Montreal, Teil Drei

This post is all about the gruesome deliciousness that was our anniversary dinner at Au Pied de Cochon. The whole experience was really quite obscene. That said, I would totally go again.

When I made reservations, I asked to sit at the bar. It was really entertaining to watch the controlled chaos in the kitchen, and how quickly dishes were assembled and sent out.

To start, we had a couple orders of the Fois Gras Cromesquis - little deep fried nuggets of hot sweet richness that melt in your mouth. This was followed by our two appetizers - the bison tartare temaki (handrolls) with raw quail egg, and the tarragon bison tongue. The tongue was half-demolished before I even remembered to take a picture. We used some of the left-over bread to pick up the sauce off the plate. drool.

For our main, we chose the PDC Melting Pot. This dish had a lot of the elements we wanted to try: two kinds of sausages, two different cuts of pork, onions, mushrooms, PDC mash, and gravy.

Ordering the desert was a mistake. I ordered the Sugar Pie for Two, thinking that we would try a bite, and take the rest home. No such luck. My husband (who ate 3/4 of the pie), later blamed his pain entirely on me. Ha.

We also saw this monstrosity being assembled as we were finishing the desert "Pig's Head for Two". At one point, one of the chefs sliced a line along the top of the skull and poured what looked like hot oil or butter into the brain cavity. This picture was taken just before the tongue was garnished with some mustard sauce, and a bunch of steamed clams were dotted around the dish. As we were leaving, we noticed a couple of patrons digging into it with relish. Oh well, there is always a next time.

We left the restaurant moaning and clutching our poor abused bellies. It took a while to digest.

The next morning we couldn't really stomach breakfast, but there was one more stop we just had to make. On our way out of town we stopped at Jean Talon Market, to get the fried shrimp from Aqua Mare. We were only the second order of the day.

The batter was fried and crispy, and the shrimp were fresh and perfectly cooked. Great way to finish an amazing trip.

Montreal, Teil Zwei

Surprisingly, we awoke without a hangover. After having coffee and a very light breakfast at the B&B, we ventured out into the sunlit streets to hunt down a pastry of mythical status: the Kouign Amann.  This pastry traditionally hailing from Brittany.

Fittingly, we found it at Boulangerie Kouign Amann. This place makes the pastry into a big round cake, which they slice into pieces. Some people online grumble that this is not the authentic way of preparing it, but I couldn't care less.

We ate our pastries under a memorial at the foot of Mont Royal. The crust was sweet, flaky, crusty and buttery, while the inside was delicate and almost custard-like. We decided to return the morning of our last day and pick up a few slices to share with our families.

During the afternoon we wandered South, through McGill, the downtown, finally ending up in Old Montreal.

We were exhausted after all that walking.

We collapsed in bed at around 5pm, watched Ghost Busters on my phone, and got ready for our reservation at Au Pied de Cochon...

Montreal, Teil Einz

The husband and I drove up to Montreal last weekend to celebrate our one year anniversary. Yay! We stayed at the little Auberge de la Fontaine B&B, and we loved it. Other than the service, the best thing about the Auberge was the location - a gorgeous neighbourhood in the heart of the plateau. We were close to everything we cared about (and mostly, we cared about food).

Our first night, it was bitterly cold and raining cats and dogs. We ditched our stuff at the B&B and went to Schwartz's for dinner. The smoked meat was delicious. Unfortunately, the service was highly questionable, and the place was pretty filthy - like health-code-violation filthy. Had we known, we would have grabbed some smoked meat as take out and eaten in our room. Still, I felt like it was the kind of authentic Montreal experience one has to have.

After cabbing it back to our hotel we decided to crack open a bottle of wine that we had gotten as a gift at our wedding, and foolishly decided to save for our one year anniversary.

Sadly, the wine was corked. We gave it a proper funeral by pouring it down the drain. There was a funeral march and everything.

Thankfully Quebec, unlike other provinces, is not afflicted by a liquor board, so we ran to a local convenience store and purchased two bottles of wine, half of which we promptly consumed in our hotel room. Already feeling the effects of half a bottle of wine, we stumbled over to the aptly named Le Lab - a ridiculously hip cocktail bar located in the next house over. You know it's cool when the website is in French only. There we met some friendly locals, and imbibed deliciously awesome cocktails - like this one, which tasted like sweet meaty smoke and came garnished with beef jerky. Yum.

We were pretty buzzed by the time we left the Lab, but we weren't ready for bed yet. J and I wandered around the park for about an hour, taking unfortunate phone-camera pictures of the foliage.

Part deux of our adventures to come soon...