DINNER December 29, 2009

I don’t really eat tartare in winter. To me it is such a quintessentially warm weather dish that I gloss right over it on menus from October to April. But friends invited me to Marche 27 on this frigid December evening and since its reputation is for tartare (and for having very little else on the menu) I was more or less cornered. The restaurant looks like a high-end lunch counter: refrigerated display cases and  marble topped tables with aluminum chairs dominate the room while antiseptic white tiling rises into layers of colored tiles and finally to blackboards stretching to the ceiling. Continue Reading…

DINNER December 19, 2009

I only knew two things about Resident: it had been named one of the top five spots for comfort food in the city by Elle Québec and they served a mini-Thanksgiving dinner plate  for one. The first point didn’t seem like much of an endorsement, but the second did. While I would like to claim that it was an insatiable lust for the taste of Thanksgiving that led our group of 20 to Resident on this blustery December evening, the truth is that we couldn’t get into Le Local.  Rather than opting for the humdrum bistro offerings of the group menu at Holder, our little band chose the road less travelled, making our way to the outskirts of civilization (the eastern periphery of Old Montreal) and into the warm embrace of Resident. Continue Reading…

LUNCH December 17, 2009

As a rule, I don’t like to spend my own money at Queue de Cheval, but news of a $27 lunch menu was too intriguing to resist. Although it had been a few years since my last visit, I had become pretty comfortable thinking of Queue de Cheval as Montreal’s best steakhouse. This isn’t to say that I particularly like the place, but in the world of steakhouses you can’t play in the big leagues without dry aged beef, and you can count the number of Montreal steakhouses serving dry aged beef on one finger. Steakhouses have a very simple business model: you buy the best products, prepare them in a simple manner, serve them in big portions and present a hefty bill at the end of the night. One look at the dry aged steaks at the take-out counter , and you know Queue de Cheval undersands the first step. But, surprisingly, there were a few more issues with the second step than I anticipated (steps three and four went pretty much as planned).

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Reviews and photos from our October trip to Paris are posted under Food Travel. Drop me a line if you know of any can’t miss spots for the next trip. So much to eat, so little time.

- Thelonious

DINNER December 4, 2009

Crescent Street is one of my least favourite places in Montreal. Most of the businesses scream “low-rent” (with apologies to the Hugo Boss Red Label store) and the restaurants seem more likely to give you hepatitis than a good meal. Newtown, even in the days it was owned by washed-up race car driver and failed minstrel Jacques Villeneuve, always seemed a little too smart for its surroundings. And once the new owners lured up and coming chefs Marc-André Jetté and Patrice Demers away from Laloux to this gaudy part of Montreal, the food promised to become a lot smarter as well.

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DINNER November 13, 2009

When I eat outside my cultural boundaries I tend to be concerned about the authenticity of what’s on the plate. It’s an interesting concern. You’d think that when venturing into a foreign cuisine one’s main concern would be that it taste good not that it be authentic. Like many foodies, I have been known to pester friends of all nationalities for the inside scoop on where their community is eating. Which is what led me to Jounieh, which an Egyptian friend described as the only worthwhile Egyptian restaurant in Montreal.

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