Montreal’s first Poutine Week seemed to have been a big success. Over 30 restaurants took part, putting out poutines en masse for the public’s vote. I had big poutine-plans at the beginning of the week, but really, it’s hard to eat a lot of poutine! In the end, I made it to two restaurants to try their entries in the big poutine contest: Fabergé’s “breakfast poutine” and Blackstrap BBQ’s “burnt ends poutine.” Who won?

For our first poutine, we wandered out into the cold, windy Saturday morning (early afternoon) to try out Fabergé on Fairmount and their breakfast poutine. I have been wanting to try this poutine for a long long time now, ever since I had first seen a photo of it on Foodspotting. It seems like an almost natural dish – potatoes, topped with cheese, hollandaise sauce and an egg? Sounds ideal to me.

After a brief wait for a seat in the bustling, busy restaurant, we settled in and planned our meal. Three breakfast poutines and a plate of fried chicken and waffles, and plenty of coffee….The fried chicken and waffles was a pretty lackluster dish – the chicken, while crunchy and crisp, was bland and there were only three tiny chicken nuggets on the plate. The waffles were thick and nice, and the housemade BBQ sauce had a great tang, but overall, a pretty boring plate. It also came with a mound of potatoes, but given that each of us a bowl the size of our heads filled with potatoes, we didn’t even touch it.

But, our reason for even going – the breakfast poutine! A mound of seasoned and roasted breakfast potatoes, caramelized red peppers and onions, bacon ($2 extra), lots of cheese curds, a velvety hollandaise sauce, all topped with an egg, its yolk just waiting to be burst. I really liked the idea, and mostly enjoyed the poutine. However, it’s texture was unappealing after a little bit…everything was just soft and mushy. Something with a bit of crunch may have made it a little more interesting. However, cheese, hollandaise and eggs…how can there be anything really wrong in there?

Later in the week, we went to try out Blackstrap BBQ. I’ve been wanting to try this place ever since it opened and given they were taking part, I finally got out there.. It appeared as though the restaurant was often running out of the poutine, so we ran out right after work to get there in time. Our efforts were not wasted.

Blackstrap BBQ is a few blocks down from the de L’Eglise metro station in Verdun. It’s not a very big place, but it is warm and welcoming. For our meal here, we opted to share the burnt ends poutine, a ½ rack of ribs and the deep fried macaroni and cheese.

The poutine was a star! The fries were excellent – many of them still crispy, thanks to their triple fry, but the ones under all the deep dark gravy were soaking up just the right amount of moisture. The cheese curds were enormous, and some of the best curds I’ve had on poutine in this city. But the best part were the rib tips, some slightly charred, some actually perfectly cooked, swimming in the gravy. This was a champion poutine and my obvious winner in the is poutine battle of two.

The ribs, a dry-rubber version served with some pickles and onions and sweet and spicy sauces, were equally stellar. These are not those messy, juicy ribs that require eighteen napkins. Nope, these are tender, pull-off-the-bone, and only need about four napkins. Loved them, and I was more.

The deep fried macaroni was also right up there. Super-crispy outside, so creamy on the inside, and perfect with a squeeze of that sweet BBQ sauce. I am looking forward to making my way to Blackstrap BBQ again to sample the rest of the goods.

The obvious winner for me was the burnt ends poutine at Blackstrap BBQ, but I did appreciate the fight.

Fabergé
25 Avenue Fairmount Ouest, Montreal

Blackstrap BBQ
4436 Wellington, Verdun, Montreal

It had been three years since our last McAuslan brunch, prepared by Martin Picard and his team at Au Pied de Cochon. Sure, we had managed to get in to the last three sugarshack meals at their cabane a sucre, as well as the first meal ever at the cabane a pommes, so we haven`t been starving or necessarily deprived of foie gras…but the McAuslan brunch has a whole other flavour and feel to it. While the two previous brunches we had gone to had been held at the AU Pied de Cochon restaurant, this one, held on January 27th, 2013, was at his cabane a sucre. I did like the atmosphere a bit better at the restaurant, but there’s no doubt that the cabane is a more logical locale.

