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

Pakerna

Pekarna
2313 Rue Sainte Catherine Ouest
Montreal, QC
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8 out of 10

I swear I will eat more salad...

It was brought to my attention that in my great Montreal Desserts adventure, I had overlooked a Slovenian shop just up the road from my house. I don't know how I missed a wall of cakes. I walk past the shop all the time. Anyway, when I was told that it was better than a lot of the places on my top 10 list, my heart fell, my sugar headache intensified, and I resigned myself to another dessert excursion. Oh God. So much cake. Don't get me wrong, I love cake, but there's a healthy intake and then there's just way too much. That "way too much" level comes a lot faster when you can't digest butter-cream icing, and oh God I love ganache, and butterscotch, and mousse.

...and the commenter was right. This place is very, very good. Pure refined sugar. Nothing good for you. Ignore the lunch counter. You come here for dessert, pure and simple. It's open late every day, weekdays until 11, midnight on Friday/Saturday, and 10 on Sundays. Right next to a movie theatre, it fit perfectly with my line about getting a piece of cake after a movie. I was skeptical at first because there were so many cakes in displays. Surely you couldn't buy them all by the slice, but you could! Then surely they must come from a factory. They don't. The café is owned by a Slovenian woman who bakes most of the cakes in a big, big kitchen on the south shore of Montreal. Her two daughters run the café and bake a few more cakes, cookies and squares in-store. No preservatives, real butter, real cream. Lots and lots of butter-cream.


There's an oreo cake AND and an oreo cheesecake! Three kinds of chocolate cake including mocha, brownie (layers and layers of actual brownie separated by rich icing and called cake) and tiramisu cake (the ladyfingers are on the outside. I think one of the layers is also soaked in rum).


Or you can try a truffle. You can tell they're home-made because they're huge and they don't look perfect.


Truffles are hard to make absolutely spherical and these are lopsided and coated in nuts or chocolate.


Then there are the "chubby nuns"...also called "Réligieuses". Cream puff pastry filled with thick, intensely sweet maple cream, topped with maple glaze, and assembled in layers that look like a church with steeples, or nuns who have eaten too many pastries. Everyone deserves something that makes them happy. If it isn't your vocation, there are worse things than sweets to fall back on...

Blasphemy aside, this is a shop full of (sinfully) sweet concoctions, and will bump a whole lot of Montreal desserts down the Top 10 list. Apparently you should try the apple pie, but with 4 lengths of counters filled with three-tiers of cake each, you have a tough choice ahead of you.

Oh, and the prices are low. Huge piece of flan for $2.99. Cakes around $4.25-$4.75. Big pieces of pie with flaky crust, even cheaper. Sounds too good to be true.

Pakerna
(514) 228-5222
Hours: Mon: 8am - 10pm, Tues-Thurs: 8am - 10:30pm, Fri: 8am - 11:30pm, Sat: 9am - 12am, Sun: 9:30am - 10pm

Montreal's Best Desserts Results!

Thanks to everyone who got in touch with me about their favourite Montreal dessert places, and especially thanks to the special people who ate a ton of cake with/for me. There are still half-pieces of maybe 8 desserts in my fridge, so my roommate has his breakfast work cut out for him for awhile. He was a great second opinion on the Brulerie St-Denis cakes, using wonderful adjectives, and discerning the hint of vanilla in the icing of the carrot cake that I had missed(!).

10 or so pieces of baklava and syrup-soaked pastries, 3 carrot cakes, 2 chocolate mousses, a chocolate cake, a chocolate swirl cheesecake, a key lime pie, a banana cake and a raspberry almond cake later, I think I'm done with cake for awhile. I did sneak leftovers of my favourites today and my stomach is currently wreaking havoc on the rest of my body. It doesn't quite understand that, try as it might, I'm not letting it escape. There are so many more things with which to fill it. Savoury things. Like vegetables. And lemon. And salad. So, so much salad. To see the whole article summarizing last week's adventures, check out Midnight Poutine.

Here's a list of the winners:
Top 10 Dessert Places in Montreal
1. La Croissanterie Figaro
2. Crudessence
3. Aux Deux Marie
4. Le Cagibi
5. Brocante Baleze
6. Brulerie St-Denis
7. Aux Vivres
8. Au Festin De Babette
9. Calories
10. Rockaberry

And here's the inside scoop for those who read here as well:
The best cakes were definitely at La Croissanterie Figaro, the reasons for which I explain in the Midnight Poutine post, but when you're craving cake, you're maybe not thinking about the best quality cakes. The Croissanterie Figaro cakes were light and beautiful and art in cake-form - chocolate mousse success like I've never achieved myself - but when I get a cake craving I will probably end up going to Aux Deux Marie for their chocolate mousse or carrot cake instead. Kind of like you know you'd be better off with the guy who has a house, a steady income, and a responsible four-door sedan, but instead you go out with the guy with the motorcycle and a mickey of gin. You know it's not the 'best' choice for you, but you do it anyway. Fortunately I don't often have this problem, as I would not want to combine a motorcycle with a mickey of gin. See? This is a responsible blog. Maybe even all-ages, what with the celebration of cake. It's important to teach kids good decision-making skills while they're young, I hear. I also digress...

