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.