food highlights: august

Let's take a spin through August's eating haul, shall we? Let's just say I indulged...

We went to Le Pégase for our anniversary dinner. It's an amazing French restaurant that serves high quality food and still allows you to bring your own wine. We drank a special bottle to celebrate one year of extreme tolerance of one another's quirks to the point of finding them nothing short of adorable. The young French waiter was suitably impressed by our rock star dark side of the moon wine. He asked us how our "Pink Floyd" wine was and I told him it certainly didn't taste of hallucinogens and dark thoughts. My mom got this special bottle for Matt as he is a true Floyd fanatic.

I had the venison tataki, served with crispy sweet potato, cranberries and cumin. I liked it but had food envy. (Matt always chooses the best thing on the menu by fluke or by intuition--who knows?) He had a salad of magret de canard.

For mains I had this lovely piece of turbot type fish with smoked salmon mousse, that sinfully sweet stuffed tomato with a fennel salad. Again, food envy ensued because Matt had lamb, and it was so perfectly prepared that I learned exactly why people love eating these beautiful fluffy animals. It's because they taste damn good.

Dessert time! Classic creme brulée for me.

Matt sniffing the Quebec cheese platter. His love affair with cheese will sustain him through life, just look at him!

Moving on to other delicious times...

Yoshi's daily creation: her leek and patty pan pizza at Café Petit Gateau. What a tasty place to have lunch.

 Parental units bonded over seafood at Teklenburg's. Fun times. Turns out, if you are from a small town and dating someone from the same small town, your parents will have many, many shared connections.

Authentic ramen, I mean pulled by hand and dropped into a pot of boiling water before your very eyes. A crazy huge portion for less than 10 bucks. In the Faubourg. Go.

Tasting my very first roasted loin of pork, prepared by Matt. I'm a lapsed vegetarian, remember? 

DROOOOOL

Sparrow by day, Sparrow by night

Sugar Shack Brunch/ Drinks at Sparrow let's do this!

 Part 1: enter one of Montreal's nicest gastropubs with an empty stomach begging to be filled with a variety of pork products smothered in mother nature's tree candy liquid.

Start off with some proper French Canadian split pea and ham soup. Just like mémére makes. Enjoy the fact that it's in a dainty cup, as you know this is only the beginning of a maple pork orgy.

Feves au lard et patates! Ouin!!!!

This meat pie killed it. I am not a fan of pie crust. It's like Sparrow read my mind because they used some kind of buttery croissant crispy topping. It was amazing. Drizzle the lot liberally with maple syrup and bang your fist on the table because it is so. Damn. Good. 

Will you get a load of that sausage? It's almost obscene. When you taste something like this you understand why pigs had to die. 

For the rest of the day, do not eat. Just walk around in a carb fueled daze and enjoy the ride. You're no lumberjack but you just ate like one. Maybe try and go climb a tree, or something.

Part 2: Sparrow by night y'all! Bring your parents here, they'll love it. This here is a French 75, maybe because it consists of 75% alcohol? Prosecco, gin, lemon, vermouth. Get some!  Random fact about these wide cup champagne glasses: they became fashionable in the 18th century and were apparently modeled after Marie Antoinette's breasts. I'll drink to that! I kind of wish her boobs would have been a tad larger though, because this drink was delicious.

Daddio's gin martini--Tanqueray 10. Nothing but the best for the Bond emulator. Actually, it was stirred, not shaken.

I love the look of this bar. Suitably vintage/British for this food snob.

Dad and Mom. Best 8 dollar Cosmo in town.

Party time, excellent! 

Milos

I like to talk about food with people, especially to find out about restaurants I should check out. Many references are often made about Milos, and how it's the best greek restaurant in Montreal. I decided to put this claim to the test. I don't really have a true reference point, not having ever been to Greece, but in my mind I pictured fresh and simply prepared food with lashings of olive oil. And that's pretty much what I got. I was transported to Adriatic bliss without even leaving my neighbourhood.

Freshly toasted bread and their own brand of olive oil. The charred crunchiness contrasted beautifully with the fresh and bright taste of the oil.

Debating whether to pay ten bucks for a glass of wine, or a ten dollar supplement to have grilled octopus, it really was no question. This was so worth it! The octopus was really very tender with a nice meaty charcoal bite. 

Cristal started with the classic tomato and feta salad. 

Olga had a double barreled salmon meal. Her starter--smoked Atlantic salmon.

Freshly grilled tsipoura fish...flown in from Greece. Not eco-friendly but tasty nonetheless.

A giant bouquet of fresh flowers. Classy! 

A classy and unassuming facade. It matched the food: simple, fresh, clean and delicious. What was also fun was that the atmosphere and the clientele were unlike any other Montreal restaurants. My friends and I wondered where all these sophisticated people came from. Milos is a great excuse to get dressed up and eat some really fantastic food.

Restaurant Arepera

Rue Duluth in the heart of Montreal's vibrant plateau always promises yummy good times. There is an abundance of "bring your own wine" restaurants which can make your nights out way less expensive and way tipsier at times. But, I was with my friend (with whom i like to lunch) or "chum de fille" as you will, for a lunch date--so no wine this time. We had better plans: to consume hearty, flavourful, exotic...Venezuelan food!

