Mylys Restaurant

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

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

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

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

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

Restaurant Pho bac #1

Restaurant Pho Bac #1
4707 rue Wellington
Verdun (Montreal), Quebec
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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

Cafe Velo Quebec

Cafe Velo Quebec
1251 Rachel East

Montreal, QC

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7 out of 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lu Mama Asian Fusion

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

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

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

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

Jolee

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