your life...

Allison Ulan is the founder of Ashtanga Yoga Montreal but before she taught yoga she had a 20-year dance career. In 1988, after seeing professional dancers incorporating yoga poses into their warm-ups, she figured the two could mix well. Since then she's traveled to India multiple times to study with the founder of Ashtanga, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. Allison now teaches regularly and gives workshops on meditation and most recently, Ayurveda.

Lets get the broad definition out of the way: Ayurveda is an Indian form of traditional, natural health care that emphasizes disease prevention rather than the reduction or elimination of symptoms. It's not a quick fix, but more of a process of lifestyle adjustment, the first (and easiest) steps of which involve nutrition and exercise.

Allison credits her years of traveling as a professional dancer for making her very conscious of the healthfulness of what she puts into her body. She also credits the book "Food and Healing" by Annemarie Colbin with unintentionally exposing her to the basics of Ayurveda: "I found it intriguing how she looked at peoples' bodies from an alkaline base and from an acidic base...and she looked at different vegetarian diets, and she looked at cravings....What's intriguing are many of her bases for what she was describing about how to eat differently correlate to different doshic constitutions."

Okay, stop. What's a doshic constitution exactly?

A doshic constitution is your individual body constitution, fixed at birth, and made up of 5 elements - earth, water, fire, air and ether. Your individual constitution can fall into 1 of 3 categories, or doshas: Vata, Pitta and kapha.

"Vata is air. They're usually creative people...they usually have a tendency to be a bit more nervous. They're considered the deer, and so they have a tendency towards anxiety because they're so expansive, because they can move so easily, (but) they can also be pushed so easily. So most artists have vata in them. They usually are the extremes - people that are really tall or really short. They're like the elves or the giants.

Pitta is fire, and they're usually medium-build and quite opinionated, quite heated, they get things done....They're considered the lion of the people and they're great leaders, but they're not the best follow-through because they expect things too fast. So they're good at organizing.

Then there's Kapha, which is the elephant. They're stable - earth and water - and when they're in balance they're all about mediation and facilitation. They want people to get along and things to happen. They connect, but when they're out of balance they stagnate and they can become hedonistic."

There are more than three kinds of people in the world, though, so most often people aren't just vata, pitta or kapha. They mostly but fall somewhere between the three doshas with a strong emphasis on 1 or 2. Rarely someone is tri-doshic, an even combination of all three.

It gets a little more complicated now, since you don't stay exactly the same your whole life. Your balanced constitution fixed at birth is called Prakriti, but based on life circumstance your dosha can vary, so your current constitution, which may be unbalanced, is called your Vrikriti. You can think of the doshas as advanced personality typing, something established long before Myers-Briggs testing. You can find online tests to help determine your doshic constitution, both your Vrikriti and your Prakriti.

I was talking about a meal once. Ayurvedic food doesn't mean vegetarian, it doesn't mean without dairy, and it doesn't mean low-fat. It means eating for your individual constitution and following the seasons of the environment where you live, but it's not just about the food you eat. It's also about how you sleep, when you eat, and when you exercise, and the tenuous balance between all these factors. These are the most easily adjustable elements of Ayurveda. More unhealthy ("unbalanced" or "toxic") people may require more advanced steps and Ayurveda has solutions for those people too. There are herbs, panchakarma cleansing, acupressure massage, yoga, and vedic astrology, and these range from fun to not so fun, especially when you get into the ghee cleanses and slightly more intense detoxes.

The whole point is to restore the balance in your individual constitution based on the belief that the body is self-correcting. According to Ayurveda illness occurs when the mind gets in the way of the body by causing stress and fatigue, and neglecting proper nutrition, so if all you need to get back in balance is better nutrition and relaxation, then that's all Ayurveda will do for you. The Ayurvedic method of restoring balance starts with ensuring that the elements of fire, water, earth, air and ether are at the correct levels for each individual based on their unique constitution within the 3 doshic categories, and the first way to try to find balance is to eat foods that give you the food property you need (sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, salty or astringent) without too much of another property, since foods can fall into multiple categories.

For example, there's a problem with blueberries because they're both astringent and either sour or sweet, depending on the type of blueberry you buy. So how can a big group of people ever share the same meal if we all have slightly different constitutions and different food requirements to get ourselves back in balance?

You can adjust by adding a little of this or a little of that, so that you retain an individual food's benefit, but balance it within a dish. Sour, for instance, is good for Kaphic types but not so great for Vata, but that's why Allison adds sweetness from the maple syrup and honey in the appetizer. In the first soup she adds freshly juiced apples (and cinnamon, cumin for their digestive properties, and turmeric for astringency) and maple comes back at the end to sweeten up dessert as well. The carrots in the salad had a natural sweetness, and the dried blueberries on the other mixed green salad were sweeter from the concentration of sugars in the drying process.

Allison also insisted that everyone at the practice dinner had more similarities than differences because we're all living in the same environment. "Right now we're in what's called a Pitta and very Kapha world in Quebec, where it's very moist but it gets very hot and the two together mean that we need to dry out and cool off. It makes common sense." She suggests leafy greens for their astringency. If they're raw, they'll have the greatest drying effect, and if they're cooked, less so. If you add water to steam or stew them you're kind of limiting the whole drying effect. You might as well go take a hot shower.

"How you're cooking changes how your foods will influence your body", says Allison. Someone who's Pitta or Kapha should be having lots of fresh vegetables, but not Vata. All three doshic constitutions should be having natural sweets to cool off, and that's where fresh fruits, especially blueberries, come into play.

"They're high in antioxidants, that deep, deep colour is a sign of they're astringent quality, and they're sweet. So they're actually the perfect food right now for people to have."
So that's how can a big group of people like Allison's practice dinner party could share the same meal to get ourselves back in balance. I mean, the appetizer alone had about 7 things in it, so surely some of those things were better for some than for others, but it was all local, in season, and had tons of astringent, drying, sweet and sour blueberries. Something for everyone, like an all-inclusive resort...but more delicious.
Not everything was local. The basmati rice with the main course, the Thai purple rice with dessert, and the tofu in the vegetarian option were not grown in our great Quebec rice paddies or soybean farms. AND there goes my original "In Ayurveda it's better to be vegetarian" theory. Allison insists that some people need meat because of their individual constitutions. In Annemarie Colbin's book she talked about her husband at the time who was vegetarian, but he kept getting more anemic. Plenty of vegetarians don't have this problem, but according to Ayurveda Coleman's husband was Pitta-Vata, which means that "when he got out of balance he became dried out, anemic, emaciated, frustrated...and for him to have meat makes total sense for that constitution because it grounds." So Ayurveda isn't saying no one should be vegetarian or everyone should be vegetarian. It's also not saying that we should all have the same diet. It's saying find out what your constitution is, what environment you live in, and use those two main factors to figure out how you should eat.

This was not your average dinner party. We were guinea pigs. Happy, happy guinea pigs. Through Ashtanga Yoga Studio Montreal, Allison organizes Ayurvedic weekend retreats throughout the year, offering participants the chance to experience yoga practice in nature with nutritious food and good company. "Getting Back to Nature - Healing Harvest Weekend" is Allison's upcoming 3-day workshop in the Eastern Townships. From September 24th-26th Allison will instruct participants on how to cook what's right for your own body in Autumn, combined with 2 yoga sessions daily (all levels welcome), meditation, and free time to walk in the woods, jump into the pool or sauna, and generally unwind.

Allison chose blueberries for the theme, but other foods with astringent, drying qualities include cranberries (big in the harvest season - think Thanksgiving), mace (again, harvest season, since it's often used in pumpkin pie), basil, and parsley, in addition to those fresh greens for summer salads. Basically autumn is the easy season because so much produce is in season. You can expect the winter retreat to be a little less bountiful in terms of fresh fruits and summer vegetables, but the richness of Quebec food traditions seems to provide plenty of inspiration - pickled and canned goods, dried fruit, winter vegetables, and hot and rich stews and soups. Actually, following local food traditions is the simplest way to eat by the season. You wouldn't always follow the traditions of India if you live in Montreal, because they have three growing seasons there, very different foods are available at different times of the year from what we get here, and your body would be reacting to a very different environment. Allison did emphasize the amazing powers of fresh coconut, but we just don't get a lot of that here. Quebec apples can't really replace human blood plasma like natural, fresh coconut water, apparently.

A 3 day retreat in the Eastern Townships doesn't seem like a lot of time to allow your body to detox, but from Allison's description of the effects on some participants in the last workshop she gave, apparently even three days of yoga, meditation, a good environment, and proper nutrition is enough to trigger some effects. In the Spring some people got headaches and felt a little sick. "Yeah, that's your liver detoxing," Allison told them. They'd talked about it in advance as something that could happen, but by the third day the negative side affects had passed and, they were feeling like they could go another day on their Ayurvedic diets. Besides, there's a lake and a sauna. It's not yoga and Ayurvedic cleansing bootcamp. You saw the menu.

3 days is also enough time to teach some recipes for good health here in central Canada in the autumn - how to eat according to our environment. At the end of the retreat you get to keep the weekend manual with all the recipes and Ayurvedic guidelines to help integrate what you learned into your everyday life.

Ayurveda won't turn you into a good cook. Allison is already one of those, but you don't have to be one yourself to enjoy the retreat. The workshop may appeal to someone who wants to learn to make Allison's recipes just as much as someone who wants to simply enjoy the results and reap the benefits, and practice a little yoga and meditation while they're at it. You can certainly also go if you're much more into yoga than into cooking. This is high quality yoga instruction for all levels, not just meal after healthy meal. Maybe most importantly, you get out of the city into the Eastern Townships at their most beautiful time of year.

If that doesn't convince you, I'll go back to describing the meal: The blueberry soup was so sweet from the apple juice but dense enough to make a refreshing start to the meal post-appetizer. Then the cashew soup took the same concept of puréed blueberries and added some nutty depth and richness to a thick broth. A little bit of mint and yogurt on top held the same cooling properties of leafy greens and complemented the toasted warmth of the soup.

The sweetness of the balsamic and blueberry honey dressing added a sinful sweetness to the Ayurvedically "bitter" leafy green salad section of the meal. The dried blueberries in the carrot salad were kind of like currents in a couscous salad, but instead of couscous in the salad there was rice with the main course to dilute the sweetness of the soups and salads.

The savoury Louisiana chicken couldn't have come at a better time. If you don't like heat, you're going to have to skip the cayenne in this recipe. A spice rub of black pepper, salt, paprika, cumin, basil, thyme, turmeric, dried mustard and a lot of cayenne completely changed the focus of the meal. Suddenly there was a world of spice. You couldn't really taste the blueberry juice, garlic and dijon marinade but the chicken was more tender for it. Even without the rub the chicken would have been more than content to lie under the blueberry and cherry tomato salsa, a mild chopped salsa that could be eaten with a spoon. By skipping the spices on the chicken, however, you'd lose out on all the medicinal properties. There's a reason Indian cooking is so full of spice. Many have preservative qualities, a necessity for making food last longer in a hot, humid climate, but spices play a large role in doshic balancing independent of where you live.

Then dessert. If I'd ever imagined that peaches sautéed with a little honey could make the perfect base for coconut-milk sweetened sticky rice, I would be a much bigger believer in fusion cuisine. Often fruit desserts seem too light and don't really satisfy, even after such a large (though generally light) meal, but the chewiness and creaminess of the pile of sweetened rice was enough to fill out any empty places in the belly. There's a great book called "Sweetness In The Belly" and if you could get Thai rice in Ethiopia this recipe would fit right in.

If nothing else, after Allison's "Healing Harvest Yoga and Ayurveda Weekend" you'll be a little healthier, a little more self-aware...and a little more full.

Healing Harvest Yoga and Ayurveda Weekend with Allison Ulan
September 24, 25 and 26 at L'Arc-en-Ciel in the Eastern townships.
$130 for the weekend without accommodation, $230 with accommodation
For more information and to register you can contact Allison Ulan at allisonulan@yahoo.ca

Ashtanga Yoga Montreal
Allison Ulan

Parisa

2010-08-24T12:25:00.002-04:00

●●●●●●●●○○
8 out of 10
4123 rue de Verdun

Montreal, QC

This is a secret that should get out:

Pomegranate should replace balsamic and lemon goes with everything, but just enough, not too much.

The real secret that should get out is that Parisa is a Persian restaurant in Verdun with a young Iranian Chef in the kitchen with good tastebuds and stellar interpretations of traditional recipes. It's a nicely sized menu of appetizers, grilled and braised meats, grouped as "traditional", "Healthy", or "Chef's Recommendations", carefully seasoned and carefully paired with much more than a heap of white rice. Actually, the rice was the biggest surprise of the meal. I'm not going to write an entire review about rice, but I am going to be pretty enthusiastic.

