Category Archives: Trips

The Holiday in Montreal… version 9.0

Posted on by

IMG_0659Over time, I blog less about my personal trips to Montréal, largely because they’re only of real interest to me. But sometimes, my enthusiasm overwhelms my better judgment.

That’s fine: I’m excited to be returning to Montréal for yet another holiday – the ninth installment of a vacation which remains one of the great highlights of the year.

Last year, I spent nine days in Montréal, followed by five days in San Francisco. This year, I’m flipping it around: five days in Montréal and then to San Francisco for a week, ending on New Year’s Day.

I’ve written before about some of the reasons I love the city, so I won’t go into greater detail. I’ll just say that I’m excited to be going back; I’m excited about seeing familiar sites and new ones; and I’m excited that we will likely have snow this year. It’s been awhile.

Where are we going to eat? Thought you’d never ask. The list is a collection of old favorites and new places, but each one has a familiar connection:

  • Les 400 Coups: We’ve eaten at restaurants run by Marc-André Jetté, Patrice Demers and Marie-Joseé Beaudoin since 2008 (Laloux, Newtown were the others). Their food gets consistently better with each year and 400 has quickly gained a reputation as one of the best restaurants in the city.
  • Liverpool House: This is my preferred star in the Joe Beef constellation. As I’ve written before, Joe Beef seems to attract a larger tourist crowd, while Liverpool House gives off more of a local vibe. I think that distinction blurs as the Joe Beef empire continues to grow, but Liverpool House feels more like the neighborhood (speaking of which, Little Burgundy is changing rapidly).
  • Le Chien Fumant: This little 20 seat bar in the Plateau is gaining more attention by the year. A friend in the city tipped us off to it in 2010, and we’ve been going back every trip, for house-made charcuterie and the delicious, meat heavy dishes that define Montréal dining in the cold winter months. It’s a favorite.
  • Nora Gray: That same food-savvy friend gave this place a rave review last year when it was still new and was getting decidedly mixed reviews from the Yelp and Chowhound crowd. We gave his recommendation a higher priority, and we were rewarded with a wonderful Italian meal. We’re going back. Nora Gray also made this year’s Best New Restaurants list in enRoute.
  • Maison Publique: Speaking of restaurants that have been on the receiving end of a fair amount of crankiness from Yelpers and Chowhounders… there’s the brand new Maison Publique in the Plateau. Derek Dammann was at the helm of DNA, which was one of the true gems of Old Montréal until it closed this summer. He’s partnered with Jamie Oliver in the new place, but I want to be careful to note that this is Dammann’s restaurant; Oliver is an investor. What are people upset about? Do you actually care? You shouldn’t, and neither do we. Dammann is smart and innovative; he has a command of offal and a long commitment to Canadian wines (here’s the December 2011 wine pairing gallery from DNA); his food is delicious. (Want to read Marie-Claude Lortie’s review from La Presse? Here ya go.)

There’s a lot more to Montréal: there’s incredibly good coffee. My favorite is Café Myriade, where the city’s Third Wave (arguably) began. It’s on Mackay and has just opened a second location at 251 St-Viateur Ouest. There’s Olive et Gourmando, which continues to delight and, possibly, exasperate in the Old City. There are great museums; this year’s choices, based on current exhibitions, are likely to be the McCord Museum and the Fine Arts Museum. There’s the daily workout at Nautilus Plus on Ste-André and Ste-Catherine. There’s the Underground City, which is a lifesaver when your adventures outdoors turn especially frigid. And there are the crowds of shoppers. What was once Boxing Day has morphed in Boxing Week, much to the relief of nervous retailers. And there’s the rustic beauty of Quebecois French, which remains one of the most beautiful sounds in the world to me.

Can you tell my holiday is approaching? Four days and counting!

A Trip to Montreal in the Summer

Posted on by

I’ve made annual trips to Montreal since 2004, in some years more than one trip. But I traveled to the city only once in summer: 2005. And my view of the city has been shaped almost entirely by cold weather, brisk wind, and snow.