So now I'm proud to say I know the best desserts in Montreal and am more than capable of recommending a place from a long list of sweet options. Feel free to disagree with me, though. In fact, please do! Let me know if I forgot somewhere. For instance, I hear tell that Beauty's has good home-made chocolate cake, but I could not physically handle another sampling of chocolate cake when I heard this, thus it got left off the list. Not good investigative journalism, I admit, but there is a line, and that would have passed it. To thine own self be true. Know your cake limits. Shakespeare knew about this stuff...

Montreal Desserts: Brulerie St-Denis

Brulerie St-Denis
3967 St-Denis
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5 1/2 out of 10

On the first eating stop of my Montreal dessert adventure, I decided to check out Au Festin de Babette, but as I'm a thorough investigator, I decided to look in every café window on my way up St-Denis in search of cakes. I was first stopped at Brulerie St-Denis by a three-tiered cake display. A million questions later, I had two pieces of cake (BMOT - brought my own tupperware) and a whole lot of answers.

I think the only reason I particularly cared about the Brulerie was because the carrot cake (bottom right of photo) was not beautifully glazed. Instead, the icing was smoothed simply around the whole body of the cake. Home made???

It turns out all the desserts at Brulerie St-Denis are bought from two Montreal companies:
Dawns Desserts and Fous Desserts.

Dawns Desserts doesn't have a shop, but delivers relatively freshly-made cakes and pies to certain Montreal cafés and restaurants, as well as doing private cake orders (by phone or email). Fous Desserts has a flagship store on Laurier, but also delivers (frozen cakes) to local businesses. Both websites say they are made with real whipped cream and the finest quality ingredients. Fous Desserts explicitly states it uses no preservatives and only the "richest butters and creams". I have a feeling Dawn Desserts skimps on the butter, though, because I know butter. When you don't eat a lot of butter, you really taste it and in Dawn's chocolate icing I did not taste butter. If it was there, it was not a particularly good butter.


The cakes: I went with Dawn's cakes because Fous Desserts had all been pre-frozen so I figured fresher would be better (but maybe you can get Fous Desserts' cakes fresh at the shop on Laurier?). Fous Desserts only had mousses and cheesecakes, kinds of cakes that can get away with freezing without people caring, but Dawn valiantly offered a two-layer Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake and a two-layer carrot cake (the colossal one with 6 layers you see at JavaU sometimes wasn't in attendance that day). If you're not like me, and are only getting one piece of cake, there's no question that you go with the carrot cake. The chocolate cake tasted like just about nothing. Non-buttery icing aside, it was a decent dense texture, though a bit dry from being refrigerated. It almost found a saving grace in a bit of espresso flavour in the icing, but it couldn't make up for the rest of the bland slice.

The carrot cake fared much better. The first of the two layers being a white cake with strands of carrot. Definitely not overly carrot-y, very moist, but the bottom layer had more of a gingerbread colour and taste, with more walnuts and dried fruit pieces, while staying just as fluffy and deceptively light as the top. The real cream cheese icing tasted respectable and was melt-in-your mouth smooth. Not the best carrot cake ever (Aux Vivres wins hands-down when theirs is fresh, despite the orange, grainy icing) but definitely not bad. If you're a cheesecake fan, try Fous
Dessert's Green Tea version, and for mousse, try the popular Phénix. I think these cakes get brownie points for trying to be wholesome and pure, but just don't make you feel like you walked into a Grandmother's kitchen. Definitely come back to these companies when you're craving that insanely bad-for-you piece of Oreo Mousse or Reese's Peanut Butter Cheesecake like you'd expect from a Cheesecake Factory.

Oh, so I got to Au Festin de Babette but the only cake they had was a small Chestnut Cream cake, which looked nice, and probably home made, but not exactly what I was hoping for cake-wise. It's cheaper at $3.75 a slice (a smaller slice) but I'd hold out on Au Festin de Babette for summer when you'll be craving their selection of soft ice cream, or go now for a rich, creamy hot chocolate.