I would never have thought that rice with dill, thyme, shredded carrots, and lima beans could be as fluffy as air but still have a real flavour. It's all about getting the highest quality rice, says Chef Payam. He has to get it from Toronto, since the imported Basmati isn't available isn't available in Montreal. It also about washing it thoroughly to remove the polish (this also keeps the rice kernels apart), soaking, and boiling and then steaming it (I think that's what he said...) to inject it with air. You can still taste the little bit of olive oil used to keep the rice from sticking to the bottom of the boiling pot, but the most flavour comes from the rice itself. This is rice you just want to keep eating and eating. It came with a braised lamb shank as part of the Baghalie Polo Mahicke ($17.95) in a slightly lemony gravy that was a bit over-salted and not wonderfully tender. I'd order it again just to get the dilled rice.

Simple saffron (real saffron, not turmeric, the cheap substitute) basmati rice comes with grilled chicken chunks in walnut and pomegranate sauce ("Fessenjoun" - $14.95). It was supposed to be with chicken thighs but all that were available were breasts, so the results weren't as tender as they would have been normally. When your restaurant is a secret it's hard to get the turnover you need to keep everything stocked and prepped. The sauce was the highlight here. At first it seemed sweet and sour, and then the bitterness of the walnuts kicked in at the end.

All these main dishes came with a side salad - a standard handful of mixed greens with what I assumed to be a balsamic vinaigrette. Nope, wrong. Tamarind was the souring agent and maybe some pomegranate for sweet, and of course, lemon. Take that ubiquitous balsamic.

Barberrie rice, an un-dilled but saffron-infused rice, comes with the Jujeh chicken breast skewer ($12.95). This chicken had marinated long enough, and had a light lemon flavour...actually most dishes had a lemon flavour. It was never overpowering, but it was always balanced with the rest of the herbs, spices (my guess is sumac and thyme) and meats. It was also never the only flavour. That would have made the food boring. Persian food is not boring, it's just rarely as well done as it is at Parisa. Barberrie is kind of like a currant. It's a small, sour fruit sprinkled on the rice. The other highlight of this rice was the grilled tomato that gets squeezed on top. What a great idea for seasoning rice. You need a flavourful tomato for this to work, but Quebec is full of good tomatoes. One that's a little sour is even idea, because the sweetness would get lost in the starch.

The only time the acid was overwhelming was in the mushroom appetizer. I kind of liked it, though. This one was not so traditional. I don't think there are a whole lot of mushroom dishes in Iran, but I could be wrong. It used lime instead of lemon. A whole lot of lime. The whole button mushrooms absorbed a ton of oil and were incredibly juicy. The pomegranate reduction was hard to identify since the lime was so strong, but the whole thing worked really well with the mild sweetness of the finely chopped deep-fried garlic on top.

You can start with a soup, Ghorme sabzi, for $3.95 for a small or $5.95 for a large, but you get it for just $1 with the purchase of any of the above mentioned mains. It would be more than enough for a lunch, though, since it's loaded with rich broth, oil, leek, spinach and dill. It also had noodles, which I found a bit odd, but apparently that's acceptable. It just kind of makes the thing harder to eat and a bit more like something you eat at home, not something at a gourmet-ish restaurant. I say "gourmet-ish" because the olive oil was artfully drizzled and the soup was garnished with parsley and spiced walnuts. The walnuts weren't as crunchy as they could have been...a little time in a skillet or an oven would have helped, but they weren't overly sweetened (which would have been a disaster) or too salty. So all in all, a nice touch.

One of my favourite things was the Mirsza Ghasemi, a roasted eggplant dish ($4.95). This is not babaganoush. Why does everyone think every eggplant dip ever created is babaganoush? There's no tahini in this. There's a slightly smoky flavour of the eggplant and little tomato combined with a slight pucker of lemon. With warm, thin pita bread, it was perfect. There was a whole lot of oil in there, since eggplant sucks that stuff up like a sponge. but oh was it good. The texture is left slightly chunky to create a thickness that you need to chew and enjoy before swallowing. On this menu, "healthy" means healthy fats, not low-fat or low-calorie.

You can also get the home-made yogurt or the Fizzy Yogurt imported carbonated beverage. It's just carbonated water, milk and yogurt culture, but it's about the best carbonated anything you have, full of healthy bacteria in yogurt, the Middle Eastern/European and now North American super-food. Get on the food trend bandwagon, or go to Parisa where it was a practical tradition long before it was the cool, healthy thing to eat.

Really, just go for the rice. Chef Payam tried to convince me it had fewer calories than other rice, but I think that's hooey. I think the only way I can believe this is if what he really meant was that because the rice was fluffy there was more air in it, so you eat less per portion. A denser rice would have more actual rice per serving. BUT you add the oil in this rice and you up the calories and fat anyway. It's still so good for you, and come on, it's rice. There's nothing unnatural about it. It's the highest quality, most naturally-flavourful rice in Montreal, I'm convinced. That's a completely ungrounded statement, by the way, but I believe it. Oh, you also go here for the beef. The ground beef is incredibly tender and rich. Fat is flavour and ground meat has flavour. Where the lamb failed, the beef succeeds. This Chef knows his seasoned meats, his rice, and his herbs and spices. Wait, he also knows his fruit...hmm...maybe lets just say he knows a thing or two about Persian cooking.

Expect To Pay: $20-$30 per person including tax and tip (no wine cost since it's BYOB)
When: lunch and dinner, I think everyday but Sunday but call for reservations so they know someone's coming and can braise things and marinade things in preparation for your arrival.
4123 rue de Verdun
514-768-7777

Gulf of Mexico Seafood In Canada

2010-08-18T12:52:00.000-04:00

Gulf of Mexico Seafood Report

I've been really surprised there hasn't been more local coverage of concerns with the import of seafood from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. It's as if people don't care or don't know...in the US they certainly care. Here in Montreal and in the rest of Canada gulf shrimp and fish do show up on all sorts of restaurant menus and in stores.

You can click on the link above to download a report I did for CKUT radio 90.3FM on the safety concerns of fish and seafood coming from the Gulf of Mexico, and the impact on Canadian fish and seafood markets on a local level, featuring the Poisonnerie Atwaer, Poissonerie Waldman and Chef Jean-Paul Giroux from Cuisine et Dépendence restaurant in Montreal.

Mini-Contest: Be My Radio Restaurant Guest

2010-08-16T10:58:00.000-04:00

I'm about to undertake another throwdown, but I'm just one person, a rather small person, and I need some help...

I'm heading to Le Petit Alep on Jean-Talon, right across from the Jean-Talon market, for a lunch of mezes and kebabs and other delicious Middle Eastern delicacies. I want to get through as many of the house specialties as possible, and that's more easily done with more stomachs. I'm simultaneously going to be recording the meal to edit into a radio feature for CKUT, to be played on the Friday Morning After show as an on-site restaurant review, like I did with Indian Maison Curry House a few months back.

So if you ever wanted to be on radio, or if you ever thought it would be fun to accompany a restaurant reviewer to work (it won't be as sneaky as usual, since I'll have the audio recorder out on the table...), or you've got some insight into Syrian food, now's your chance!

How to Win:

Leave a comment below telling me one of the following:
a) your favourite Middle Eastern dish (why, where, when)
b) berating me for being culturally unaware by grouping all Middle Eastern food together instead of separating by country

Top marks go to dish descriptions and offers to pay for the meal...Just kidding. Unfortunately I can't cover your meal costs, but I can offer you radio air-time and your name in print.

Rules:
You must live in Montreal, be free in the next two weeks for lunch or dinner, like Middle Eastern food and be willing to share, let me take pictures of dishes before you dive in, accept that leftovers are inevitable and not stuff yourself silly because you hate taking them, try to enjoy yourself,and most importantly:
You must critique. "It's fine" is not a critique, unless justified. You don't have to be a poet, but I like to hear another opinion. Agree, disagree - both are fine, but if you think something about the food, then a reader or a radio listener might too, and they deserve, and probably want, to know.

Sourdough Grilled Cheeses at the Mile End Market

2010-08-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

I have one more favourite stall at the Mile End Market. I don't even know the name of the stall, but what I do know is they take their fresh sourdough bread (the only bread they make) and some incredible cheese and make very simple grilled cheese sandwiches in front of you.

Okay, so a lot of places are touting the simple grilled cheese, the gourmet cheese, the classic, the modern, etc these days. Comfort food. There are whole restaurants devoted to grilled cheese, and I don't even eat grilled cheese(!), but I love this stall. I've chatted with the woman who tells me that it's her husband (I'm pretty sure it was husband) who has spent the last year or something ridiculous like that honing his sourdough bread craft. He inherited sourdough starter from a former roommate of some sort and kept it going. All he makes is sourdough bread, and the lady bakes other things, but at the market her job is to grill this bread with some organic cheese. There is absolutely nothing fancy to this, but I love this couple.

Across the way a woman sells pickled asparagus and honey-dijon vinaigrette. Now honey dijon vinaigrette is about the easiest thing in the world to make, but this is from a very high-quality honey from her farm. I don't know how you would possibly get through all this vinaigrette without it going bad, since there are really no preservatives in it and it couldn't last more than a few weeks max after opening, but good luck.

Pickled asparagus are something I never would buy for myself, but house guests bought them after sampling them and left the bottle at my house. I do not throw out organic local products, no matter how much I dislike refined sugar. Basically the pickling mixture is vinegar, sugar and salt. I ended up loving these things, though. They're the dessert of vegetables - not sour or hot like kimchi or bitter or chewy like pickles. If pickles were this good I think I would like them. I do love asparagus, however, and the natural sweetness makes this a refreshing topping on a salad. It's basically a roasted asparagus salad pre-made and without the oily dressing; you don't even need to add anything to it. You can snack on them as they are, or combine them with something else, like lettuce or carrots, which actually helps to dilute the intensely sweet brine.

She also makes some tasty-looking muffins. I never buy them because I never want 6, but did you ever think of rhubarb and almond in a muffin? I didn't. She did. Her blueberries and wild blackberries also look plump and ripe in their muffin homes, as well as the more traditional strawberry-rhubarb option. Flavours change every week, so Thursday 4:30-8:30 at Parc Lahaie (St-Laurent and St-Joseph) is your chance to be surprised.

What Ste-Anne-De-Bellevue Has That Montreal Doesn't

2010-07-31T21:49:00.000-04:00

It seems like there are a lot of the same vendors at the Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Farmers' Market and the Mile End and Plateau Farmers' Markets, so why trek out to Ste-Anne if you're not lucky enough to live there already? It's a bit touristy, a bit fake, and beautiful in a soon-to-be more touristy and fake kind of way. It's also a calm, beautiful escape from the city. It also has a whole lot more producers that don't make it into Montreal, like Ferme Tourne-Sol (such a great name: "Sunflower Farm", but more literally, "Turn the Soil Farm":

The abundance of produce is impressive. I think they get a lot more customers at this market. Supplies are limited at the other markets because they're smaller. Here there seems to be more of everything, and vendors don't run out of products until later in the morning. Farmers' Markets are not like stores where everything must be in stock all the time; they only bring what they expect to sell, or a little more if they're feeling lucky or outgoing or generous that day.

You won't see this in Mile End: Huge blocks of maple sugar to be grated. GRATED! It's like cheese.

Or choose from this vendor's whole line of maple products, including pure light (for waffles and pancakes), amber (a bit stronger) and dark maple syrups (bitter and strong like molasses), as well as crushed maple sugar, chocolates, fudge, suckers, and dessert sauces. If you can make it with maple, this guy has.

I saw these and was immediately confused, and then very impressed. Who buys enough bread that gets hard fast enough to care about buying a bread bag for them? Apparently some people do. These are double-lined to be specially-insulated. Since buying my favourite loaf of bread ever at the Plateau Market (hazelnut) and nearly dying of joy eating a few pieces that day, I was saddened to not return to bread heaven the next day at breakfast. I think the same bread-saving (non-hardening) effect can be achieved by wrapping the bread in a tea towel before putting it in a plastic bag, but these are just so beautiful, the bags, that for $5 if I had a bit of additional income, I'd invest. The woman who makes them loves her bags, and obviously loves her bread. I respect that. You can even get one bag to hold your baguette and one to hold your miche. Only the French...

I like the honeywine guy at the Plateau and Mile End Markets (Ferme Desrochers), but I like that the honeywine here in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue is from a different wine-maker: Les Trois Acres. Of the honeywine selection at the Montreal markets, the dessert wine is the only really great one (the Cuvée de la Diable). I might cook with the others (white, rosé, and red) but only for something that needed some extra sweetness, like the white in a chicken recipe with white wine, orange and a little honey in it anyway. These Trois Acres wines could be used similarly and are a little less expensive ($12 for the dry white. "Dry" being a relative term because it is honeywine after all). I also love that the name of the white wine is La Musicale.This doesn't make any sense at all. Perhaps drinking it leads to outbursts of song. Or you drink it while you're singing and it makes you seem better, or at it seems that you sing better.

