Eating Through Montréal

Recently I was in Montréal for a week and spent some time eating my way through the city (at least for meals that weren't catered at the conference), and had a delicious time eating my way though various types of cuisine.

Olive et Gourmando
This restaurant in old Montréal is more of a café-type place that's open through lunch, and tends to specialize in sandwiches. This place tends to give off a hip feel and seating is generally pretty limited. I ordered a Mr Miami sandwich along with the soup of the day, and I was decently impressed with the food. The sandwich definitely was pretty substantial, and definitely a lot better than most others that you just see come out of a fridge into a sandwich press. The soup, which was some kind of chicken and feta soup, was very good and definitely unique. However it was pretty pricey at over 20 USD, which is right in line with the hip vibe (which I don't understand).

Stach Café
Stach Café is also in old Montréal and specializes in Polish food, which I very rarely encounter. The restaurant has definitely a quieter feel, and the pace of the meal seems deliberately slowed, providing a more relaxing time in the restaurant. The krokeit, a filled breaded crêpe, wasn't cooked all the way through, as the filling was warm while the outside was hot. The accompanying mushroom bechamel-like sauce, on the other hand, was most excellent. I also had a mixed plate of pierogis, which were pretty good, though the portion size was a little small. My favorite dish was the dessert, which was a peach cobbler with sweet cream (and probably the least polish thing I had).

Patati Patata
Patati Patata is a tiny restaurant, and takeout orders are pretty common. It's a place for good cheap burgers and poutine (and a beer as well), and you can have a full lunch for around 10 CAD. I had the patatine, which is poutine with some peppers, mushrooms, some other stuff, and extra sausage. Overall this was very good, and proof that good poutine doesn't have to be expensive.

Qing Hua Dumpling
This difficult to find restaurant in Chinatown basically does only dumplings and offers a wide variety of fillings. The steamed ones are very similar to soup dumplings, as there's quite a bit of soup (though it's sold as steamed dumplings). They're better than what you can find at Din Tai Fung in the states (to be fair the outlets in the US are far inferior to those in Asia). My main gripe is that the flat part of the steamer was woven bamboo, and the dumplings would start to stick to it after a while.

Au Pied de Cochon
This was the one nice sit-down place we went to during the week, and it definitely lived up to expectations. Reservations are difficult to get on short notice, and the only time I could get that week was a 9:30PM reservation. While it's a nice restaurant, it definitely can be very loud, and at times the waiter couldn't even hear us. The restaurant is highlighted by its many dishes containing foie gras, and it definitely didn't disappoint. We ordered foie gras poutine as an appetizer, and I'd have to say it was probably the richest poutine I ever had with generous portions of foie gras. I ordered the Plogue à Champlain, which is a huge piece of foie gras on top of some bacon and a pancake covered in a maple glaze. The foie gras melts in the mouth (for real, especially compared to any meat), and the maple wasn't overly sweet. Dessert was excellent as well, though they made a mistake and gave us a maple poudding chômeur instead of our pecan pie. The pudding was excellent, but the maple crème brûlée was very sweet. We ended up taking the pecan pie to go, and it still tasted good the next day despite the hardened crust.

Schwartz's Deli
The restaurant is pretty reminiscent of a cafeteria, with long shared tables in a small crowded space. The house specialty is smoked meat sandwiches, and you could get either a sandwich or a platter (with a heap of meat on one plate and bread on another) and request meat on the fattier or leaner side (or in between if you're into that kind of thing). The only other thing on the sandwich is mustard, making the meat the start of the show. The sandwich is amazing, with just enough fat on it to help it come apart as you eat it. The food there is also pretty cheap, considering how much meat you get in a helping.

Dic Ann's
Dic Ann's is a Canadian burger joint (and they also serve poutine) that serves a very thin burger. The whole thing put together might be around one inch in thickness. I found a Dic Ann's food truck, so it might be different from the dine-in establishments. The standard burger is just meat and a bun, as a burger with veggies is another menu item entirely (and I'm not sure the food truck carries those items). In addition to the option of having cheese, the burgers can also be dressed with some kind of sauce. Overall it's alright as a good fast-food burger, but definitely a unique approach to burgers.

Félix & Norton
Right next to the Dic Ann's truck at the old port of Montréal was this cookie truck, which also sold cookie ice cream sandwiches, with a square block of ice cream stuck between two cookies. I liked the cookies, and the added ice cream was nice in the warm afternoon, but overall this was good but not great.

Vua Sandwichs
I'm a huge fan of banh mi, so naturally I had to stop by. The offer two sandwich sizes and a wide variety of meats. I ordered both a grilled pork and bbq pork sandwich with extra veggies. For those of you that are familiar with Lee's Sandwiches, which kind of skimps on the filling, the portions of vegetables and meat were pretty generous and tasted pretty good. I was a little disappointed that they ran out of the coconut shake, but I ordered a mango shake and wasn't too pleased, as it tasted like (and definitely looked like) the added mango powder to a shake and just a tiny bit of actual mango.

My First Waffle House Experience

A few weeks ago I experience the southern staple for the first time. I actually had a chance last year when I was on the gulf coast and there was one right across the street from my hotel, but I couldn't quite get around to going there. This time, I was in North Carolina and there was a Waffle House around the corner, and I was not about to let this opportunity slip by.

As I was dining alone, I sat at the counter and began consulting the menu. Of course I had to get a pecan waffle, and since I eat a lot, eventually decided upon adding a side of hash browns. I also threw in a salad to pretend like I was eating healthy (especially since this was the last night of a 4-day trip in North Carolina and I hadn't been eating particularly healthy at all). After all of that I added a Texas bacon cheesesteak melt since I was still a little hungry.

Naturally with the Waffle House you're not expecting gourmet food, but instead something that's always reliable. I was generally pleased with the food-I was a big fan of the waffle, and the pecan was a great addition. Perhaps I should consider adding nuts to my breakfast items next time I'm at Portage Bay. The hash brown was typical, and wasn't too starchy. The melt was definitely interesting, as the bread itself went on the flat-top and the cheese was added at the very end (right before the cooked meat was placed on top of it). It did taste a little cheap, like something that might come out of a freezer box. Overall good, but not great, but that's what you expect when you come the Waffle House. Perhaps next time I should go late at night to see how that goes.

On Sequels

Movie sequels are an interesting proposition. There needs to be enough new material to keep the sequel fresh while maintaining the old jokes and storylines from the previous film(s). As is the case with most sequels, they're pigeonholed into a half-assed effort to mostly ride out the money train into the sunset, complete with forced laughter and awkward character development (if at all-looking at you Star Wars). Of course there usually has to be a popular reception to the previous film(s) before a sequel can even come out.

Or so I thought, until recently.

I had actually watched the second movie of Don't Go Breaking My Heart  《单身男女2》before I watched the original. For those of you not versed in Chinese films, they're some combination of martial arts, fantasy, and love story, and in this case, it was a love story (love stories to be accurate, as it involved a love pentagon). The sequel was decently palatable without that much forced character development. It probably helped that the love stories weren't overly schmoozy and over the top. Additionally a couple of new characters helped liven up the story. The first movie, on the other hand, was too lovey dovey (though that plays right into the hands of a typical Chinese love story) and development was pretty poor. The relationships seemed forced and chasing the girls seemed quite petty. In general I felt that they could have done without the first film and left the second one as a standalone.

I'm just glad at this point Spaceballs 2: The Search For More Money won't come to fruition.