Expect to Pay: $6.00-$7.50 with tax and tip

Brulerie St-Denis: 3967 St-Denis, 514-286-9158
5252 Cote-des-Neiges, 514 -731-9158
1587 St-Denis, 514-286-9159
Maison Alcan, 1188 Sherbrooke West, 514-985-9159
10 rue King, 514-397-9866
Ste-Justine Hospital, 3175 Cote-Ste-Catherine, 514-738-4900
Ptomenade Masson, 3039 Masson, 514-750-6259
Fousdesserts: 809 avenue Laurier Est, 514-273-9335, Tue-Wed 8am-7pm, Thu-Fri 7:30am-7:30pm, Sat 7:30am-6pm

Best Montreal Desserts

Help! I need suggestions! It's true, I love dessert and I often don't have it. There's nothing as bitterly disappointing as a fruit cup at a good restaurant. I don't care what kind of sorbet you serve with it. A half cup of mango purée with ice and sugar is a punishment (optimistic people would say a "torturous lesson in self-discipline) when the person sitting across from you is allowed a veritable mountain of Pain Perdu dripping in luxurious vanilla ice cream and maple syrup. If over half the world's inhabitants are at least slightly lactose-intolerant, then the dessert chefs are not catching up to the times. So there are very few places in this city where my stomach and head get along. Example:

Stomach says, "Cream! Butter! Sugar!"

Head says "Foolish child. You know you can't digest that."

So Stomach and Head have a tea and a dairy-free dry biscuit and weigh the short-term gain versus the long term pain. All very rational. But sometimes things don't go as smoothly, and Head says:

"How can you possibly be so head-strong when I disagree?" but promptly quiets down when it tastes the first bite of warm fleur de sel caramel brownie topped with old-style Vanilla ice cream from Juliette et Chocolat...Some days when this type of conversation happens, I go to bed with Head shaking itself, saying "I told you so!" and Stomach meekly admitting defeat and regretting every moment of chocolate-eating, except the first bite. Never the first bite.

Some days Stomach wins and Head shrugs, "Go figure? You should be sick now...and yet..." So it's a gamble and this seems to run in my family. The lactose-intolerance and the gambling, I mean.

...and I had a point...hmm...

Oh yes, I remember. I don't eat as much dessert as I would if I could, and I review food, and I want to do a review of the best desserts in Montreal. This is a conundrum. I am actually willing to sample small amounts of dairy-laden desserts for the good of Montreal readers, but since I've only been here two years, I haven't had enough opportunities to go after forbidden fruit. So I don't know all the hidden gems of the city's sweet-tooth. This is where you, the facilitator, comes in. I need recommendations, stories, addresses and names. The more information the better. When you think cake in Montreal, what do you envision?

In addition, I'm being particular. Here are my criteria:
1. A place that serves an individual piece of cake or pie or cheesecake (not little individual pastries, mille-feuilles, croissants and danishes like Première Moisson)
2. Not a counter patisserie. There must be somewhere to sit to enjoy this piece of cake. Even Cocoa Locale, who's renowned as the best cake-maker in the city, shouldn't really count as you can't sit and enjoy a single piece. You must buy a whole cake and take it to go. Though some cakes are smaller, they are still not meant to be eaten in a single sitting.
3. Preferably it should be open in the evening to have dessert after dinner. This is just to eliminate the bakery-style places and focus on café-style locations.
4. Somewhere you would go to celebrate a special occasion, but could also walk in on your own, and would certainly walk in because the place is known for its desserts
5. Not a fine dining restaurant with a ridiculously good pastry chef (a dessert sampling platter is not the kind of semi-casual indulgence I'm looking for)
6. Home made! Not factory-made. I'm on the fence about places like Rockaberry, Calories and Cheaters Dessert Bar. Definitely not worthy of the top of the list.


Here's what I have so far:

1. Le Figaro (Croissanterie)
2. Le Cagibi
3. Mamie Clafoutis
4. Crudessence
5. Cocoa Locale
6. Bilboquet
7. Cafe Beleze
8. Au Festin De Babette
8. Juliette et Chocolat
9. Calories
10. Cheaters Premium Dessert Bar
11. Rockaberry Tart

Le Figaro: I thought this was just a croissant and pastry place, but no, it makes its own beautiful cakes, is open late, encourages lingering, has a beautiful atmosphere (and terrasse in summer) and, well, is perfect if you can/choose to digest cream. You should eat their chocolate mousse cake. Three layers of...oh just eat it. Everything made fresh. All delicious.

Le Cagibi: Great atmosphere and great home-made desserts. They have a beautiful glass cake container that sits prominently on the end of their counter. It's not made there...but it is obviously home made (you can tell by the shape of the icing) and often the chili-laced brownies are brought in from Cocoa Locale.

Mamie Clafoutis: This is the sunniest, quietest, warmest place to hang out with dessert and a coffee, alone or in a group. Somewhere between a café and a take-out patisserie (I didn't know they had an upstairs full of plush chairs and games nights until a few days ago), this place won't sell you a piece of cake, but the Clafoutis are so unique and the atmosphere is so conducive to sitting and enjoying your dessert that I had to count it. Besides, it's open into the evening, meaning it's more than a place to pick up a sweet or loaf of bread and go. Definitely worth an after-dinner trip.

Cocoa Locale: Amazing date cake. Everyone seems to love the Valhora Chocolate cake, but I'm not sold on it. The chili brownies you can often find at Le Cagibi, your only option if you want to sit to eat that piece of dense chocolate. Since there's no actual place to eat in the shop, I only include it because you can buy her desserts at other places that think chairs are good ideas. Probably it's a good idea to keep nosy patrons out of your store post-purchase if your tiny kitchen is also your sales counter and you have a million cakes to bake by the end of the day. Let somewhere else encourage sitting.