Because it's not the Montreal markets, Les Trois Acres can also sell their skincare products, all made with beeswax. Or you can go for their vinaigrettes or honey-mustards. I think one of the nicest things about farmers' markets are the little info pages on each farm. You can just ask the vendor any questions you may have, but the pictures of the farms are worth a thousand words. I suppose I should stop writing now...

Oh, there was one more honey vendor whose products were too beautiful to not include. There were SO many kinds of honey. Now they're not my favourite Manuka honey from Australia that you can only get at St-Lawrence Market in Toronto and will cost you about $36 a bottle, and whose health benefits of it are incredible, but these are as close as you can come in Quebec. We just don't have the bees and the environment ("terroir") here. These clock in at about "no-where-near-as-good-for-you, but still a little bit so". The variety and price are incredible. It's also unpasteurized, and you're bound to find a creamy, clover or buckwheat variety that you like.

They also do "cooking" demos here. I only put the quotation marks because the day I was there the demo happened to be a juicing demo, not so much cooking. I usually hate drinks sweetened with beets, but there were enough carrots in this mix to make it savoury enough for me. The apples didn't even bother me. If I see a used juicer I will buy it quickly. These things are expensive, and the old ones are generally stronger and better. Yard sales or friends looking to get rid of them? This is how I got a pasta maker...

If I had a car, a ride, or public transit that could get me to this market every week, I would want to go. I would skip the Thursday Mile End Market (sorry) and enjoy a leisurely morning in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. I'm not a country person, but this is just enough of an escape for me.

Where: 107 Ste-Anne Street, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC

When: Saturdays, 9am-4pm (but supplies don't always last, especially for the muffins...)

Who: Some of the best of the province's organic producers and artisans

Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Farmers' Market and My Addiction to its Muffins

2010-07-30T08:16:00.000-04:00

Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Farmers' Market

107 Ste-Anne Street, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC

I am addicted to these muffins. I'm almost 100% sure they're the from the same farm as my Plateau Farmers' Market muffins. It's a different guy who was doing the selling, but rest of the market stall's offerings were the same - the "healthy" seed cookies, the date squares, the same kinds of breads. If I had bought a bread I would know for sure. Alas, I stopped myself at a muffin.

I want to live in a quaint small town sometimes when I forget how much I love urban centres. It almost makes me want a cottage. I draw the line at a cottage, though. No, I think I draw the line at a dog. A cottage wouldn't be so bad. I mean, it's not like a cabin or anything (I'm from Newfoundland, where there's a HUGE difference between a cabin and a cottage. After moving to Toronto and venturing to Muskoka expecting no running water, I was a bit blown over by the satellite TVs everywhere...cottages are second home, or better homes, and cabins are shacks in the woods that your Grandfather maybe built himself) and Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue is close enough that it doesn't take an age to get there by car.

You could bike it, like one vendor does. She actually lives in my area and jumps on the Lachine Canal bikepath with all her handmade bags every Saturday. I thought about trying it once but I got lost looking for the Lachine Market, and that's supposed to be a whole lot closer.I figured it'd be a bit more dangerous to get a few hours into the trip and only then realize I'm horrendously lost. Maybe if I just stayed on the bike path I wouldn't end up on the highway going the wrong way like I did last time?

That's the nice thing about this market - the diversity of the products. It's a farmers' market, but it also has crafts and things that don't come from a farm. Some people aren't okay with this, like the Marché Fermier organization in Montreal that runs the Plateau and Mile End Markets.

One vendor here who sells beautiful photographs of flowers isn't allowed to have a booth at those markets because he's not food-related. Makes sense, but I bet no customers would mind. I suppose then it's not fair to artisans from Montreal who would want booths as well.

This market also felt bigger than both of those markets, which are the biggest farmers' markets in the city besides the public markets. I loved that I recognized some of the same vendors here, though. Stairsholme Farms was there with their organic beef products. The Wasselton family farm was represented with their sambusas, injera, sweet loaves and some produce (the producers for Organic Campus at McGill - check out my Food Audio tab above to access my radio feature on them). Then there was the Ochado Tea makers:

(they're so lovely, and have very high quality red, green, white and black tea blends)

They're not from a "farm" either, so the fairness is a bit sketchy, but they're "food and drink-related"). Then there's the apple donut, chili sauce and marmalade husband and wife team from the Plateau Market:

They're from McMillan Orchards and sell big bottles of fresh apple juice and cider for VERY reasonable prices. The wife is also the queen of canning. I need a weekend with her to learn these important things, but I fear the havoc to be wreaked on my digestive system from the apple donuts.

The cheese people from the Plateau and Mile End Markets, Le Ruban Bleu (the ones whose goats' milk cheese is used by every guest chef at the Mile End market), are represented here as well, but they offer more variety to sample and buy. Their name means "the Blue Ribbon" and they do specialize in very delicate blue cheeses (not stinky as you may expect - and I love) but they also have some very nice orange-ribbon-ed offerings with peppers and spices.

So these are the food-related vendors that you can find other places in Montreal, plus some of the non-food ones. Next post I'll feature the ones you can't find in the downtown area on any day of the week, plus a woman who makes special double-lined bread bags for specific kinds of loaves of bread. This woman...so very endearingly Québecoise.

Where: 107 Ste-Anne Street, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC

When: Saturdays, 9am-4pm (but supplies don't always last, especially for the muffins...)

Who: Some of the best of the province's organic producers and artisans

Mile End Farmers' Market: Corn

2010-07-29T09:24:00.001-04:00

The Mile End Market is run by the same organization as the Sunday Plateau Market, but some of the vendors are different. Most important, La Perle and her baker aren't there, so no muffins or incredible bread for me, malheureusement.

On the upside, however, there is always a guest chef. Often they'll bring something half pre-done, like La Montée du Lait's chef did when he brought his eggplant pancakes, then put some goat's milk cheese available at the market on top and covered it all with some fresh arugula. Voila, snack.

Another chef from...hmm...I forget...somewhere that specialized in pig. Anyway, this chef made tacos with pork butt. I ran before they were done. Better to run away than explain my reasons for not-eating pork.

So my favourite stall is currently the corn and raspberries guy. The corn is a recent addition to the stall's offerings. I met him about three weeks ago when I was busily not buying raspberries. I was walking around the market and seeing all these raspberries that looked delicious but I'd try them and they just weren't. Nothing special, not worth the high price tag, but then I got to this guy and he had some that were bigger, and normally to me that's a bad sign. It often means they're genetically modified, like the oversized everything at normal grocery stores or even Atwater Market. Except the Mile End market is all organics, so I asked why they were bigger, and he said they were a different varietal of raspberry, a little sweeter...good salesman. So I caved and bought them, and yes, the bigger ones were sweeter, but they were mixed in with smaller ones that I didn't like much. Still, I somehow managed to get through them, force them down and all, while waiting for that day's chef to decide to make yet another salad with goat cheese...

Now what really got me with this man was that he immediately said, "First time? I don't think I've seen you here before," and he was right. Then when I came back two weeks later, he said, "I remember you," and I believe he did, even though I was wearing my contacts that day instead of my glasses, a very Superman-like change in appearance.

So I decided to buy his corn. I love fresh corn. I was in Appleton, Wisconsin one summer and bought corn by the dozen off the back of a truck. That was the sweetest, most amazing corn I've ever eaten. You don't even cook that corn. I've had good corn since then from the corn guy at Atwater, but so far this year neither his corn nor this Mile End Market corn guy's corn has compared. I'll try again in a few weeks. It's not bad, and I like this guy so much now that I will continue to buy his corn anyway. I mean, it's better than potatoes as far as starchy vegetables go, especially with some lime juice and salt, but it's not amazing. It's the human element that brings me back; this man remembers me. Maybe his week is a little more complete if he sees me, and mine a little more complete if I buy corn or berries from him.

Laperle et Son Boulanger at the Plateau Farmers' Market, Sunday 10am-2pm

2010-07-28T23:00:00.001-04:00

I'm very picky when it comes to Farmer's Markets, but it is summer, and I've been making the rounds.

Tuesday is Organic Campus at McGill
Thursday is the Mile End Market or the Coop La Maison Verte on Sherbrooke in NDG
Saturday is Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue (only went once since it's far) or St-Henri or Little Burgundy Market
Sunday is the Plateau Market (but starting this week it's also the Outremont market) and I generally also get to Jean-Talon on Sundays on my way to the Plateau.

Sundays are my favourite for one reason: the muffins and bread at the Plateau Market from "La Perle et Son Boulanger" (adorable name: "The pearl and her baker", or more likely "Someone whose last name is Laperle and his or her baker". The raspberry blueberry muffin is incredible. the fruit are fresh, not frozen, and they make the whole muffin juicy. They also actually taste like something. The muffin itself is so moist and flavourful. I swear this guy has amazing flour. Two weeks ago was the first time I bought the bread. Now I've been making my own gluten-free bread lately and figured bread was not high on my list of things to buy, but they only have food there (lunch-style food like the fresh gazpacho I had once) sometimes, and I was hungry and a loaf of chocolate cranberry (bread, not loaf, really, since there was no sugar and it a simple loaf with small pieces of bittersweet chocolate and dried cranberries) was very tempting. Oh wow, was it good. I think there might be a little bit of sourdough in all the breads, because even though it wasn't a sourdough loaf, it had that slightly fermented taste to which I'm completely addicted. The chocolate wasn't anything special in terms of taste, but it was soft and a little warm in the Montreal heat when I bought it, and the cranberries got plump and juicy.

So I went back last week looking for another loaf. They were sold out, so I bought a loaf of hazelnut, along with a muffin and a chocolatine (pain au chocolate or chocolate in pastry, for all you non-Quebers). No I did not eat all them at once. I'm big on tasting. The bread was absolutely amazing. It's the perfect bread for dips (I just blended some chickpeas and some steamed turnip greens. The bitterness of turnip greens and the nuttiness of the cooked chickpeas worked really nicely with the bitterness of the fermentation and the hazelnuts), but only when fresh. The next day it's about half as good, and the day after that, even less. It dries out fast since it's so fresh, so I think I need to start wrapping it in a tea towel and then in a bag to keep it fresher.

The muffin was ridiculously good, and I wasn't even really attracted to the pain au chocolate, which looked a little squished. After trying the chocolate in the bread I wasn't expecting much, but I was so very wrong. There was so much butter in the pastry that I could have died of French heaven on the spot. The chocolate was again a little gooey, but this time it was semi-sweet chocolate, and so when it combined with the butter...

Thank goodness I'm lactose-intolerant or I would have eaten it all. The knowledge that I'm going to get really sick if I keep going is usually enough to stop me mid-pastry. Still, I'll be back for more bread next week. They've turned me into a loyal customer through addiction. Good work.

Pho Lien

2010-07-21T21:57:00.005-04:00

Pho Lien
5703 Côte des Neiges
Montreal, QC
●●●●●●●●☺○○
8 1/2 out of 10

All I've had here is the pho and the cold vermicelli rolls. Sure, they have other things at this restaurant, but you just don't order those. They are nothing special by comparison.

This is the best beef broth I've found in the city, and until I find better (since I'm not convinced it is the best ever) I will come back here when I am craving a rich, sweet broth of star anise, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon and not in the mood for half a day's worth of broth-making.

I came here once and was absolutely blown away by the broth, but I came here again for lunch and was completely disappointed. For once I couldn't complain that the broth was too salty and tasted like MSG, but where once there had been cloves, now there were none. I feel like I spend my life in Vietnamese restaurants asking, "Where are the cloves? I don't taste cloves!" Cloves are a hard-to-miss flavour. They're what make a pumpkin pie taste like Thanksgiving. Sure, there's mace, a strong, bitter spice from nutmeg, but for me, it's all about cloves. Then star anise - that's the fennel flavour. It shouldn't make the broth taste like black licorice, but it should be present. The cinnamon shouldn't be overpowering either, but it should complement the cloves. The broth just was more lacklustre this time. Nothing really stood out about it. So maybe the lunch broth was made differently or by a different chef than the evening broth. Or maybe it had needed to simmer longer but the chefs (the kitchen help that started the broth) didn't arrive until later that morning. Maybe it was an off-lunch. Still, it was not what I wanted, and if I'm going to eat beef, it had better be good.
I'll get the boring things out of the way. The imperial rolls were fine. The crust seemed pretty crispy. If you like such things, these are a decent rendition. The dipping sauce is simple.
The cold vermicelli spring rolls ($3.00 for 2, tax inc.) were pretty good just because the peanut dipping sauce is incredible. I'm too scared to ask what's in it, bad food reviewer that I am, because I know there'll be something in it that I won't want to eat, like MSG-laden bottled sauces or ingredients I can't pronounce, or ingredients that start with the word "condensed", all of which are bad. The sauce here is served slightly warm and topped with tasty, fresh peanuts and somehow tastes a bit like the richness of beef. Do they put broth in the dip? Probably not. Probably I'm crazy, but I'm certainly not going to ask. One unique thing they do is put beef in the actual roll. Yes, you can see shrimp in the picture above, but there is also cooked, finely sliced beef, like what goes in the soup. It has a lot of flavour, and as long as you aren't really upset to discover beef in the roll, you'll like it. It's the first Vietnamese restaurant I've seen that does beef in the rolls. It really does add flavour.
The Chicken Pho Ga. Now this was interesting. The chicken was shredded from a full bird that had been boiled to make the broth. Thus the broth was mild and clear. It's a good broth. Some people prefer the chicken broth to be seasoned with the same spices as the beef broth, but chicken is a milder flavour and I don't think it holds up to the strong spices as well. It gets kind of overwhelmed. Doesn't know how to react. Would you if you were swimming in cloves? Have a little compassion for the chicken broth.