We headed to the corner of Duluth and De Bullion to check out the restaurant, aptly named Arepera as it serves the traditional arepas. Not sure what that is? Neither was I. The handsome and friendly waiter was very happy to explain that arepas are a type of white corn flour chewy bread stuffed with delicious meats and vegetables of all kinds. Sounded good to me!

We went with the chicken and avocado arepa. Hoder, qué bueno! It tasted like chicken salad suspended in the creamiest guacamole imaginable. Pleasure synapses fired in my brain--the combo of carbs from the corn bread, fat from the avocado, and protein from the delicious fresh chicken just flooded my limbic system and made my brain and taste buds very, very happy.

We also ordered a "plato" which comes with the meat or veggie stew of your choice, rice, black beans, fried plantain. Oh the plantain..., is there another substance that lends itself better to a quick bath in piping hot oil? I don't think so! You eat all of this with another mini-arepa and amazing homemade sauce. Avocado sauce, and homemade hot sauce with chipotle peppers. I will be back to Arepera just for those sauces. Trust me.

You can't say the food at Arepera isn't fresh. The cooks were grabbing produce off of the display to make our lunch. Beautiful. 

The interior is clean, bright, and warm. All the elements you need for lunching on a cold winter's day.

A hammock in the restaurant, why not? You might need this after stuffing your face with delicious arepas...I settled for a brisk walk home, feeling full and satisfied.

Laurier's chicken shack

I have this friend with whom I like to lunch. We have sort of become the ladies who lunch. Not that we have the time or the money to do so, but hey, you only live once, so why not shirk responsibilities and throw down the credit card once and a while? Not that this meal was expensive; I am rapidly learning that lunches are way cheaper than dinners. The same held true during our excursion to Gordon Ramsay's re-hauled Chicken Shack on Laurier, in Montreal. It's not so much a chicken shack as a classy rotisserie. The decor was pretty much the antithesis of the "before" looks on Kitchen Nightmares. Whitewashed wood on walls, dove grey banquette seats and lovely brown exposed beams. The place was spotless. I also really enjoyed the oversized pickle jars on each table to eat to your palate's content. I am a huge fan of pickles.

My companion and I both decided to get the prix fixe lunch menu. A very good deal for 14.95$, plus you don't really need to eat for the rest of the day! Choice of soups or salad, many chicken and non-chicken mains, and amazing homemade deserts.

We both decided to go for the salad. How many times have I watched Gordon verbally bitch-slap bad restauranteurs for the quality of their produce? Too many. But he obviously takes his own advice.

The salad was perfect. Nice touch with the shaved fennel.

Nice thigh! The chickens are local, grain-fed and presumably have a life before becoming sustenance for my body.

Everything tasted awesome. The service was courteous and prompt, except they forgot to bring our drinks before the food came. Give 'em hell, Gordon!

There was a great selection of homemade deserts. This here is the chocolate cream pie. It was crazy good!

I would go back just to have another taste of the bread and butter pudding. 

Check out those caramelized pecans! 

Brunch at Fabergé

Last month we took our fine selves out to brunch at Fabergé. I found this place by accident when I sat down on a bench outside the resto to eat a sorbet in the Mile End. A lovely waitress came outside and suggested I check out their herb garden in the back. I wasn't even going to eat there, but she said it was alright so off I went down the alley and found an oasis of herbs and flowers in a sunlit corner.

There I met chef André who was more than happy to show me around the garden. He was extremely knowledgeable about his herbs, and shared with me all the wondrous ideas he has for these lovely ingredients.

They even have a pond with a resident turtle.

They're growing stevia by the bushel to use in their shakes. I broke off a leaf and tried fresh stevia for the first time! So herbal and uber sweet.

All kinds of peppers to make all kinds of spicy deliciousness.

Ah, one of my favourite herbs. The mighty lemonbalm. Picks you up and mellows you out, all at the same time. That goes into their epic fruit shakes, along with the stevia.

After spending a lovely time in the garden, I vowed to make it back to check out their brunch.

It was nearly harvest time in the community garden.


We brunched on a quiet Monday afternoon. Fabergé is all about breakfast, hence the name (get it? Fabergé eggs?) There were a couple of flat screen TVs playing old school cartoons. Perfect for the pre-breakfast hunger bitchiness, you can actively ignore the people around you and wait for your food. Or something.

There are comfy booths with pillows, and a perfect open window view to the outside world.


First up. I had to get that smoothie in me. It did not disappoint. Fruity, herbal and sweet, I felt amazing after drinking this and I was tempted to order a second one.

Trying not to chug it back...it was so good!

Next up, we ordered food. Since we were both on a cleanse, there was no bread joy to be had. Fabergé has all kinds of amazing bread, from cheese to raisin, to banana. To be honest, there were quite a few things on my "avoid" list, so I stuck to the basics: omelette!


Here we have a roasted red pepper and tomato omelette, with a side of salsa. Some potatoes and fruit finish off the meal.


The omelette was fresh and fluffy, with a slight sweetness from the roasted peppers. Seeing as I was on a cleanse, I found the potatoes a little greasy. I'd like to see them do a roasted potato rather than throwing them in the deep-fryer. No complaints of the fruit salad though, there was a nice mix of more exotic fruit like pineapple and strawberries.

Overall, I am super pleased I found this place. The service is friendly, prompt and laid-back, the menu is not so huge as to be overwhelming (think typical breakfast fare with a twist) and they offer vegan options. Do check it out!