Cafe Beleze: The owner here can be very rude...but even if he can't tell you what's in the cakes and loaves, and tells a lactose-intolerant person that maybe she should buy a piece of cake and see what it's like instead of asking so many annoying questions (very not okay), the cake shouts "home-made". One answer he did give was that the chocolate layer cake was made by a friend. No factory involved in this one, and it again showed in the roughly-applied icing. Way more love went into that cake than a cookie-cutter cake from Rockaberry...now if only the owner weren't so mean.

Bilboquet: Known for incredible ice cream (the original store on Bernard in Outremont serves bigger scoops than the one in Westmount or what you'll get at Java U...), the other desserts here are not to be missed. Though you're not going to walk in and start sharing an ice cream cake between a group of friends (hmm...), you get a beautiful choice of baked goods large enough to qualify as a dessert indulgence equivalent to a piece of cake. They may even have a cake that day.

Crudessence: Pop in any time of day for mousse, key lime pie or blueberry cheesecake (or whatever the chef has created) and enjoy a very different kind of guilty pleasure. Their desserts are refined sugar-free and are all vegan, but you'd never know the cheesecake was made with macademia and cashew nut purée until you're done and instead of feeling gittery from a sugar high, you feel full for the next 5 hours. Very full, and glowing.

Honourable mention:
Best Baklava: Afroditi Bakery. Not the Middle Eastern kind you find all over the city from take-out places to grocery stores, this baklava is the Greek version and comes swimming in honey syrup. More like a gooey pouding chomeur than a dry Christmas cake. If you live more downtown, you can also find their baklava at the PA Supermarket on rue du Fort. (I've heard tell that Ambrosia actually has the best baklava, but it's in Laval, not Montreal, so doesn't quite qualify for the competition. It definitely shouldn't be ignored, though). So baklava isn't cake, obviously, but you really can go to Afroditi and sit in a great space to enjoy your dessert of choice. The cakes you need to buy whole, putting this more in line with Première Moisson in terms of a place for buying and eating pastry with your Grandmother, but Première Moisson has nothing on the baklava, AND these guys are open late, encouraging a post-dinner excursion.

Qing Hua

Qing Hua

1676 Ave Lincoln
Montreal, QC
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7 out of 10

Maybe Dalian? From somewhere in China anyway...

There's one thing about this place that's really bothering me...Where in China does the food originate? China's huge and dumplings are ubiquitous. At first I thought it was from Qinghai which sits landlocked in the middle of China, next to Tibet. Then I thought it was from the south, then for about 10 seconds I thought it might come from Shanghai, then maybe Beijing, and now I hear it comes from Dalian, a coastal city in Liaoning Province to the Northeast, about halfway between Beijing and North Korea. So I have a lopsided triangle of dumpling-origin options on a map of the giant Chinese land mass.

Trying to detective dough through China is an almost thankless task. Only 'almost', because it fortunately results in some kind of dumpling or noodle even if you're wrong.

A million foodies and critics have written this place up already, so I don't need to tell you about some hidden gem where you just have to try the lamb and coriander steamed dumplings or the pork and cabbage boiled. They're tasty. Moving on...

What makes this place interesting is that the dumplings are home-made, there's apparently no added MSG, and you actually have to wait for your meal like the patient person that you are since your dumplings are made-to-order on a little counter visible from the dining room; magic hands shaping dough and fillings into carefully-wrapped bundles.


These are not wontons. These are not not dim sum steamed gauu. These are not Tibetan momos. These are not steamed Xiaolong bao buns, like the ones with curry beef and BBQ pork.

I was lucky to have a meal here with three Japanese gyoza connoisseurs, whose first reactions were emphatically that it was certainly not like gyoza. The dumpling wrappers were very thick and the filling was garlic-free. So I'm lead to believe these are Jiaozi, a generic term for wheat-wrapped dumplings, generally coming from the North of China.

At first I foolishly thought the restaurant's Chinese origins may be in Qing Hai. Maybe there was a spelling/pronunciation/translation issue between the name of the restaurant and the name of the region? I assume I'm wrong on this, but in a great reference book for Chinese food traditions, Beyond the Great Wall by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford, they give a jiaozi dumpling recipe from Qing Hai that says that lamb and coriander is a common substitute for ground pork in this region. Turns out lambs aren't stationary animals and, at some point in the thousands and thousands of years of Chinese history, made their way all across the country, not just to Qing Hai province. So I'm a fool. Supporting my Qing Hai region of origin theory, however, was the fact that for awhile this restaurant was offering "Magic" Noodles, noodles stretched from one long noodle, like a seemingly endless game of cat's cradle. Back to my Chinese reference book...