If you're looking for a very simple chicken broth to cure what ails you, this is it. Thick globules of delicious fat swim in the broth and raw onions garnish. Throw in some bean sprouts, basil and then bite into a lime and it's very satisfactory.
I don't look for "satisfactory" in a restaurant, however. I look for epiphany, perfection, and I expect the best. Otherwise it's a waste of my money and I should make a better version at home. I have incredible lamb broth in my freezer. I can make my own broth, but it's not pho, real pho. We are all capable of making delicious soup broth, but every cook's broth is slightly different and so every restaurant is a slightly different experience, whether or not it's better or worse. This beef broth at Pho Lien is real pho, but only when done correctly. It's much better than Pho Bac #1 in Verdun. It's better than Chinatown.

This is probably the only restaurant I will recommend getting take-out. Now you wouldn't think you'd want to order raw beef soup and carry it home to eat. The heat promotes the growth and spread of bacteria, so ideally you'd want to eat at the restaurant to not give those guys a chance at procreation. I always say there are too many children in the world anyway.

But here, you want to take the soup to go. It gets packed in two separate Styrofoam (I know, awful for the environment, but the only way to travel with hot soup) containers, with the beef left uncooked in one along with the noodles and bean sprouts, and the soup in another. So when you get home you heat up the broth and add only the amount of noodles to it that you're going to eat in the next 5 minutes. Then you put half the raw beef in a bowl (not the pot) and scoop out a ladle of broth and noodles. Add some bean sprouts and basil and have your lime at the ready. This way the beef is barely cooked when you eat it. Raw beef is tender when it's good quality. If you wait at the restaurant to be served (even though service is fast) your raw beef will not be raw when it arrives. ALSO by the time you get halfway through your soup the rest of the "raw" beef has become very "well-done". So if you're at home, you can only eat as much beef as you want at a time. You eat some, and then when you want more you put more in your bowl (keep it in the fridge while you eat the first bowl) and then ladle more of your heated broth from the pot into your bowl. The reason you don't want to add the noodles all at once is they get too soft when they're left sitting in the broth, and if you refrigerate leftovers they'll be mush when you heat them up the next day. So heat up a portion in the broth, then get them all into your bowl, and leave some of the broth sitting on the stove in case you want more beef in 5 minutes. At that point you can just add more noodles to the broth. This re-heating process takes no time at all. Just don't boil off too much broth. The flavour will concentrate more this way, but you'll end up with less broth overall. So it's a trade-off. You're also supposed to trust that the chef got the broth to the perfect concentration in HIS kitchen, and you're not really supposed to mess with that.

At the restaurant you can order all raw beef ($7 for a small, $8 for a large, $9 for two days worth of food, aka XL, all tax included), but that's ridiculous because you won't possibly be able to eat it all while it's raw. By the time you make it through the bowl of beef, only your first few mouthfuls would be raw and then the next would be medium, and then the next would be well-done. So order a combination bowl to make it worth it. You can also order the "cow in a bowl" (my words, not theirs) - tripe, tendon, rare, brisket, and well-done flank ($.25 more than the other soups). I love that nothing is wasted, but tripe and tendon are acquired tastes. The tendon has the texture of fat and much less flavour. I couldn't find a piece of brisket, but the effect of the tender meat is lost in soup where it all falls apart anyway.

Another reason to take out is because they give you a little container of hoisin mixed with hot sauce, two things I generally don't use in my pho, but do use in my other cooking. You also get to keep any leftover peanut sauce from the cold spring rolls, which is worth it in and of itself. You can keep your garnishes, say, if you don't want all the bean sprouts at the time. You actually waste less of what's put in front of you at a meal of pho by getting take-out, minus the Styrofoam and plastic containers and plastic bag. Oh, and of course you save a little money. The environment is screwed either way, so it's your choice.

So in my opinion there may be somewhere better for pho in Montreal, but I don't know where that is yet. Yet.

Expect To Pay: $12.50-$14.00 for soup and an order of cold spring rolls.

Hours: Mon, Wed-Fri 11am-10pm, Sat-Sun 10am-10pm
514-735-6949

Restaurant Pho bac #1

2010-07-20T23:42:00.007-04:00

Restaurant Pho Bac #1
4707 rue Wellington
Verdun (Montreal), Quebec
●●●●●●☺○○○○
6 1/2 out of 10

I was first introduced to Vietnamese noodle soup (pho - pronounced somewhere between "phuh" and "phah") in Toronto. It was cheap, delicious, and filling, and it was soup so it had to be healthy, right? Well, I kept having digestive problems and started wondering what could possibly be in pho that was bothering me so much. I always got the chicken kind, pho' ga, and all it was was broth, noodles, chicken, bean sprouts, basil and cilantro. I didn't even add the hoisin and hot sauce that came on the side.

MSG. Like all cheap Chinese food, the secret to making delicious pho without the work of making a good broth is in adding MSG. The bad cook's cheat. That's why I kept getting sick. I don't get headaches and cramps like some people who have more severe reactions, but my reactions were enough to turn me off noodle soup, no matter how convenient and affordable.

Until Montreal. I've been sneaking pho. Once I was having a really awful day and I was completely exhausted, but I needed a good, comforting dinner. That would be chicken noodle soup in any form, in many countries, Canada and Vietnam included. I was around Pho Lien, the Montreal establishment generally accepted as having the best pho, on Cote-des-Neiges. So I went and I ordered some. Beef! I ordered the beef! I hadn't eaten beef in...well, a long time. I reserve it for very special occasions and ensure the highest quality. So I figured this was breaking my rules, but the chicken pho apparently was cooked in beef broth anyway, so I might as well just get the regular beef option. Well, it turns out there are about 8 beef options involving different cuts of beef (raw, well-cooked, tendon, tripe, etc.) and the server told me to go with the one that was a combination of raw and well-cooked. The quality can't be bad if they're daring to serve raw beef. It's basically cut very thin like Chinese fondue and cooks only once it's added to the noodle broth just before serving. The broth, brought to a boil, barely needs to soften it, and as long as the quality is high there shouldn't be a risk of contamination. It's like beef carpaccio at a fancy restaurant, but about $30 cheaper.

Long story short, it was perfect. The broth...it was rich but not greasy, a little sweet, flavoured with cloves, cinnamon and star anise. This was a real pho' broth, the likes of which is hard to find in a city masquerading in "traditional" Vietnamese restaurant outfits. The raw beef was incredible. For the well-cooked, I couldn't have cared less. Nothing special. So I realized I'd been missing this all along, and decided to do a pho comparison. My next stop was Phobac #1 in Verdun, pictured here (not to be confused with the Pho - not number 1 - on boulevard St-Laurent. I do not eat Vietnamese in Chinatown...).
It's a simple menu, printed on a sheet of paper kept under the glass-topped tables. Very convenient, since you can't spill anything on it and the server doesn't even need to bring it to you.
This post is not about the spring rolls.
The accompanying peanut sauce was a million times better at Pho Lien than at Phobac, but that's not why you go to these restaurants. Well, it's not why you go to Pho Lien. I wouldn't go to Phobac for the Pho anyway, I've decided.
There was nothing special about either the beef broth or the chicken broth at Phobac #1 (here the chicken is actually served in a chicken broth). The reason? The chicken in the soup wasn't even cooked whole in the pot to make the broth in the first place. There was probably something added to the broth. It may even have been not a home-made broth. Maybe. I just know it wasn't traditionally made since the chicken in it was grilled. I actually loved that it was grilled, but more traditionally a whole chicken is used to make the broth for the soup and then the meat is shredded and put back into the sieved and simmered broth. There really wasn't a complexity to the broth anyway, but chicken broth is supposed to be simpler than beef, being a lighter flavour, and often not made with the same strong spices.

The beef was a disappointment. I tried a few bites and then reverted to my anti-beef stance. It's not that it was bad, just that it didn't make me want to stop not-eating beef, like Pho Lien had. The beef broth was...not very beefy. I'm afraid there's no way to describe what it was, just what it wasn't. There was no cinnamon, no cloves. The noodles were hand-made, which was a highlight, since my dining companion pointed out the fact that they were cut unevenly.

So I would very much like to try their other noodle dishes with chicken, since they grill a good chicken, after all. So in a dish where the chicken is actually supposed to be grilled this could be amazing. Maybe some Vietnamese bun here (vermicelli noodles with lettuce and herbs, often meat and a spring roll, served with a little bowl of sweetened fish sauce to pour on top) or another cooked dish would be another Vietnamese epiphany. I doubt it...but it would probably be very good for the price, and the bike ride there is a lot more level than the long, arduous climb uphill to Cote-des-Neiges and Pho Lien.

Pho Bac #1 really doesn't pride itself on its food. When I asked to take mine to go they put the noodles in one container with the broth. You're not really supposed to do that because the noodles get soggy. Basically it ruins the soup. They'd probably keep them separate if I'd gotten it to go in the first place, but after having eaten half, it's a bit of trouble to do, and so a restaurant won't do this unless it's important to them to ensure the quality of the leftover soup. Of course, I am not Vietnamese, so it's very possible they assumed I know nothing about pho and don't really care if my noodles get soggy. I'll eat happily like the next culturally unaware pho newbie.

Unfortunately, THAT I am not. Disappointed, I am. Next stop, back to Pho Lien to make sure I wasn't hallucinating the first time around and should just never eat beef again...

Expect To Pay: $8-$12 for lunch or dinner of soup and a spring roll
514-362-1022

Montreal Bagel Throwdown: St-Viateur vs. Fairmount

2010-07-17T22:58:00.007-04:00

THE CRITERIA: Freshness, Sweetness, Texture, Crust, Size, Overall Bagel Experience

The Methodology: To objectively compare Montreal's finest bagel establishments I drove from bagel shop to bagel shop, having a few bites of the fresh bagels and taking notes just after purchasing. At the end of the trip I did a direct comparison between all the bagels purchased. The following day there was another comparison of all the bagels purchased (the photo above with lemon as a palate-cleanser. Bagels are serious business). While this was mainly a comparison of Fairmount and St-Viateur bagels, to cover all the bagel ground in the city, I also compared D.A.D.'s Bagels and R.E.A.L Bagel. Sesame seed and Poppy seed bagels were purchased at each bagel shop, along with unique or specialty bagels at certain establishments, but for the the purposes of this study, only the sesame and poppy seed bagels were used to determine the winners in each category.