When we walked in for our 11am seating, our tablemates weren’t there yet (our group of four had been combined with another group of four), so we settled in and started in on the complimentary pitcher of Caesar deliciousness, while ordering a pitcher of McAuslan blonde and rousse. The beer was all-you-can-drink, though I always leave these places feeling like I should’ve drank more. However, we were almost immediately informed that there was to be 14 dishes served to us today, so it’s better I didn’t fill up on beer. I did a pretty good job with the Caesars already.

Pretty soon, the first dishes started getting carried out. Served on enormous planks of wood that needed two servers to carry, each table received a variety of plates to start the meal off with. Some of my favourite parts of the meal were served on this forest-platter!

There was horse “smoked meat,” served alongside a little squeeze bottle of mustard and apparently rye bread, but we never got the rye bread. We did have an entire baguette and a block of butter for the table, so I didn’t miss the rye bread, instead slathering butter on the bread, a dab of mustard and a slice or two of the horse. It wasn’t as fatty as smoked meat, but still really tender and salty. There was a package of housemade gravlax, which was actually right at the top of my favourite things – luscious, thick, pieces of salmon that were light and decadent all at the same time. Another one of my favs was the maple-almond croissant…this thing had pretty much been made out of butter, with a thick, sweet, sugary crust in the middle, having been bathed in maple syrup. There was a jar of housemade maple yogurt, and I ate my entire croissant half by dipping it in the silky, smooth, sweet yogurt. A high point of the meal for me!

There was also a fennel salad with a clementine vinaigrette that everyone at the table loved, but I found it a bit too acidic. I did love the baby dill pickles and the corn relish though.

My plate was filled after this one course…and I even started to slow down a little…

There was a soup served, and this was my least favourite dish of the meal. Absolutely tender and melting pieces of tendon with airy pieces of tripe in a broth of volailles, it was very mildly flavoured and little lack luster. However, the tendon was striking, melting in your mouth, coating your mouth. Apparently this soup had dumplings in it, but I didn’t get any. One of our servers came around with a little carton of quail eggs much later, telling us they were to break into the soup; however, the soup had been sitting at our table for quite some time by then, and wasn’t exactly hot anymore. Also, by that point, most of us had almost finished our soup anyway.

A fantastically interesting and beautiful dish came next: their infamous tourtiere stuffed with every possible meat. The APDC tourtiere, by itself, is a thing of beauty – pork, pork and more pork baked in a flaky, buttery crust. Add light, fluffy sweetbreads and salty Victor and Berthold cheese, and it rises to perfection!

The next dish seemed simple in comparison, but was even more flavourful: the egg, cheese and bacon omelet. This was so rich, so creamy, so smooth, so intense in its cheesy, bacony flavour….I ate my slice, then ate more, then maybe ate more. This is also where I hit my wall. I blame it on the thin strips of slightly crunchy bacon baked into the omelet.

I believe this is where we were given a short break. It’s difficult to remember anything clearly after this point.

A giant cannelloni stuffed foie gras and black truffles hit the table. Cut into eight slices for the table, I was sorry we didn’t have more to share – it was simple, refined, and another one of my favourites. As full as I was at that point, I easily managed to eat what was served to me.

Next up, a shining star in the meal – a deboned chicken that had not only been stuffed with chunks of lobster and foie gras, but actually injected with a lobster bisque. This chicken, its meat juicy, tender, its skin, crispy, salty, exuded lobster-flavour. Every bite was packed with buttery lobster. It didn’t need the gravy it was served with, but the gravy definitely didn’t hurt!

There was really no more eating possible for me at this point. I merely sampled the pompano and mussels that came to the table, but we did bring a lot of it home, including the heads, which one of our tablemates was about to throw out. Delicate and soft, Soli absolutely adored this fish. A salty salad with smashed potatoes at the bottom and crumby garlic pork sausage all over the top was also delivered – at the time I couldn’t even take a bit, but again, we took so much of it home that we ate it for two nights in a row.