These are called Uighur Flung Noodles and come from Xinjiang, which borders Qing Hai to the northwest. Close enough geographically to allow a little bit of food tradition transfer. But apparently the chef who used to make these noodles has left, and to me that shouts that he wasn't part of the restaurant family. So maybe he's from that area but the restaurant owners and dumpling-makers are not? I don't know too many Chinese who leave their family restaurants, then go across the street and teach another restaurant's chef (at Maison du Nord) to make your special noodles.


Okay, so then I thought Shanghai. The dumplings are innapropriately called "soup-dumplings". Yes, they burst with liquid when you bite into them, (which is both hilarious and disastrous. Messy is fine, but projectile soup is definitely for the adventurous. Not what you want to eat when you have something to look presentable for after lunch or dinner. Of course, you could turn it into a game and come to the restaurant regularly with you soup-spitting team to practice, just get team bibs instead of uniforms), but I saw the dumplings being made and there's no soup actually put into the dumplings. Nor are they served in soup. It's just a few teaspoons of meat mixture. In Shanghai "soup-dumplings" are made by adding gelatinized soup to the filling, so when the dumplings are steamed the soup liquifies. Thus soup in dumplings. Gelatinized soup...tasty...but I figured this was wrong because nothing else here shouted Shanghai and it killed the "North thick wheat-wrapper theory". Probably the filling is just incredibly moist from the meat and moisture in the filling. Lamb is fatty and when it's as tender as it is in these dumplings, the juices would definitely squirt out. The other fillings are probably just not dry. They're maybe tenderized before? Kind of in the way that meat is pre-marinaded to make it tender for other kinds of cooking. Any other theories?

So then I figured Beijing, since Qing Hua University is built on the site of Qing Hua Garden, an imperial villa in Beijing. Finally I read that the restaurant was officially "Dalian", a good ways east of Beijing. Oh, I don't know. It's north, so thick dumpling wrappers still applied. Lamb is everywhere, so that wasn't a deal-breaker. It's sort of close to Beijing and the reference to Qing Hua Gardens. Screw it. If the rest of the world can take Asian cuisine and combine it with way too many other things to call it "fusion", why can't Chinese people make whatever kind of dumplings and wrappers they want? Take flour and water and wrap meat in it. I mean, Indians call them samosas, South Americans call them empanadas, Italians call them ravioli, Jamaicans and Trinidadians call them patties or doubles. Variations on a theme. So Chinese cuisine has fused a little and as long as no traditions are lost, we, the eater, are the beneficiaries.


So try the mackerel ball soup. Mackerel and green onion balls doused in lemon (to get rid of the fishy taste), in home-made broth. Who knows where these balls come from? It's a big argument for Dalian because it was my only coastal option. Fish don't even have to walk themselves to new regions, though, thanks to salt, smoke and freezer trucks. Try the dumplings boiled, steamed and fried and see what you like. Don't judge them against anything else. They're not trying to be anything but exactly what they are.

A few notes: The cooks use clothespins to identify the steamer baskets full of dumplings. It would be an awful day spent not knowing which basket was which, since the dumplings seemed to be all wrapped the same.

The cooks could be from different places and were trained one way by the restaurant owners. It may not have been just the Magic Noodle man from outside the family or region of origin.


You can order for pick-up, or buy some of the dumplings frozen at half the cost. You have to buy them in quantities of 30, apparently.

The miso soup and salad that come at the beginning of the meal are...nice because you'll be hungry waiting for the dumplings, but nothing special. Bean sprouts were way too sweet and miso was not the greatest quality. I'm fine with this because the restaurant obviously spent so much more time, money and effort making the dumplings well and with good-quality ingredients, and it's a nice thought to try to provide something to snack on since so many people complained about actually having to wait for their food when this place first opened. Geez, try making polite conversation with your dining companion...or read a book, maybe it will open your mind to being more considerate. Lamb doesn't grind itself, wrap itself with magically-chopped coriander in dough that's been kneaded, stretched and rolled, and stick itself in an appropriately-clothes-pinned steamer basket, then deliver itself to your table hot, fresh and perfectly-cooked.

Price: $8-$14 for 16 steamed dumplings

Expect To Pay: $15-$25 to be absolutely stuffed

Hours: 11am to 11pm everyday!
(438) 288-5366
Credit cards and interac not accepted! Cash only!

Ristorante Sapori Pronto

Ristorante Sapori Pronto

4894 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC
●●●●●●●●○○
8 out of 10

Italian

After a bit of disappointment at Le Samuel de Champlain, I decided to take one more kick at the Montreal Highlights Festival proverbial can. Everything should be sold out by now...but it's not. When I called for a reservation for Happy Hour at Italian restaurant Sapori Pronto I figured I'd get a quick "Non, c'est complet", all booked up. Instead, I was asked if my party would be staying for dinner afterward...As the dinner menu was a $75 5 Italian course, 3 glasses of Portuguese wine and 1 liqueur (I assume port) affair, I opted for the $25 Italian "snacks" and 3 glasses of Portuguese wine Happy Hour. At least partly based on common sense. Mostly out of nostalgia.