The 5 bagel shops tested were (in order of purchase):
D.A.D.'s Bagel (5732 Sherbrooke West), R.E.A.L. Bagel (6160 chemin de la Cote-Saint-Luc), St-Viateur Bagel (263 St-Viateur West), St-Viateur Bake Shop (158 St-Viateur West), and Fairmount Bagel (74 Fairmount West)

A Brief History: Fairmount is the original Montreal bagel shop, but long before there were "Fairmount bagels", there were Chaim Seligman and Isadore Shlafman. In 1919 Shlafman started selling bagels in an alley off St-Laurent, but according to Jewish historian, Joe King, Seligman was the original bagel guy, selling his strings of bagels from the back of a horse-drawn buggy up and down St-Laurent. Seligman then went into business with Jack Shlafman (of the Fairmount lineage) and a new-to-the-scene bagel-maker, Myer Lewkowicz. That didn't last long. One big falling-out later, the Shlafmans moved into the current Fairmount Bagel location in 1949 and Seligman and Lewkowicz got it together to open St-Viateur in 1957. The names and the traditions were born, and they were connected. In 1963 Joe Morena took over St-Viateur. Flash forward to the 1990's and Montreal-style bagel offspring R.E.A.L. Bagel and D.A.D.'s Bagel (I don't think there's any real blood connection. Definitely not with D.A.D.'s Bagel, whose owners are Punjabi) opened, using the same bagel-making method.
The Bagel: There are only 8 ingredients in a Montreal-style bagel. These are flour, sugar, yeast, oil, honey, egg, malt, and Montreal water. The quantities and quality of the ingredients are what make the difference. They're what make your bagel slightly more of less stale the next day (more or less egg probably), determine the fluffiness of the dough (type and quantity of flour based on amount of gluten, amount of oil, amount of egg, and use of honey in the dough itself which will make it dryer) and the all-important sweetness (whether honey is used in addition to sugar in the kneaded dough, and the flavour of the malt). The standard these days is to use an unbleached white flour, though each shop's brand of choice may differ and may have changed over the years.
In all of the above establishments similar bagel-making equipment and methods are used. The ingredients are mixed and kneaded in a giant dough-making machine, then left to rise for about 45 minutes. The huge block of dough is then sliced into bagel-width strips and hand-rolled and twisted, one at a time, into bagel shapes. The bagels get thrown into a big vat of simmering honey-water that looks a bit like a deep-fryer, for about 5 minutes. They then get fished out, dragged through sesame or poppy seeds, and placed in lines on long, thin, planks of wood, and baked in an open wood-fired oven for 10 minutes.
What happens in the oven is very important. The bagels start close to the heat for about 5 minutes, then are slowly moved away from the flames to finish on the cooler side of the oven. The inconsistency and unpredictability of the flames are what give the bagels the darker-in-some-spots look. They're also what turn the sesame seeds into a real topping, so you feel like you're eating a bagel slathered with toasted, delicious nuts when it comes out fresh, instead of a bagel covered in something generically chewy. The poppy seeds get toasted too, but the effect isn't quite the same. So for sesame bagels you don't really need anything on top of them, but smoked salmon or cream cheese, or both, work really well. Since there's no salt in the bagels themselves, adding smoked salmon doesn't feel like you're eating a week's worth of sodium.

THE RESULTS
Freshness: St-Viateur
It has to be fresh! The most important revelation of this taste-test was that all of these bagels were good as long as they were hot out of the oven. Be warned, bagel-eaters, that while all these places use wood-burning ovens, Fairmount actually uses an electric oven for its wholesale operation. So if you buy outside of the Fairmount bagel shop you're not getting the real deal.

Sesame was the most popular flavour at all the bagel shops, and it was the only one that was ever really fresh. Not that it's a better flavour, just that more people buy it, so if you prefer poppy seed you have your work cut out for you to either find a consistent way of getting your bagels while they're hot (a bagel bell?) or make poppy seed bagels more popular so they're baked more often. St-Viateur doesn't even make a new batch of poppy seed until the last ones are almost gone, but their sesame bagel was my best bagel of the day. R.E.A.L. Bagel and Fairmount were both working on batches of sesame at the time of purchase so if you want more fresh poppy seed bagels in Montreal you'll need to start an uprising to turn the market trend in your flavour favour.

D.A.D's bagel only bakes in the morning and at night, so if you come during the day there's absolutely no way your bagel will be really fresh. The sesame at R.E.A.L. Bagel was warm, but not hot. Not good enough. At Fairmount, like St-Viateur, only the sesame was fresh. Forget about buying at the grocery store; you need to go to the source. Often in the bake shops themselves they'll even sell you the cooler bagels because that's what makes financial sense - get rid of the old product to bring in new - but that's not what you want. It has to be hot.
Sweetness: Fairmount
D.A.D.'s was too sweet, R.E.A.L. Bagel was bland, and St-Viateur was just neutral. Normally I would say the sugar wasn't really necessary, just addictive, but you're dealing with multiple kinds of sweetness from the sugar, honey and malt. The most flavour comes from the malt, and so Fairmount's higher malt and sweetness created more overall flavour for the bagel. I'll be honest, I could taste the difference in sweetness a lot more the day after, once the bagels had cooled down, but when the bagels were fresh it was a tough comparison. I kept trying the St-Viateur and Fairmount the day after to make sure I wasn't wrong about the sweetness, but Fairmount was just better.
Best Texture: St-Viateur
The texture was so smooth and soft without being doughy, but ONLY when it was fresh. Fairmount was a bit fluffier, but I only preferred this the day after, when St-Viateur became very crunchy and hard but Fairmount stayed relatively chewy. I'm certainly not going to buy a bagel for its 'day-after' attributes. R.E.A.L. Bagel and D.A.D's just couldn't compete in this category because the texture was automatically not as good when the bagels weren't hot. It shouldn't feel like work to chew a Montreal bagel.
Best Crust: St-Viateur and Fairmount Sesame Bagels
There's really only a good crust when the bagels are hot. You can re-toast, which is fine, but your toaster or toaster-oven is not a wood-burning bagel oven. Both St-Viateur and Fairmount sesame bagels (because they were the only really fresh ones) had a crispy, nutty outside to contrast the smooth, luscious inside.

Size: St-Viateur
St-Viateur, both the shop and wholesale bakery, were the only place to consistently and correctly size all their bagels, from sesame and poppy seed to all-dressed and cinnamon raisin. Montreal bagels are not big and fluffy. This is not a roll. This is not a pillow of flour-y fluff. This is smaller, finer affair.

Fairmount had well-sized poppy seed and sesame but the others expanded from there. Honestly, I liked the blueberry bagel and cinnamon raisin a lot, but not as Montreal-style bagels. A purist would reject them outright. Pumpernickel had a pretty good flavour, but muesli was just weird. Maybe if you live on muesli but are dying for a bagel you'll appreciate it more? R.E.A.L. bagel seemed huge by comparison, though their sourdough (made without eggs and sugar) was actually really good and deliciously tangy from a good sourdough culture, but the size and flavour made it more like bread than a bagel. Perfect for a bagel sandwich, but not really a Montreal-style bagel at all. The R.E.A.L. Bagel poppy seed version was more appropriately 'Montreal', so the bagel-roller was just a little inconsistent. D.A.D.'s were a good size but just by looking at the batch made that morning you could tell that the consistency just wasn't the same as St-Viateur.

Overall Bagel Experience: St-Viateur
I'll be honest, all these bagels are very similar. What can set a bagel apart is the experience that goes along with its purchase. St-Viateur (263 St-Viateur West) was hands-down the friendliest place I went into. Yes, there was a steady stream of patrons, but never did I feel rushed out of there. Actually it was kind of hard to leave because I started asking questions like I always do and ended up in a long conversation with the man at the cash. He'd started coming in as a patron Friday night/morning (it is 24 hours), buying some bagels, and hanging out for a few hours. It got to the point where the owner said that if he was going to come in every week and hang out, he might as well work while he was there.

And he's been working there ever since. He chats with customers, but he doesn't waste time. Now this is just one worker, and on a different day at a different time I could have had a different experience, but St-Viateur is cultivating that family-friendly appearance that makes you feel welcome and invited. This was emphasized by the total contrast of walking into Fairmount and feeling crowded and unwelcome. The ordering space isn't any smaller than St-Viateur, but it feels more closed off from the bagel ovens, and getting to the cash feels like a pressure situation. Go, go, go! Pay! Get out! I started asking questions, which was not appreciated. Pictures were frowned upon. The cashiers couldn't tell me exactly how the different bagels were made or even what was in them. They were just employees, not people who cared about and knew about the bagels.

At R.E.A.L. Bagel I had another good experience, and the guy at the cash was a little tickled that I had such an interest in the bagels. I mean, it's not St-Viateur or Fairmount, so tourists don't head out to that bagel shop too often to discuss the finer points of bagel-making. D.A.D.'s was also wonderful. The friendly man explained that while the shop is both a place for 24 Hour bagels and Indian food, it started out as just bagels. THAT is what his family figured would sell in Montreal at the time. they were right, but the tandoori chicken looked amazing. Convenience store food this is not. If you like Indian snack food, like bhajis, get them fresh. The home-made samosas stay at their best a bit longer, but not all night. So this place has more than bagels going for it.

Walking into all these places it was incredible to see how far the Montreal bagel has come. Joe Morena, the owner of St-Viateur after Lewkowicz, summed it up in 1988 when he said,

"What I really am is living proof that you don't have to be Jewish to make or love bagels."

Thanks, Joe. Montreal can be proud to call you its own. The diverse bagel establishments in this city all do a great job, and as long as the bagels are fresh, you won't be disappointed at any one of them.
But...

OVERALL WINNER: St-Viateur
While I actually prefer the taste of Fairmount, loyalty is what the Montreal bagel is really all about, and I want to give my loyalty to the St-Viateur company. They seem to care more about the bagels, and their bagel-making and selling philosophy. When you walk in to the shop you feel like you're walking into Montreal history, not a commercial operation. While I wouldn't turn down a bagel from D.A.D.'s if I was in NDG late one night, and I wouldn't turn down a trip to R.E.A.L. bagel if I was out by cote-st-luc, on the Queen Mary (4940 chemin Queen-Mary), or near the original in Dollard-des-Ormeaux (3702 boulevard Saint-Jean, Dollard-des-Ormeaux), I am slowly placing myself in a St-Viateur bagel-loyalty group.

Hopefully I'll have lots more Fairmount bagels before I turn into an old person in a rockin' chair telling stories to anyone who'll listen that start with, "Back in my day, when Morena was running St-Viateur, long after the original Shlafman had passed on his Fairmount legacy, people swore by the best Montreal bagel..."

To listen to a radio program describing this Bagel-testing adventure, follow the link to the CKUT archived audio stream of the Friday Morning After Show from July 9th, 2010. The bagel discussion can be found half-way through the stream.

Cafe Velo Quebec

2010-07-02T12:36:00.004-04:00

Cafe Velo Quebec
1251 Rachel East

Montreal, QC

●●●●●●●○○○

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

Lu Mama Asian Fusion

2010-06-25T16:05:00.005-04:00

Lu Mama

1858 Ste-Catherine West
Montreal, QC
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Taiwanese/All-You-Can-Eat Sushi/A little bit of Korean thrown in for good measure

This is a bit of an odd place. It calls itself Asian fusion, but only in the sense that it offers dishes from different countries in Asia. There's nothing really fusion about their menu, thank goodness.

It started out as a Taiwanese place, but there wasn't a big enough market, so they say, for their Taiwanese food. What is there a big market for in Montreal? All you can eat sushi, apparently, though I don't think it's particularly huge here. Still, in the downtown area (Guy-Concordia, to be precise) there are at least 4 options for AYCE sushi within a three block radius. None of them are amazing, and at least two are passable, this being one. The other being Tokyo sushi. Kanda is junk and makes me want to cry over how bad the fish is, and I haven't tried Odaki, having done the rotating sushi bar well in other cities. I just can't let my heart get broken again.

So coming to Lu Mama was like putting my heart on a platter and presenting it an evil fairy godmother. I figured it wouldn't turn out well, but there was something I needed - a lot of sushi for less than the ridiculous prices that mediocre places in the city make you pay.

Know what? It wasn't bad! A lot of it was even good! and some of the Taiwanese dishes were pretty okay too. There was even a sweet potato appetizer that had obviously been sitting too long in its sweet sauce, since the starch in the potato had broken down a bit, but again, not bad.
There isn't even a Taiwanese menu here, as far as I know. At least, we were only offered the AYCE menu. All the usual suspects were there.
I don't eat tempura, but it seems like that's what this place specializes in, since there's about a page of the stuff. There's the normal vegetable and shrimp tempura, but then there are also the Taiwanese ones, like the popcorn chicken (pictured at the top - I did try a piece to be fair, and it was pretty good. Not too greasy, but actually very flavourful. The chicken inside even tasted like chicken, and was tender). There were other deep-fried and breaded chicken options, like the black pepper, which was just okay. If you like tempura I think this is a decent place, especially for the price.

Then there are the chicken and beef dishes. You get a few little slices per order, which is all you want, really. In this case the chicken was boring and the sauces - peanut, teriyaki, Japanese curry, etc. were bland. The best sauce of the evening was the wasabi masago on the beautiful mussels. I'm wary of mussels at a not-top notch sushi place, but these were juicy and huge and obviously fresh. Besides, the wasabi is anti-microbial, so it'll kill off a fair bit of bacteria and help out your stomach.
Other strange things on the menu were deep-fried tofu (again, the guy manning the deep-fryer did a good job) and spring rolls. The breaded shrimp were not coated in panko, but rather some other breading that I liked better. Then peanut sauces and black pepper sauces were drizzled over them. They didn't even get too soggy, and the breading was more like frozen chicken fingers than Japanese tempura. It was actually a nice change, so that shouldn't really be taken as an insult.
Then the maki. The crab meat was actually decent. It wasn't too sweet, and one of the rolls used a better imitation crab meat than the usual crab sticks. The California roll (on the right) did not...
Almost everything came with tempura bits in it, but they were very accommodating with making exceptions since the restaurant was pretty empty. The ambiance is nice, though a little dark, and they were probably only having a bit of success because the people who didn't feel like waiting in line at the new Izakaya place down the road, Kazu, might drift in here. It's kind of sad because this place wasn't bad!