Somewhere along the way, we were also served small milkshakes, sweet and rich, of which I ended up drinking two. I brought my dessert of maple and chocolate cream doughnuts and sugarpie poptarts home.

And so it ended. We walked out of there with a bag full of leftovers –fish, chicken, tourtiere, salad, omelet…This was the meal that just keeps giving.

Now we’re waiting for our callback for the cabane a sucre for this season…Give me another few weeks, and I’ll be ready to go for another round.

Montreal a Table, or, in English, Taste Montreal, was this city’s first attempt at a “restaurant week,” where over one hundred Montreal restos offered menus at $19, $29, and $39 during the first week and a half of November. Most of these restaurants would be otherwise pretty expensive, and so as soon as we heard of the event, I booked two meals at places I’ve been itching to try: Brasserie T! and Les 400 Coups. I loved both of the meals – they were very different from each other, but both are restaurants that I would return to and recommend.

The first restaurant we went to was Brasserie T!, Toque’s sister restaurant, which was offering a three-course meal for $29/person. Located in a narrow, window-laden building looking out at the Quartier des Spectacles, the place itself certainly is interesting and eye-catching. Our table was all the way at the end of the restaurant, the last table before the bathrooms, which is always a bit disappointing. However, the food made up for the somewhat awkward table location.

There were two choices of appetizers, mains and desserts. Since there were two of us, it only made sense to order all the choices and just share everything. Wise choice!

Our appetizers were both great. One was a horse tartare, served with a lightly dressed and tangy salad. The tartare was mild-tasting, with a slight heat. The dish was light and fresh – great start to any meal, for sure. The other appetizer was the house terrine. This wasn’t heavy either, despite being packed with livers. Not too salty, not too fatty, it was excellently seasoned and served with crunchy toast points and some sweet and lovely prune compote.

The main dishes were the star of the show, though. I especially loved the pork ribs and fries, served with a side of coleslaw. I will always love pork ribs, but these were exceptionally good. The sauce was perfectly balanced, sweet, salty and sticky, while the meat tender and slid right off the bone. The coleslaw was not all that exciting or memorable when eaten by itself, but when combined with the ribs, iuts character completely changed. It was no longer slightly bland and slightly boring, but an active character supporting the heavy heartiness of the pork ribs. Oh, and the fries!! These were, by far, the best French fries I have ever eaten. So crispy on the outside, so soft on the inside, fried in savoury duck fat. They were actually my favourite part of the meal.

The other main dish was a little less exciting for me, but I think Soli preferred it more – skate with hazelnut butter. I found the skate a little difficult to eat (maybe more apt is to say difficult to share) and the romanesco was bland. The hazelnut was a nice complement to the fish, but was perhaps a bit too buttery. For me, this dish was simply just okay.

Soli and I disagreed again with the desserts. We received the paris brest and cardamom rice pudding with slightly sour preserved fruits (can’t actually recall what these fruits were!). Soli adored the paris brest, while I did not. In fact, I only had one bite and let him devour the rest. Paris brest is a choux pastry with a light praline cream inside, so it’s understandable that Soli would love it – this seems to always be his favourite kind of dessert. I found the pastry not sweet enough and overall, not very interesting. I tend to like my desserts rich and sweet, and I wasn’t disappointed in the rice pudding. It was very creamy and heavy on the cardamom – just perfect!

Overall, a good experience, and I would happily go back to Brasserie T! to sample more from its regular menu.

BRASSERIE T!
1425 RUE JEANNE-MANCE
Montreal, Quebec, H2X 2J4

One hot Friday this summer, Soli and I biked down to Old Montreal to finally give Club Chasse et Peche a try. We had been wanting to try it for a long, long time, and a summer lunch is the perfect opportunity. During the summer, there is seating outside, overlooking the Château Ramezay gardens. It’s got a gorgeous atmosphere and stunning food and impeccable service – I can’t think of a meal I’ve had that I enjoyed more than this one.