Happy Hour in Italy is an experience. Bars and lounges throw open their unpretentious doors to anyone looking for a 7 euro drink to be accompanied by what's supposed to be a snack, but in some places more than constitutes a meal of bar-type food. This is not North American nachos and wings. This is polenta, bruschetta, tapenade, thin-crust pizza, rice salads, pasta salads, prosciutto, melon, foccacia, and sometimes pastries. It's more of a buffet. So I was really interested to see how upscale Sapori Pronto would present Italian snacks. I assumed they would have a bar or lounge area in the restaurant where all the Happy Hour guests would sample the wines and snacks together - a kind of party atmosphere.

I suppose there's a reason this is Montreal and not Italy. I suppose there's also a reason this is a restaurant and not a bar. The atmosphere is old-school Italian. For the music, think an Italian version of Star Académie or Canadian Idol if it was made in the 60's. The place was empty and we were seated at a table...alone. No bar. You certainly can't set up a buffet for three people.

Naive, I know.

Not that the food or wine was disappointing. Our waiter was from Venice, and as he poured the first glass of a fairly sweet white Portuguese wine, he admitted he knew nothing about it. From a server at a good restaurant, this was a bit shocking...I'm quite sure he would never have admitted it to someone who looked like they could possibly know anything about wine (aka not me). Like the older gentlemen with nice watches who walked in an hour later. About Italian wines, however, he was an expert. He did come from the Veneto after all, and he was more than accommodating in telling me the Italian origins of the olive oil and balsamic.

After the white, a dry rosé. Again, it didn't seem particularly important to know anything about it. Just to know that it went well with the incredibly thin-crust spicy tomato-sauced pizza. The Italian snacks were very well executed, and were certainly a step up from even most Italian bars. The half pizza-circle of tomato was complemented by a second half of spinach pizza with cream and the tiniest dusting of parmesan. The pizza was for the table to share, but the next course of appetizers (hurray!) was presented on large individual plate: Mozzarella di bufala on giant slices of tomato, grilled zucchini, two kinds of salumi (I believe soppressa and prosciutto with melon), olive tapenade on crostini, and two potato croquettes.

It's really hard to avoid cheese in an Italian meal. I was bound to get sick. At least the cheese wasn't abused. It served its purpose and no more, to avoid masking other flavours. The pizza and the croquettes both had parmesan (though I was not warned about the croquettes...), and the mozzarella...well, I was given the zucchini as a replacement. The zucchini was heavily salted (I loved it...), grilled to perfection, and doused in olive oil, along with the otherwise bland, though meaty, field tomatoes. The fresh black pepper did spice it up a little. The kalamata olive tapenade was not too salty because it was diluted with so much calming olive oil, but the soppressa stole the show. The prosciutto was nothing special (though the melon was sweet and rich) ,and not worth more than a first bite, but the spicy flavour of the soppressa was absolutely perfect with the final red Portuguese wine offered (It came from Douro, the wine, but all the wines at the festival seem to come from Douro...so I'm afraid I'm of no help to anyone who would like to try this beautiful red). I very rarely eat pork, but this was worth it.

Oh, a note on Italian bread. It's not crusty baguette like France, and thus is not what you generally get in Montreal. It was a treat to have soft, creamy, fresh-from-the-oven small loaves brought to accompany the oil and balsamic. One of the meal highlights was our lovely Venician waiter pouring oil into little rectangular dishes for each guest, and topping them with artistic drops of balsamic vinegar. Kind of like if the server at a sushi restaurant lovingly poured each guests' soy sauce for them...but the wasabi unfortunately wouldn't be able to turn the result into an abstract work of Italian art.

This was certainly enough to have as a meal. For a grand total of $32 per person, three glasses of wine and a very authentic spread of Italian delicacies, this experience certainly would entice me to return the restaurant another time with a larger budget for what I'm sure would be an incredible evening of Italian gourmet from Chef Peppino Perri.

Price: $25 for 3 glasses of wine, pizza and antipasti

Expect to Pay: $32

Hours of Operation: Mon to Thurs: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m, Fri & Sat: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m, closed Sun
Payment: Amex, Debit Card, Diners Club, Mastercard, Visa, Cash

514 487-9666

www.saporipronto.com

Montreal Highlights Festival Review: The Perfect Wine and Cheese at the Micro Festival of Quebec Cheeses

It's days like this that remind me why I love this city. I can walk through an underground shopping mall and find 40 Quebec cheese producers snuggling up with a shocking array of Portuguese wines. Really there weren't that many wines, maybe 40, but what was there was of such high quality that Montreal and is truly spoiled right now.