Until...
There is a hole in the salmon. This is not okay. This shows a lack of respect for the fish by the sushi chef. Okay, he's not Japanese, but really...

It's a very bad cut - very imprecise and uneven. The fish is draped nonchalantly over the rice. The rice was also good at some points in the meal, and not good at others, which says to me that the rice vinegar dressing was not mixed in well, and that different batches of rice (though I do't think they could have gotten through an entire batch of rice with just our table and the one other occupied table that evening) are not made consistently. Often the rice was over-seasoned with too much sugar or salt, or pre-seasoned rice vinegar. Rice is delicate and this was not.

Still, the next bunch of nigiri sushi that came out was better, and both the shrimp and salmon were consistently delicious all night. I'm very picky when it comes to salmon and I was actually very impressed here. Yes, it was Atlantic and I prefer Pacific, but it was tender and smooth. The shrimp were juicy and perfectly cooked. Even the cucumber in the maki was freshly cut and very refreshing, even if not cut into properly-sized batons. The mise en place in sushi prep (all the cutting) is very precise and dogmatic, but I didn't mind because I didn't come here for the best sushi experience ever. Lower your expectations and enjoy the good tasting salmon and shrimp.
Skip the surf clam that tastes like rubber, and god forbid you order the octopus. You will spend the next five years of your life chewing.

Also skip the sushi pizza. For something that I thought might actually be originally Taiwanese, this is not the version you find at most restaurants. It was diced vegetables in the same sweet masago as the mussel (to the right, below) on a deep-fried piece of breaded rice. There was no fish involved and the diced vegetables were just bizarre. Also, there is nothing pizza-like about it, but when you only order one serving I guess it's hard. We figured we'd get the whole pizza, not just one serving. Ah, the complexities of the AYCE menu. You just never know what you'll end up with in terms of serving size. That's where the "you pay for what you don't eat" business is such a scam. You always have to order small portions, and I feel so bad for the kitchen staff that has to make the same dish three times in slightly different portions for just your table throughout the night. It has to be done quickly and the same each time. It sounds like an awful job.

...but they do it here happily, at least when there aren't 20 tables to worry about. Food was fast, but not too fast, as if everything had been prepped in advance. The servers were friendly, even if they didn't understand the menu and couldn't always answer our questions. They always smiled, even when we asked for another ordering form and kept eating. They never judged us, which is the most important part of a buffet. At least, they didn't judge us in English, and I choose to think they didn't judge us in any other language either.

So, for Taiwanese snack food, decent salmon and shrimp, and good tempura, this place is definitely, definitely worth it. A grand total of $25 including tax and tip, and that was generous.
I'm not scared of getting sick from the fish here, like I am at Kanda, and I like supporting the small operation. Just choose you orders carefully, but isn't that the ultimate AYCE rule?

Hours: Mon-Sat noon – 3pm, 5:30pm -10:30 pm
Expect To Pay: $25 Mon-Thurs, $29 Fri-Sat, including tax and tip. You don't need to order AYCE, but I can't see that anything else would be worth it, unless the menu was greatly expanded with Taiwanese specialties
(514) 582-2222

My Little Italian Haven in the Old Port: Romagna Caffe

2010-06-22T10:56:00.002-04:00

Romagna Caffe

60 rue St-Jacques
Montreal, QC

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8 1/2 out of 10

Montreal has an authentic Italian cafe outside of Little Italy! It's not touristy, it's not romantic, it has traditional Emilia-Romagna piadine and ciaccini sandwiches, possibly the city's best gelato, and most importantly, it shows the World Cup games on a big screen.

...or so I thought. How can a place that has FIFA world cup signs absolutely everywhere, flags everywhere, an Azzurri uniform in the window (the Italian team) be closed on a provincial holiday when neither the owner or the chef are Quebecois? More importantly, one of them is Italian, and perhaps even more importantly, one of them is married to that Italian. Really, the game should have on, the cafe should have been open, and it should have been full. That's just bad advertising. There were tourists everywhere in the Old Port this morning. How much of their money did Romagna Caffe make? None.

Nobody seems to know about this place, but there's a huge breakfast menu, $10 lunch deals of a main dish (best to go with the day's sandwich option) and soup or dessert, antipasti platters to snack on, tons of variations on the quintessential Italian soda, and it's licensed, all of which means it deserves to be very successful. Even if you don't cheer for the Azzurri, this is a downtown Montreal hidden gem.

The owner of Romagna Caffe is Italian. His wife, the cook and pastry chef, is French. She did, however, study pastry in Italy. How can her baking possibly get any better when both of these countries are involved? Oh, and they cater, so all of her desserts can be ordered, even if they don't appear in the Cafe often enough to suit your sweet tooth...fortunately, there's always gelato and Italian soda.

So there are a few pages of breakfast options ranging from tons of omelets, to plates of eggs with toast and pork in its various forms. Nothing over $10, most things much less. There's also a very, very nice Italian espresso machine and all the options that go along with that. Then there are about three pages of lunch options including panini (which just means "sandwiches" in Italian), piadine and ciaccini. The latter two are traditional flatbreads from Emilia-Romagna. The mortadella sausage in the ciaccino pictured below also comes from that region of Northern Italy.

It's my dream to have a World Cup cinq a sept upstairs in the reception area that overlooks the rest of the cafe (Unfortunately I do not want to have this 5 a 7 from 10am to noon, or even 2:30 to 4:30). They have a special menu of platters of antipasti - so many kinds of marinated vegetables and the traditional cheeses and cured, smoked and aged meats that make Romagna famous. Prosciutto di parma and real parmesan cheese.

Really, the paper World Cup schedules as place settings tip you off that this would be a good place to come to watch the games. The soup is not the focus of this picture...even if I should be getting to the point about the $10 lunch deal being so great...

A home-made soup (broth from scratch) starts the meal. The vegetables were frozen and it really wasn't that amazing a minestrone, but at least it was good for me. Vegetables counter-balanced the gelato that was to come. Really you just want to come here for the flatbread and gelato. Piadina is unleavened bread (yeast-free) that's traditionally cooked on a terracotta pan (called a "testo") and made of flour, water, salt, baking soda (to replace the yeast) and lard. I didn't want to know if Romagna Caffe's version was made with lard, but it definitely had an extra ingredient - sugar.

I tell you it's addictive, even if the filling of seafood (mostly imitation crabmeat) and too much sweet mayonnaise weren't spectacular.

On another trip I tried the Kamouraska lamb piadina with mint and butter ($8.95 for just the sandwich. That's why the lunch deal is so good) that melted onto the inside of the warm bread (of course it's heated). I liked it more than the seafood, but the bread was just as incredible. I couldn't believe it was only $8 for Kamouraska lamb. Sure, it was only a small portion of actual meat, and the meat was pretty dry, like incredibly thin pieces of leftover roast, but with the butter and the tiny, tiny bit of mint it was pretty satisfying. I can't really complain when I pay $8 for lamb on home-made bread.

I keep wishing I'd tried the Soda Verte. It's a mix of lemonade with kiwi, pistachio and mint- flavoured syrups ($4.95). You can also get a less expensive treat of grenadine, mint and water for $2.00. Another interesting option is the Snow Ball - a mix of lemonade with coconut, lemon and curacao (the syrup, not the liquor).

Or just come for gelato, which is served beautifully in giant glass goblets. You can get specialty combinations like traditional affogato (a shot of espresso poured over, "drowning", your choice of gelato. Go with chocolate or something rich), or just get a few scoops of your favourite options. It's all home-made, and you could get lucky and find a little bit of miraculous limoncello-flavoured gelato that is so much better than a lemon sorbet. If I could find limoncello in Montreal at the SAQ I would be a happy, happy person. I have the best memory of sitting in a restaurant with a bottle of limoncello in front me that the server had placed there. He didn't say what it was doing there, since I hadn't asked for it, and he hadn't poured it for me (though he had given me a glass), but I'd already payed the bill, so I figured it was a "drink your fill" kind of idea. Tourists...

Gelato is not ice cream. It's not haagen-daaz. The method of making gelato actually results in a denser, more flavourful milk (sometimes cream, or a mix of the two) since less air is whipped into it. The gelato machine that's used at Romagna Cafe is from Italy, of course, and is very much earning its keep. It's incredible how thick and creamy milk can be. I can't even recommend one flavour over another because they were all so good. You can definitely have a taste before you decide anyway. Branching out to the Italian traditional flavours like hazelnut is a very good idea, but the papaya, lemon, and limoncello that accompany it in the picture above are all good choices.

This cafe used to be on Crescent but they moved to the Old Port for more space. Now they have bad signage and probably aren't doing great business because it's just off the heavy tourist foot traffic area. It doesn't look like a cute place to have lunch, landing somewhere between a cafeteria-style look and a bar, but it's full table-service (for a more traditional Italian bar experience try Montallegro at 1991 rue Belanger, east of Papineau). If you prefer, you can just have a coffee at the bar, and chat with the friendly baker, but tourists would probably walk on by this place without much of a second glance. So don't judge this place by looking in the window. I'm sharing this gem with you so Romagna Cafe can be more successful. For now it's a perfect little hole in the wall that deserves to be a great success. An affordable, authentic Italian cafe in the Old Port. Please go eat piadine and gelato. They don't even have to feel conflicted about opening on Canada Day, since there's no World Cup game. More importantly, nobody will show up expecting them to be open. How much of my money did they make today? None.

Expect To Pay: $13 for a piadina and gelato, including tax and tip

Hours: Open early for breakfast, but not open late.
514-844-1528

Ferreira Cafe

2010-06-10T14:52:00.004-04:00

Café Ferreira
1446 rue Peel
Montreal, QC
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8 out of 10

Portuguese

Again, I didn't go here to review it, but I wanted to talk about it. This is what I do, talk about food. Periodically I do and talk about other things.

Anyway, we show up a tiny, tiny bit late for a reservation but are very courteously shown to our table in the VERY busy restaurant on a Saturday night. Peel Street is the place to be apparently. Perfect seat across from the open kitchen to watch the show. Our server doesn't appear for 15 minutes. We wait. And watch. Presumably they know we're here since the busboy/runner came around with three Portuguese rolls and some exquisite extra virgin olive oil. The green tinge was beautiful and the taste was very good. No butter here. We're in Portugal.

So when the server finally comes I get scared. She talks really loud and really fast. Mind you, it's busy and it's loud in there, but I feel panicked. Exactly the opposite of the calm professionalism of MAS Cuisine. We go for the sardines grilled with Maldon salt and a salad of arugula, tomatoes and canteloupe to start. The two glasses of house white are a chardonnay from Chile and a Portuguese vinho verde (I think?) from Douro. The Portuguese was very dry and acidic and the Chardonnay was a little more flavourful and sweet. The dry went well with the sardines, which came with a little ramekin of sundried tomato pesto with olives, and went nicely with the Portuguese bun. The salad was refreshing, and even though the arugula wasn't amazing, and the tomatoes were just good (it's still not tomato season), the melon was perfect, so the sweetness of the fruit and the bitterness of the green was also nice.

For mains, a bouillabaisse, a shrimp dish with fresh vegetables, and a black cod with port wine. I was dying to try the black cod since it's my favouite thing in the world, but Portugal is not the place for it. The fish already tastes like butter, but putting the port on it kind of wrecked it since no more butter was added. The port reduction tasted like a veal reduction and so the fish just tasted like an absolutely perfectly cooked fish. There was nothing sinfully butter about the meat of the black cod itself. Basically this meal was perfect in execution and not perfect in conception, the opposite of what you might expect from a menu that doesn't often change. The bouillabaisse, was plentiful, with a rotating card of fresh fish in it (there are a few things that change depending on the day and season, of course) to include clams, cod, halibut, shrimp and a bunch of things I didn't know very well. Some potatoes made this a giant meal. If you love simple, fresh fish, this is a perfect dish, but it's home-cooking. There was no fancy sauce or exciting flavour that jumped out at you. So at $35 you are paying for plain fish. The only thing I didn't like at the restaurant (despite the wait for the server and then the excruciatingly long wait for the main dishes. Oddly enough the appetizers came incredibly quickly. Different kitchen section and man in charge I think) was the Portuguese tomato rice. Kind of like a very oily paella without the meat. It's better than plain rice, but it's a side that's just thrown on plates. It didn't go with the black cod, but I couldn't have the mashed potatoes because they do use milk in those, despite being an almost-butter-free country. I didn't want to think about the rolls.

So the real fun was watching the kitchen have a problem. Somewhere in the line some orders got messed up and things were left sitting, building up under the heat lamps for awhile. Far too long in the opinion of the chef and myself. The runners were trying to figure out what went where. Maybe some of the chits got out of order, but whatever happened, food started getting run around, the Chef came around the outside of the kitchen to figure it out, and the whole kitchen got really backed up for awhile. Our meals got long.