So, three weeks ago, in mid-June, when I landed in Montreal without my coat and gloves and scarf and sweaters… and looked around me and saw green grass and trees in full bloom, well, it was a different city.

Montreal is a different city in summer. The city gets a lot of winter tourism, but it’s swarming with visitors in the summer months. The sun rises early, sets late, people eat outdoors. I won’t go much further with this because that description applies to summer everywhere. But seeing it in summer again after so long gave me a chance to enjoy Montreal in new ways.

How so? Like taking a long walk outdoors in the evening. Two of the nights we were there, we ate at restaurants in the Plateau and then walked back to the hotel. Another example: aimless sightseeing. In winter, the weather conditions force one to be economical about time spent outdoors, so while I walk a lot, in winter my trips are less whimsical. I loved wandering down streets, or deciding at the last minute that I was near a favorite cafe, making a detour for an iced coffee.

Now I really am going to stop talking about this, but I’ll close by saying that I’m so biased about the superiority of Montreal in winter; however, I’m planning more warm weather trips there, too.

Happy Canada Day… and Stand By for the 2012-06 Report

Posted on by

flags of Quebec and Canada

A quick note to say Happy Canada Day and to put you on alert that I do have some words and pics coming out this week about the Montreal trip in mid-June.

I returned to Boston on June 18th and right back into the whirlwind of work. The holiday-shortened week will give me an opportunity to get back up to date on posts. What I’ll say right now is that it was wonderful fun, even though it was much abbreviated compared to the holiday visit. But really nice to be outdoors in Montreal without a coat, and gloves, and hat, and scarf. And so nice to see the city when it’s green. This despite the love of fall and winter that seems to be a part of my DNA.

Well, there’s more to come!

Eating Montreal: The June Edition

Posted on by

We’ll be in Montréal next weekend for a few days of relaxation, the obligatory workouts at the gym, and some really great food.

As with every trip to Montréal, and this is my tenth, I’m pretty low key about planning activities. The general framework for a day is breakfast, some kind of tourist kind of activity, an invigorating workout, coffee at a café, cocktails, and then dinner. Next day, repeat.

The gym is Nautilus Plus in the Village, the coffee is at Café Myriade, cocktails are traditionally at the W Hotel, and dinners…

Friday 6/15 Les 400 Coups
Saturday 6/16 Le Filet
Sunday 6/17 Le Comptoir

This is a change from the original plan. I’ve wanted to drop in on Le Filet. Lesley Chesterman gave it a mixed review in the Gazette in 2011, but it had only been open for a couple months and it has some great names behind it (Claude Pelletier and Hubert Marsolais). And it popped up on some 2011 year-ender lists, including Marie-Claude Lortie’s in La Presse.

Tourist type activities? I want to go to the McCord Museum, which I’ve not been to. It’s a great city museum and there’s a good permanent exhibition on the history of Montréal that I’d like to see. What else? Nothing planned, but I can imagine I’ll spend a lot of time outdoors, since this is the first time in seven years that I’ve been to Montréal when the temperature was warmer than 40 degrees!

photo credit: Flickr/NedraI cc

Montreal 2012-06

Posted on by

Since 2006, my trips to Montréal have limited to an annual vacation for the Christmas holiday. It’s grown from three days to as many as ten days, so I’ve had a lot of time to absorb the vibes of my favorite city. But distance and cost reduced my options the rest of the year.

Seven weeks ago, I moved to Boston. For the first time, I’m within easy driving distance and airfares are around $200 less roundtrip, compared to my previous location.

And so, I’ll be spending a long weekend in Montréal on June 15-18! The annual holiday trips traditionally get a version number (2011 was v.8) but trips inside the year will officially be designated as yyyy-mm. Errr… so…

As is my wont, I’ve spent some time thinking over the restaurant choices. Here’s our plan:

For such a short trip, by comparison, the plan was easy: pick a restaurant we’ve been to before, and add two new ones to the mix.