All the cheese is overwhelming, so here's some help: walk into Complexe Desjardins and circle your way around the cheese counters. The offerings run the gamut from soft, unripened goats milk to organic semi-firm thermised (heated to a certain temperature but can officially be called unpasteurized. It falls somewhere between raw and pasteurized, but is unfriendly to lactose-intolerant people, making the title "unpasteurized" a little deceiving to those who expect it to mean 'raw'). Of course, there were bries and blues all averaging about $5 or $6 a block, but the real thing to do here is to have a little cheese and then direct your attention to the wines. For $5 you get 3 coupons which can be traded for 3 wine samples. Fortunately most of the producers are more than generous and will give you several samples from their collection with just one coupon. This is depending on type, of course. They will not give you several red wine samples and a few ports unless you're incredibly charming. My charm topped out at a business card to interview a chef at the Restaurant Nuances and 2 glasses of red from Esporao. That's quite enough charm for one day. You sample from one winery, go have a bite of cheese to clear the palette, sample from another, repeat palette-cleansing, and then try a final producer's offerings. By then you'll know what wine you liked and you can buy your favourite cheese to take home. The beauty of Quebec is that you get one wine glass when you purchase your sample coupons, and this wine glass can trek with you all around the Complexe. You could make it to the metro and the security would be none the wiser. In fact they certainly didn't seem to care where anyone trekked. You're not supposed to take wine outside of the wine sampling area (which had a coat rack for those intending to stay awhile!) but your empty glass has full access to the cheese sampling area. So traipsing back and forth is encouraged.

To make this review a bit more fun, here's what I propose: My favourite wines, paired with my favourite cheeses (though I'm sure you'll try all the cheeses if you make it there yourself). With the wines it's hard to know where to start and what's worth your valuable coupons. If there's no cheese that pairs well, I'll recommend a recipe or food pairing idea.

Jose Maria Da Fonseca

Definitely try these wines. Their white, an Albis 2008 (A very reasonable $12) is mostly Moscatel with a bit of the Portuguese varietal, Arinto. It's light and fruity. Not sweet, you could have it on its own as an aperitif, but you may find it deceptively water-like after the intense fruit smell. In fact the smell is a little more satisfying, though the wine is lovely. To keep your post-sniffing disappointment at bay I think it would go nicely with Fromagerie L'Ancetre's Emmental, a slightly sweet but mild cheese.

Jose Maria Da Fonseca also offers a Moscatel ($15, fortified, like a light port) that lands somewhere between an iced cider, a honeywine and a glass of melted butter. It's not overloaded with sugar, and makes for a very good digestif on its own. I had a grand chat with the representative about soaking dried fruit in it. He had just had a discussion with two women about using it in baking and I laughed because that was also my first thought. It would be a great replacement for rum or amaretto. Even cointreau. Bananas flambé or Disaronno-Soaked Apricot Loaf. It you want to keep the alcohol and the pungency of the wine either keep a small glass to sip on the side while eating the loaf, or use it as a glaze without cooking off the alcohol. Or just drink the apricot-soaking liquid when you are too impatient make the actual loaf. The producer also recommended trying it over baked brie.

Then there was Verlente, Sempa Duoro whose Amantis (A white wine at $27) was much more acidic than I had expected. Both it and the estate's Dona Maria would go well with an unripened goat cheese or maybe even the camembert-like offering from Fromagerie Pied-de-Vent. I wouldn't want to drink them on their own, but it would certainly be an acquired taste.

Two other very nice cheeses were from Fromagerie La Station. Both raw, they were very similar, just the older brother had 5 months or so on his younger sister. There was a distinct taste of orange in the rind, that was confirmed by the producer. Being light, neither would go particularly well with the very dry reds from Esporao. The Monte Velho (the less prestigious and less expensive at $13.24 a bottle) would be wonderful in a braised meat dish or coq au vin. Using a mixture of trincadeira (think similar to madeira or a cooking wine) aragines and catelao, the wine would be a happily-accepted gift for a dinner party or more than respectable for a meal at home. To step up a level, though, the Esporao Reserva at $24 is almost too strong to drink on its own and begs for red meat. The price jump is completely justified in this 'grand vin', and this wine should definitely be tried. Very smooth, dry, and exceptional.

A few hours spent over a selection of incredible wines and cheeses, talking with people who care as much about them as I do...heaven. 3pm wine and cheese. If you live in Montreal you can have this experience any day for the next week. Enjoy!

Valentines Day Dinner Reservations

I love Valentines Day. I don't love anyone in particular, but I love the hallmark holiday of special treats for someone you care about, or the excitement of someone new. Basically the excuse for a romantic day or evening where you show in some way, big or small, that you care about someone else. Call me a romantic, or call me naive, but I really believe that any excuse to celebrate is one worth taking, so why not spend the day trying to make someone else happy?

Then in walks the prix fixe dinner concept. Take a restaurant (of whatever quality), concoct a special table d'hote, prix fixe, meal, and watch the couples come like moths to a flame. What a nice idea to have a special meal, maybe splurge a bit, they think. But a restaurant can sense a gullible couple in love a mile away.