So nothing spectacular on the menu that we tried (though the salt on the sardines was very good, the quality of the fish was incredible, and I like the olive oil and sundried tomato pesto a lot), but there was a whole lot more menu to sample. This is very good food on Peel Street, not some over-priced joint trying to make money off of people in finance who know nothing about food. It's good, satisfying, ample-portioned, traditional and contemporary Portuguese.

Expect to Pay: $80-$120 per person including tax, tip and wine (at least a glass, probably some port)
Hours: Mon-Fri 11:45am-3pm, Mon-Wed 5:30pm-11pm, Thurs-Sat 5:30pm-midnight
(514) 848-0988
www.ferreiracafe.com

MAS Cuisine

2010-06-10T14:17:00.005-04:00

Mas Cuisine
3779 Wellington
Verdun, Montreal, QC

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9 out of 10

French/Local

This is not a normal restaurant review. I did not come to this restaurant to review it, but I loved it so much that I just wanted to write about it. These guys are good...

First came out a little platter of black and green olives with some very mildly-seasoned cashews. The cashews were at first lacklustre, since you expect them to be so salty, but that's what the olives are for. Genius! Only after that does the bread come, since it's not necessarily supposed to be enjoyed together. Three kinds - a beautiful potato-like texture with a perfect crust, a nut-spiked heartier version, and one with milk that I could not try. These are small pieces so you can sample each.

Appetizers were spectacular. A beautiful cream-based soup that I was sorry to fore go, and an incredibly-shaped circular tower of duck tartar with remoulade (egg yolk-based sauce). The duck was fine but the sauce was spectacular. Then the house gravlax. This was incredible. Not sweet, not salty, but so fresh and so much flavour. It just tasted...beautiful.

For mains, scallops in an orange sauce the likes of which I couldn't believe. Apparently the orange is put in a special European food processor that heats as it processes, so the orange is emulsified like nobody's business with oil for 30 minutes. Imagine holding a hand mixer for 30 minutes over a double boiler. Europeans are sensible. This food processor was apparently created for at-home use, so it's not industry-sized. Perfect for MAS cuisine's small restaurant and ever-changing menu. So 30 minutes of processing just to coat the most simple of sautéed foods - scallops. These were very nice, seared scallops. Along with some local asparagus, it was a great plate.

The veal organs (sweetbreads sounds so much nicer. Maybe too nice) were actually phenomenal. I hate ordering veal, mostly for ethical reasons, but also because they're so easy to do poorly, but these were tender and not stringy and the sauce was sweet and to die for. I don't even remember what it was, horrible food writer that I am, but it doesn't really matter since you can't have it anymore. The menu is changed. The lamb was also very good. That's all I can say. Simply that everything was very good to spectacular, and care was put into each element of the dish, including complementary offerings. Never would the same sides appear with each dish. Risotto, fingerling potatoes (which were heavenly, soaking the sweetbreads sauce), etc.

The desserts are the only things that don't change as regularly. So you can still enjoy a very rich chocolate brownie with slightly melted pieces of dark chocolate. No milk, a little butter, HEAVY on the eggs makes this seem very luscious. Since it's not milk chocolate the brownie on its own can seem a touch underwhelming, but the accompanying caramel ice cream is mostly milk and not so much caramel (a home-made not overly-salty version of which gets poured under the brownie) to add creaminess. On its own the ice cream isn't that great either, but put it all together and add a sweet cocoa syrup and it's divine. There is also a dairy-free option that isn't sorbet!! Even though I opted for the brownie (not TOO much butter, like I said), you can go for oranges and grapefruit with almonds, all of which I assume comes IN tea. Kind of like a fruit salad, or fruit soup, but the tea and almonds are a nice touch, and make it less disappointing. The replacement on my brownie for the ice cream was the raspberry sorbet that accompanies the lemon soufflé cake, and I'm happy to say it was very good for sorbet.

What I absolutely loved about the restaurant (besides the food, of course), was the service. Our server was a true professional. Perfect wine service, attentiveness to water, dishes coming out together, knowledge of the dishes. Wow...That's an art. All in all, I was just blown away. For approximately $35 plus tax and tip you get a table d'hote including the beginning freebies of olives, nuts and bread, an appetizer, a main, a dessert and coffee or tea. If this place were more downtown and not in Verdun, they'd be charging $50, I'm sure. At least! But all that would just go to rent, probably. Still Verdun is my new favourite area (Montreal borough?) and it's worth a stroll around Metro De L'Eglise. Definitely, definitely stop at MAS Cuisine for dinner.

Expect to Pay: $65-$95, including tax, tip and a glass to a bottle of wine (with a bill split between two or three people) from the reasonably-priced, well-chosen list
Hours: Wed-Fri 12-2, Wed-Sat 6pm-close
514-544-3779

17th Festival Mondial de la Biere Montreal

2010-06-03T13:07:00.002-04:00

-The self-proclaimed "most important festival of international beers in North America"

You hve three mroe days (including today - Friday) to sample a world's worth of beer is go to the Windsor Station and Courtyard (1160 de la Gauchetiere West, metro Bonaventure or Peel). Just buy some tasting coupons ($1 each) and wind your way through a crowd of happy, beer-loving people in a former railway station. It'll be like walking down Ste-Catherine after the Habs won game 7 all over again. This is such a big event that the wikipedia article about Windsor Station actually mentions it as the home of the beer festival. Talk about tradition. Good thing the trains don't run out of there anymore, because you should definitely stay away from operating heavy machinery, or, you know, driving anything after a stroll through this Montreal festival.

Like the Festival en Lumiere featured the wines of specific countries, so does this festival of beer. This year's special representatives are Belgium, Brazil and Italy. I don't remember a whole lot of good beer in Italy, but maybe I was looking in the wrong places? Besides, if what you sample at the Mondial de la Biere isn't very good you just pick another beer, or another country. The consistently incredible beer mecca of Belgium is offering 147 different samples, so odds are you'll like at least 1.

If you somehow make it through all 147 Belgian beers and it gets to the point where you need to sit down, you can go and learn about beer cocktails in a workshop with Philippe Gaïani, or learn how to be a beer writer and judge with Mirella Amato. Or on Saturday and Sunday you can find out how beer goes with nougat and fudge.

Even though Canada is not one of the featured countries, Quebec has a huge representation of beer at the festival. You may be wondering why you'd go to this festival to taste Quebec beers if you live in Quebec and could, in theory, have them any old time. Trois Brasseurs brewpubs are popping up everywhere (even in Toronto), and you expect the micro-brews from L'Amere a Boire or Benelux to be exceptional, but how often can you try 232 Quebec beers in 5 days? I am not suggesting that this be made into a drinking game, just that there will be a whole lot of Quebec options proudly offered under one roof, which is definitely a rare opportunity. Compare your favoure Dieu du Ciel or Ste-Ambroise with something you've never heard of. Or if you've ever wandered into the best beer Depanneur in the city, or the places in the Atwater and Jean-Talon markets that specialize in Quebec's hops-y offerings, and found yourself overwhelmed by options, this is your chance to test out a lot of types (you get 1/4 to 1/3 of a beer with every sample) without investing in a full case before you know if you'll like what you buy.

Oh, and if you really love the experience, consider becoming a member of the International Circle of Malt. I'm not kidding. It costs 18 euros. Or 50 for a corporate membership. Fun for the whole office! Sure beats team-building exercises.

So besides nougat and fudge, what does beer go with? Cheese, apparently. There will even be workshops on beer and cheese pairing. Feel a bit chi-chi to you? Don't worry, there will also be lots and lots of meat - everything from stag and kangaroo to the mandatory sausages. The cheese might be free, though. The meat will not. What kind of meat goes with the Bikini Blond Lager or Coconut Porter from Maui? Again, not kidding.

Dates: June 2-6, 2010
Hours: Wed-Sat 11am-10pm, Sun 11am-8pm
Expect to Pay: $0 - ?, or until your blood alcohol concentration = 0.8%, which is dependent on the number of drinks you have over a course of time, your weight, gender, and if you want to try the pricier beers. Do the math.

Jolee

2010-05-30T08:46:00.006-04:00

5495 Avenue Victoria

Montreal, QC
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6 out of 10

Sri Lankan/South Indian/South Asian

Kind of fuzzy on the type of food, I know, but International boundaries don't really bind culinary traditions in places whose interconnected histories go back thousands of years. For example, everything on the thali plate above looks like standard Indian except the noodles. Even the restaurant's sign says "Indian" but the Sri Lankan influences are huge, and there's definitely a combination of Northern and Southern Indian fare being offered here.

That being said, here's what this restaurant/take-away serves: dosa, idli, vada, biryani and uttappam - all South Indian specialties - as well as pittu, string hoppers and kottu, Sri Lankan dishes.

But Wait! There's more! Butter chicken, spicy vegetable and non-vegetable curries, naan, all served as part of thalis, and appetizers like pakoras - very much Northern Indian fare. Then, just in case you don't like any of these foods, there are the Chinese dishes of noodles and meat, vegetables or seafood with shrimp, egg, oyster sauce and soy sauce, reminiscent of Cantonese chow mein. There's nothing called "fried rice" on the menu, but between the biryani and the string hoppers kottu you'd probably never know the difference unless you were from one of the places listed above.
Because of all the selection, this restaurant does a mean take-out business with all the different people living in the Cote-Ste-Catherine area. With a buffet-style counter at the front, you can get your crab leg curry and chicken roti to go, along with samosa-type deep-fried pastries or vats of over-cooked meats in spiced oil. Yes, they've been sitting there for awhile, but the turn-over can be pretty good depending on the dish. I actually saw a fresh chafing dish of beef put out between the time I entered the restaurant and the time I left. Impressive, and the highlight of my whole trip was the take-away roti of ungreasy sweet baked dough wrapped around spicy chicken and potatoes, the whole thing the size of a kids hot dog, but much more delicious. I like spicy and despite my requests for spicy dishes, this was the only thing that came close to satisfying my tongue.
That's not to say that they didn't try to spike my string hoppers kottu with diced fresh green chiles. Unfortunately, it just didn't work very well. I could see mustard seeds and fennel mixed into the home-made diced noodles, onions, chili, egg and fried seafood mixture, but it just didn't taste like much. Turns out the trick with this dish is to order beef or lamb since the fat of those cheap pieces of meat flavours the entire dish. The seafood was tough, chewy and bland, and therefore so was the rest of the dish. The interesting part was that it was served with lime on the side, which is definitely a Thai influence on the Sri Lankan dish, not Indian. The lime added a lot to the enormous platter of food ($8.00 for the seafood option, $6.50 for lamb, chicken or beef, $5.50 for vegetarian), but there wasn't enough lime to flavour three meals of the stuff, which is how many meals I made out of it. God bless take-out containers and tupperware.
I really couldn't expect the Idly to be spicy. It's not supposed to be. 5 discs of steamed dessicated rice and lentils ($5.50) aren't supposed to be extremely tasty by themselves. It's their accompanying sambar and coconut chutney that should do the work. Unfortunately the sambar, a mix of carrots, okra (another less common ingredient), lentils and spices, ended up pretty watery and bland. I couldn't taste fenugreek or cumin or mustard seed (despite seeing them again) or coriander. The coconut chutney was worse. It tasted metallic and a little salty. It should be a little sweet, even the unsweetened variety. This probably means the coconut was not fresh, but it also means no spices or flavourings were added to help.
Sambar is served with just about all the South Indian appetizers and dosas, so there were a few more disappointments. The vada, deep-fried balls of lentils, coriander, onions and chilies sit in a soup of the stuff (thoguh they may be saved by the oil from the balls leeching into the liquid (think Gulf of Mexico oil spill but delicious), and the masala dosa - giant, thin, crepe-like cones of lentil and spices wrapped around potato and other unidentifiable, kind of spiced oily vegetables, all fried in more oil - didn't really have a chance.
The dosas themselves (we tried the regular masala version - masala just means spice blend, like curry means Indian spices to a lot of Westerners - and the onion version, which was exactly the same but added raw chopped red onions to the inside of the lentil wrap). The dosa shell was tasty, slightly fermented and lemony, but the inside was nothing to write home about. It needed a whole lot more fresh spice and heat, and less oil.

I'd never had stringhoppers before, so I was looking forward to trying the Sri Lankan specialty. These home-made noodles are very fun. They're a little brownish-red in colour and once steamed, stick together in small circular bundles, that are easily removed from on top of each other. They were served in a thali, a mixed metal plate separated into sections of different cooked vegetables, lentils and meats. The vegetarian version came with beautifully squishy (thanks to all the oil) eggplant, boring potatoes in a turmeric-based heat-less spicing, and a very respectable daal. I liked the daal because it didn't cheat by using salt to add flavour. I could actually taste the fennel, FINALLY! The noodles themselves don't taste like much, they're just noodles, after all, but there's something very comforting about noodles, and it's very different to be eating noodles, and not rice with what you think will be a rice-heavy South Indian meal.