400: I’ve written more about Marc-André Jetté, Patrice Demers and Marie-Josée Beaudoin and their restaurant homes, than any other chefs on my blog. These three (Beaudoin oversees the wine program) have created an exceptional restaurant and it continues at the highest level. It’s one of a tiny number of Montréal restaurants that are Michelin caliber.
Comptoir: People in the service industry consistently list this restaurant among their favorites, if you ask them. That’s a good sign. I’ve had this buried in my list for a couple years, and it rises to the top for 2012-06.
Chronique: Similar story… this restaurant has been on the list for probably 3-4 years, always hovering in the wings, never called upon. So it gets a spot in the dining list.
Activities: besides the obligatory daily workouts at Nautilus Plus, I think we’ll check out the McCord Museum. And as much as I love Montreal in winter, I’ll be excited to see the city in summer for the first time since 2005.
Looking ahead to Montréal v. 9.0 in December: still in the early planning stages, but for meals, I’m thinking of an homage to the chefs who have played a role in making Montréal in the modern era. Normand Laprise, Graziella Battista, Martin Picard, David McMillan and Federic Morin, Derek Damman, Marc-André Jetté and Patrice Demers, among others.
I think it will be fun!

Photo: The kitchen, as seen from the bar: Le Chien Fumant

December 20, 2012: Eating at the End of the World

Posted on by

It’s never too early to plan for The End of the World, right?

On December 20th, our last night of life as we know it, where will we be? We’ll be having champagne at the Plateau Lounge at the W Hotel, followed by dinner: Au Pied de Cochon.

It seems only fitting that we end the world with a world-ending mound of foie gras.

(yes, I will be making dinner reservations for 12/21)

Where will be you eating on the night before the world ends? :)

Montreal: Talking About the Food

Posted on by

I’ve published pictorials for Les 400 Coups, as well as the tasting menu and wine/beer pairings at DNA, and that’s just about all you’re gonna get for pics from this year’s restaurants. One of the downsides of eating at a bunch of fun bistros is that it’s dark: no workable photos.

Perhaps that’s for the better because I tend to put the phone away and enjoy the meal, and my friends, more.

But in lieu of pictures, here are some thoughts that can serve as an addendum to my pre-holiday post about food.

This year’s menu:

I wrote earlier this month that I think the bistro is one of the best expressions of great eating in Montréal. In fact, there’s a cranky argument on Chowhound right now about whether Montréal has world class restaurants. I don’t think it does, but I don’t give a crap: for me, the issue isn’t world class, it’s about good food, and how a city expresses itself in its restaurants.

So where were we? Ah yes, the bistro. I made most of the 2011 trip a celebration of the bistro. Nora Gray, Chien Fumant, and Liverpool House are small format bistros, seating around 40 at the maximum (Liverpool House somewhat more than that). Le Local and Garde Manger are larger format bistros. Bonaparte is old-style French fine dining, and Les 400 Coups and DNA are what I would characterize as modern fine dining. So, when you look over the list, that’s four nights of bistros out of eight.

The best meals we ate this year? Here’s our top four:

  1. Les 400 Coups
  2. DNA
  3. Le Chien Fumant
  4. Liverpool House

I’ll let the pictorials of Les 400 Coups and DNA speak for themselves. Le Chien Fumant and Liverpool House excel at offering ever-changing menus of delicious food: pork belly, calamari, halibut, duck confit, charcuterie, etc, etc. Both have enjoyable and affordable wine lists. But both get a push over the top for their ambience – their vibe – and the quality, friendliness and attentiveness of their service. Garde Manger is good, loud, fun, but it doesn’t surpass the aforementioned. Nora Gray is so new it’s hard to make a sweeping comment about it, especially after only one meal, but it shows real promise, it’s a pioneer in the neighbourhood and it nicely straddles the Italian food Nonna used to make and the stylistic characteristics that define modern Italian cuisine. Nora Gray bears watching, and we’ll likely go back.

One extra note about all those bistros: it’s probably just me, but after about five days, all I wanted was a vegetable. Or an ethnic meal. PLEASE! Well, that’s my fault… and I’ve made a note to address that meat overload in next year’s planning, probably with a lighter meal of some kind on one of the nights. It’s all in how you stack the deck when you’re planning meals, and there’s also the reality of dining in winter when local fresh vegetables are out of season.