There's a Montreal Company, the Antonopoulos Group, that owns a lot of restaurants in the Old Port. At 5 of these restaurants they are advertising prix fixe meals: Aix Cuisine du Terroir, Suite 701, Narcisse, Verses and the Vieux-Port Steakhouse.

Aix Cuisine du Terroir is my favourite French restaurant in Montreal currently, Suite 701 is the ultra-hip lounge upstairs that serves generally less expensive meals out of the same kitchen. In this kitchen the lamb is cooked 5 hours. The gravlax is smoked in-house. I dream of these things. So when I found out there was a special menu for Valentines Day I got really excited and wondered where I could pick me up a date. Except the menu is pretty much exactly the same as the normal menu, thus negating the need for a significant or insignificant 'other' this Valentines...The smoked salmon is there as an appetizer again (though it's just the salmon this time. No arctic char and smoked scallop to go with it like normal. I somehow don't think the accompanying vodka vinaigrette was quite as much work to make...). The one vegetarian appetizer option is still in place (quinoa and goat cheese mountain stack, except they're calling it a salad now), and the veal sweetbreads are back, minus the incredible fig spread that usually accompanies. The amazing lamb is still one of the mains, served simply with roasted squash. Aix Cuisine's normal 3-course $45 prix fixe of pretty much the same dishes is a lot of money as is, but the food is so good...It's a good place to go for a very, very special occasion. The only real difference between this and the Valentines $65 prix fixe, however, is a grand total of one Quebec cheese course (or optional champagne and pineapple ice) and $20. That's a very expensive palate cleanser. $20? Really??

So you think you'll save a bit of money if you go upstairs to the Suite 701 lounge and order their prix fixe, right? Same kitchen, same high quality. There you get a three-course meal (EXACTLY the same menu, but with fewer options) for the low, low price of $50. But that's still a $5 mark-up from the fancier restaurant's everyday prix fixe of $45!

Taking advantage of happy couples is a sad, sad thing. They'll spend the extra money, either because they don't think there's a choice, this is what the restaurant is offering, or they think that it's a good deal. They're going to a fancy restaurant and it's a special occasion, so it's justified. You should be ashamed of yourself, Aix Cuisine and Suite 701. In fact, just a few weeks ago, there was a winter special on for their everyday prix fixe for $35. Same lamb. Winter's a slow season for restaurants. Valentines Day is the exception. So now there's a $30 price jump on pretty much the same meal. And you know you're going to want at least 1 glass of wine, maybe a bottle (it is a special occasion), and this is certainly not included.

So that's my favourite restaurant crossed off my Valentines Day wish list. What about the other restaurants' options?

Vieux-Port Steakhouse: You better like Clam Chowder, because you don't have a choice. You're getting it. This $45 prix-fixe just doesn't compare with Aix Cuisine's usual $45 menu. A plain salad of diced tomatoes and onions to start? Not exactly on par with foie gras...The only reason to go here would be for the surf and turf or the grilled meat shared platter. Very romantic to share a big plate of beef, lamb and shrimp with your loved one, also to stuff yourself on a steak AND a lobster tail. Gluttony is very attractive.

The most affordable of all the meals, at ONLY $35 for 3 courses, is Narcisse. You get a salad with raspberries, a decent choice of filet mignon, duck or shrimp (this will really depend on how good the chef is), and a molten chocolate cake. It's probably going to be fine, and it's probably actually an okay deal, but it's not fine-dining and the quality will not be as high as spending the same amount of money on a different night at a better restaurant.

Finally, Verses. This looks like an incredible restaurant. The menus are always stunning, and I'll admit I've never been there, but would love to go. Here you will get the house-smoked scallop I waxed poetic about at Aix Cuisine, as part of the 6-course $68 prix fixe. It's a gorgeous menu involving black truffle oil, cherries confit, tahitian vanilla, a sweet potato brandade accompanying porcini-mushroom coated cod, buckwheat risotto, rabbit stuffed with chorizo, and accompaniments of exotic chili sauce and garlic, butter and parsley croquettes. Who knows what a garlic, butter and parsley croquette is, but either it's mostly garlic (not a Valentines big-seller) or it's mostly parsley, and anyone who can make a croquette-like thing out of one of those is ingenious.

But for $68?? Plus wine, tip and tax...

You're not going to find anything affordable in terms of upscale Valentines Day restaurant dinners, but if you're looking for a unique menu that you can only take advantage of this one day in all the year, Verses is not a horrible choice. A much better idea would be to wait an extra day and then go to Aix Cuisine du Terroir, save a ton of money (it's all relative...), or get yourself a nicer bottle of wine, a digestif, and a lot more menu choice. Better still, braise your own Atwater market-bought Kamouraska rack of lamb for 5 hours...now that's a gesture. Of love? Maybe. Sorry, vegetarians. "Quinoa and goat cheese?" says Aix Cuisine.

Brocante Baleze

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Expect to Pay: With your self-esteem

Olives et Epices

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

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

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

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

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



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

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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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