Of course, the standard Indian thali is just like, but maybe a little worse, than any North Indian place in Parc Extension. For almost no money you get a ton of food - the same eggplant, daal and potato, along with rice, a piece of thin, sub-par naan and a curry of beef, lamb or chicken. The lamb was over-cooked and chewy, since I think it came from the counter-top buffet in front instead of the fresh pan I saw put out.

So there were problems here. The restaurant was dirty. Apparently they violated a whole lot of health codes in the past. There were hairs in some of the food. The bathrooms weren't clean, nothing seemed sanitized. Most importantly, the food was just so-so, but as a restaurant experience it was really fun. If you're the type of person who likes to try a new dish, a new style of cuisine, and learn about a different culinary tradition, this is a great place to come. Just ask what's fresh, order what the locals order and don't expect anything to be amazing. It will be very, very good for the meagre amount of money that you spend, though. I would go back for the chicken roti.

Hours: Noon-11pm, daily
Expect to Pay: Vegetarian - $7, Meat - $7.50-$13 including tax and tip, less on take-out.
Licensed: In theory, yes, but they don't sell alcohol and you can't BYOB, so probably they don't have a license anymore.
514-733-6362

Kitchen Galerie

2010-05-25T08:54:00.003-04:00

Kitchen Galerie

60 Jean-Talon East
Montreal, QC
●●●●●●●☺○○○
7 1/2 out of 10

Glorified fruit salad. I liked you until you gave me glorified fruit salad. If that's as creative as you can be, oh great chefs, well, you need to try a little harder.
I was warned not to get my hopes up. Kitchen Galerie is creating tons of buzz with their chefs who are servers who are fun. A team of quasi-bad-ass guys who joke and yell in their open kitchen (the stove is in the dinig room) and dance to the cool music they play in the restaurant. There are probably some tattoos involved, and there's definitely a lot of meat and potatoes. All this being said, this is still an upscale place. A table d'hote menu cost you upwards of $45 including tax and tip, so with wine and choosing one of the 6 fois gras options, prices get increasingly astronomical. That's pretty standard in Montreal, though, as long as the food lives up to the expectations.

Expectations...Maybe it's not fair to expect so much of these guys, but I spent a lot of the meal being impressed rather than disappointed. You're welcomed into the restaurant casually, you sit, look around at the other diners wearing jeans and t-shirts, and get explained the menu by a guy who is serving for the night. He knows everything about every dish. He can recommend wine, knowing exactly what flavours in the dishes will match with the extensive wine list. This guy has obviously done a lot of eating amazing food and drinking amazing wine, even if he looks more like a beer drinker...or a lumberjack. A fairly attractive lumberjack, mind you.

First, the bread came. The crusty baguette was perfect. Soft and doughy, but crisp on the outside. Now I was convinced this was going to be a great meal.

As much as this is a meat-centric restaurant, a vegetarian can also have a good time as long as they don't mind having no choice in their meal. A gazpacho to start and a goat cheese pasta as a main. Unfortunately the tomatoes in the gazpacho are not at their best. It's certainly not August yet, so the soup lacked any kind of a punch (this is certainly a restaurant where a punch wouldn't be out of place). The texture of the vegetable brunoise (very finely chopped vegetables) was very nice, featuring fresh shallots, but it couldn't make up for the mildly sweet, but otherwise bland flavour of the heaping bowl of red. In fact I have a small feeling that my amuse-bouche came from the same brunoise. While the other diners at my table were given a lobster-avocado mouthful to start the meal, my dairy-free concoction was made of finely diced carrots and shallots with green onions, kosher salt and truffle oil. There may not have been truffle oil in the gazpacho, but the very, very subtle flavour of it in my little pot of mouth-amusement was strikingly similar to the soup. I also wish I could have tasted more of the truffle oil, though I was happy every time I came across a big grain of salt that would explode when I bit into it and bring out the flavour of the rest of the mouthful of sweet but mild carrots.
Then a starter of tilapia, seared and planked to cook it through. Unfortunately a little too cooked through. The poor little fish probably knew he was raised in a tightly enclosed fish farm on the remains of other fish that he would otherwise not choose to eat. Kind of like broiler chickens. That kind of upbringing would make anyone a little tough. In a tough neighbourhood he had to fend for himself, and elbow his way through the crowds to eat (the entrée of red snapper is actually deemed completely unsustainable by Seachoice, and really shouldn't be on the menu at all...). The tomato confit rushed juice into the slightly over-done flesh of the tilapia, but only saved the thickest parts. The cherry tomatoes didn't gain anything from rosemary or garlic (maybe the same tomatoes used for the gazpacho). The tomato oil garnish was beautiful, though flavourless after a bite of the confit version. Plated on salad of fresh spinach, the greens seemed more like plate garnish than something that worked well with the fish and tomato. So not an ingenious dish, but not bad.

The excellent appetizer of the evening was the beef and pork terrine. A less than traditional version, this small slab of lusciously fatty meat was interlaced with nuts and spices beside a little salad with beautifully thin and sweet yellow beets that worked much better with the rest of the dish than the leafy bed for the tipalia. The terrine was better on its own than with the perfect baguette, but it was incredible with the server/cook's wine suggestion of a 2008 California Cabernet Sauvignon, Frontier Red from Fess Parker ($45). Suddenly the wine was sweet and the terrine was buttery. Ah! That's what the tilapia needed! More butter! If I wasn't lactose-intolerant it would have been swimming in the stuff, and the fish would have been more tender.

See, this is the problem. I called in advance and told the Chefs that I was lactose-intolerant. Normally that's fine. They'll say, "Sure, there are things you can eat," or, "We'll make some exceptions. Our Chefs are very good," etc. What I was told was, "Our Chefs love it when there's something like this! It's a fun challenge!" So they got my hopes up. My little heart was moved, touched. This team of creative, successful, respectable young men was going to go out of their way to cater to me. I could be their muse and push them to new culinary feats.

Instead, like almost every other restaurant, they just left things out. They used a bland oil instead of butter. Now oil is fine as long as you do it well, and use the right oil, but if not...well, I don't deal well with getting my heart broken. It's not like I go all Carrie or anything, but men can be so disappointing. Lets just leave it at that.

I once ate a restaurant with a woman who didn't think it necessary to inform the kitchen in advance that she couldn't eat anything that had touched black pepper. That's SO much worse than dairy! Out go stocks, sauces, long-cooking meats or vegetables, soups, anything remotely prepped in advance. Really, I'm not that bad, and will not excuse the kitchen gallery for their less than stellar creativity when it came to dealing with a stomach that can't handle all the beautiful cream and butter their knives like to throw into dishes.
Moving on. The main courses fared much better. This is a meat place, so once you start learning to ignore the fish and vegetarian options you fare much better. Braised rabbit came sitting on a large bed of thinly sliced, buttered up potatoes. Even the Quebec asparagus got to soak up the braising liquid. While this was definitely the smallest portion of meat of the evening's mains, what was there was perfectly cooked, tender and flavourful. The slow-cooking brought out the best of the high-quality meat.
Still, there wasn't enough there to satisfy a larger appetite, which is why it was good that two other dining companions got the rib-eye beef for 2, since there was more than enough leftover to fill the wanting belly of the diner who finished off the lovely rabbit. A huge hunk of meat on the bone cooked medium-rare placed above and around (it was that large) a bed of creamy mashed potatoes and some green beans, all served on an enormous white platter. It even says in the menu that people sharing this dish need to sit across from one another because of the communal plate. Don't worry, though. You probably won't be fighting for the last bite (not unless you're our server, who said he can eat the whole portion himself). Not because it's not good, just because it's huge. The sauce is a simple red wine reduction with anise (either ouzo or some other kind of black licorice flavoured liqueur, or anise) and comes on the side. There's more than enough to help out the potatoes and coat the roasted root vegetables, as well as covering the meat, if you so wish.

Wait, winter's over. Why are they still using root vegetables? There were already lots of mashed potatoes and enough green beans to call a serving of green vegetables on the platter. The winter vegetables didn't make the plate look much more attractive. Besides the amount of beef, there wasn't much going on on the plate (no garnishes or extra flavours), but it was good on its own, and this was one huge chunk of meat.
I was a little worried when I wasn't asked how I wanted my veal chop cooked, but when it came out a nice medium-rare I was happy. I would have just said to cook it however the chefs suggested anyway. My veal reduction was simple, being spiked with nothing (no anise here), but I'm glad there wasn't too strong a flavour to overpower the highlight of the dish - the crushed potatoes. These weren't creamy. They were just crushed enough to give texture, and the salt, garlic and herbs were perfect combined with whatever kind of fat they were cooked in. I don't know if the supposed lobster mushrooms sneaked off (lobsters being slow creatures on land, so their mushrooms probably being about the same...), but if they were in the potato mixture, they certainly helped. The sliced and quartered pieces of salty sausage thrown over and around the potatoes were wonderful on their own as well as with a bite of the veal, but added too much salt to the spectacular potatoes.

The green beans were necessary and fresh, and subtly sweet compared to the salty acidity of the meat and sauce. My favourite part of the presentation of the dish was how the potatoes and green beans were seemingly haphazardly spread around the bottom of the plate and then the veal chop was hacked into two enormous halves and placed carefully on top. Hunting under the meat for the bountiful hidden treasure was fun, and made the whole evening seem like what the chefs wanted it to be - entertaining, care-free, rough gourmet. Home-style cooking for hungry people who appreciate expensive high-quality ingredients (meat, mushrooms, truffles, and wine). The veal chop itself was beautifully seared so the fat locked onto the meat and moisturized the flesh. Not too chewy, not too fatty, not too lean. This was the veritable Goldilocks of meat chops. Just right.

My only complaint is the wine that paired so well with the sweet fat of the beef and pork terrine and the tomato confit didn't go well with the veal. On its own the veal didn't taste spicy but with the wine it suddenly did. As interesting as this was, it didn't help the veal. So was this the veal's fault of the wine's fault?
For dessert, nothing innovative. Just some (mostly) very good takes on standard chocolate mousse, New York style cheesecake, and creme caramel. The pot of rich 65%(?) chocolate ganache came with a generous dollop of whipped cream. A few bites were all that could be managed after the portion of beef. Again, the creme caramel was extremely rich. The top was expertly torched, and made it a little more fun spooning out the insides. The cheesecake came with a much too sweet blueberry coulis, but at least there was lemon in the cheese to lend some acid and flavour to the mix. It's a long, long way from Quebec blueberry season, so these ones would disappoint any Quebecer who knew that blueberries here are small and a little acidic, not large, kind of sweet, but otherwise bland and uninteresting. The other ridiculously sweet topping, a thick caramel, was luscious, but would have been better paired with a blueberry coulis that had a little more lemon in it. The cheesecake shouldn't have to do all the work on its own.

Up until this point I was pretty happy with my meal. There had been some problems, not necessarily mistakes, but more so differences of opinion between myself and the chefs, but there had been some wonderful surprises - the terrine, the rabbit, the crushed potatoes, and the ample and nicely cooked meat. Ingredients were fresh and dishes were generally well thought out. Then the moment I had been waiting for...

...the server promised me a special dessert since there was nothing on the menu I could eat (everything had cream) but it was a table d'hote that was supposed to come with dessert. I generally do not pass on trying a dessert if it's part of the meal and I can digest it. There are such things as "wrapped to go, please?" I was so excited. See, when you're lactose intolerant, dessert at a nice restaurant means fruit salad. I hate fruit salad. There's nothing wrong with fruit salad. In fact, I've eaten some phenomenal fruit salads, but I can make them at home with phenomenal fruit. There isn't a whole lot of culinary magic that goes into fruit salad. Not like creme caramel or a pot of chocolate with fruit whipped cream, or a home-made caramel sauce. So I will judge a restaurant that promises me that the "chefs like a challenge" by the quality of the special dessert that I am offered.
In general, I do prefer soup to salad. It fills you up more. Unfortunately, when it comes to dessert neither term that I generally associate with restaurant dinner appetizers, soup or salad, belongs in front of me. You can purée gorgeous canteloupe with sugar and water, pour it into a bowl, dice some apples, grapefruit, amazing oranges (just like the ones currently in my fridge), and pineapple to throw over top and say "fait accompli", aka "we fed the lactose intolerant girl," but I'm sorry, that's not good enough. If you're going to get a girl all excited about a special dessert at one of the newest hot restaurants in town then you've got to deliver more than fruit soup.

65% Chocolate soup...Maybe I could change my mind about dessert soup, but what would the other 35% of the soup be?

Hours: Tues-Sat 6pm-11pm
Expect to Pay: $55-$90, including tax, tip and at least one glass of something red or white
(514) 315-8994
www.kitchengalerie.com