What are priorities for next year? Each year’s dining list is a mix of old favorites and new entrants. Next year, I’ll add a couple new places – Le Comptoir is one, the other to be determined. Au Pied de Cochon will return because we’ve not been there since 2008, and so we’ve just now finished working off the caloric input from that meal. Besides, since the world is ending on December 21, 2012, it would only be right to have five different preparations of foie gras for our Last Meal on Earth. (Yes, I will be making reservations after 12/21, so you know where I stand on the End of the World question.) And I’m going to try very hard to find a cool, comfortable place for dinner on Christmas Eve. Bonaparte is enjoyable and good, but I’ve eaten there every Christmas Eve since 2004.

Suggestions? Let me know!

Making the Most of Montreal This Year

Posted on by

I’ll have more to say about this year’s holiday in Montréal in the coming days, but a few brief impressions.

This was the warmest, most snow-free trip there. We had several days of temperatures in the 20’s, 30’s and even 40’s F. There were three brief snow “events” – by which I mean flurries. On Christmas Day, you could probably have called it light snow. I’ve written that you can experience everything on a winter vacation there, so I’ll note we also had rain a couple days, and freezing rain one evening. The weather made going outdoors and getting around a lot easier, even if it robbed us of that quintessential experience of a walking through a snowy Old City at night.

The western end of St-Paul is changing so quickly. It was, and remains, less of a tourist trap than the east end, where you’ll find the t-shirt and souvenir shops and more of the lower end galleries. Tourists making the westward trek have had Olive et Gourmando as their reward for years now, and the rest of St-Paul Ouest now features more high end clothing and other shops. I like that it developed later and that it has taken on a different character than its eastern half.

St-Paul and St-Francois Xavier is now very noisy most nights. Santos has become a popular club and every year, the raucous noise outside has grown. I stay a couple doors down from Santos, and I wouldn’t trade my view of St-Paul for anything, but 6 of the 9 nights I stayed there this time, I was awakened by the revelry around 2 or 3am. There’s been a steady increase in the noise level as more locals and tourists go there each year. The warmer weather plays a role in that, too.

The Centre d’histoire de Montréal, the city history museum, on Place d’Youville, was an enjoyable and informative stop. If you’re at all interested in the history of Montréal, it’s by no means exhaustive (it’s designed to appeal to all ages), but it’s a good place to begin your exploration. The current exhibition on three Lost Neighbourhoods of Montreal, was an excellent, thought-provoking piece about city planning. It was an undercurrent of the rest of our stay, popping up often. I’d had this museum on my list to visit for several years, and I would likely go back in future years to check out the temporary exhibits.

Monday: Here’s Your Teaspoon of Snow

Posted on by

And there’s your Christmas snowfall, folks. Yup, not even a centimeter. And in the afternoon, it warmed up to 5°C and then it rained. So this is the 2011 variant of the Montréal holiday.

Hey, we can live with it, even if we’d prefer to see snow.

One note about yesterday – our dinner at Le Local was delicious, although a rocky experience. I think we hit the restaurant just at the moment when it was slammed, or something else was going on, but we waited about 70 minutes for the appetizers to arrive. (Tartares, which as you know don’t require cooking.) By that time, we’d already finished the first bottle of wine and the two pieces of bread delivered to each of us.

Well, this could turn into your standard Yelp review, but it won’t. This was my third dining experience there; my friends have been there 4 times. Our experience was clearly an anomaly, although we were surprised that no one really seemed to understand what was going on, nor did anyone try to explain much. But if you dine out often, you can feel when the rhythm is off. Servers felt it, the kitchen seemed to, we did.

Sh-t happens, as they say. It was a bad night and everyone has a bad night. What didn’t change was the quality of the food, which was excellent. We loved everything we ate, we drank delicious wine (Local’s list has a lot of US wines, interestingly, and it’s a well-curated list), we had a nice server, who even comped the desserts once everything got back on the rails.

We were determined not to have a bad time or raise a ruckus, and the result was still a great evening with good food and conversation. We’ll go back.