We started with a delightful glass of bubbly. I can’t remember what was called now – however, it’s not something that’s available to us at the SAQ, as it is a private import for the restaurant only. We did love this, and savoured every last drop. At the end of the meal, our waiter was kind enough to pour us another glass of it, probably because we spent the whole meal raving about how much we loved it.

We each ordered a different appetizer and main, and when possible, the kitchen split the plates in half for us. Such was not possible with our snow crab salad with tobiko, apple and avocado on a buttery, flaky cracker. I loved this appetizer, especially with the shreds of apple offering tartness to the creamy and sweet crab, and the rich, buttery base. We also shared the wagyu tartare, which was definitely milder in taste. The mushrooms and egg was the perfect topping for it.

For our mains, we shared the duck confit risotto with foie gras shavings and the grilled octopus with lima beans, tomatoes and mint. Both were incredible! The duck confit risotto was so rich and decadent, I couldn’t imagine having a whole plate of it to myself. The foie gras shavings melted slowly over the whole thing, changing the dish into something new and exciting every time we took a bite. This was one of the most perfect dishes I have ever had the pleasure of eating. The grilled octopus was excellent as the counterpoint – lighter and brighter, it was nice enjoying the perfectly charred octopus in between bites of the heavier risotto.

We skipped dessert and instead took a walk through Old Montreal, a place we rarely visit, despite living about a 15-minute walk away from. I’m looking forward to trying this place in the middle of winter too, in what I hear is possibly the coziest restaurant in the city. I know for sure it’s one of the most delicious!

Le Club Chasse et Peche
423, rue St-Claude
Montreal, Quebec

It’s chilly during the days. Even frostier in the evening, our heaters are on and we just celebrated Thanksgiving. This means, sadly, that summer is over. the sun is setting earlier and earlier and the leaves are slowly changing colour, curling off their branches, and falling to the ground. Autumn would be so much better if we could just have another summer after it, not the long, cold winter.

So now that summer’s gone, I figured it’s time to sum up the last few months and just be happy with how the time was spent.

With the exception of the time in Portugal at the end of May and the camping trip at the beginning of June, summer was spent in Montreal. Fortunately, Montreal is a great city to live in in the summer, as there are festivals happening pretty much every day. We took the opportunities we had to enjoy as much as we could, exploring the city and even making some new discoveries!

For the most part, I used my phone’s camera to get photos of everything, but there were a few days where I wandered around with the Nikon in tow. One of these days was a walk down to the Old Port (top row) and Old Montreal. It’s a top tourist destination, but I never, ever go there – there’s just not all that much to do. I got caught in a massive downpour (pretty much the only one we had all summer!) while on a tiny, cobbled side street and had to huddle in a tiny doorway with a ton of spiders for about 30 minutes to wait it out. I also checked out the Just for Laughs festival on a few occasions, The photos on the bottom row show them just starting to set up the festival at the Quartier des Spectacles.

Other random things in Montreal that were explored.

Top row
(1) On top of the hotel that overlooks the Quartier des Spectacles. We went up there to find the hotel bar, which was great, with an awesome swimming pool. This little spot was along the side, and so pretty and private.
(2) A rainbow spotted one Sunday evening on my parent’s balcony in the south shore.
(3) Sitting after a walk through parc Lafontaine, where I spent a few afternoons and evenings watching the water and reading books

Middle row
(1) Cloudy sunset from my front porch steps
(2) Blue moon from my front porch steps
(3) The sunset on my bike ride home from work one evening

Bottom row
(1) Graffiti behind Foufounes
(2) and (3) Visiting LaRonde on the hottest day of the year and feeling much, much too old.

Oh, and the food! Along with the meals at the Main and Diablos, we feasted every chance we could!

Top row
(1) Beef in red coconut curry from Kam Do in Ville St-Laurent
(2) My favourite poutine in the city – Montreal Pool Room on St-Laurent
(3) A great and cheap burger from Burger de Ville, a fallback when we discovered our favourite Vietnamese place closes early in the evening

Second row
(1) Sushi with uni(!) at Mikado
(2) Shish taouk while waiting in line for a Fantasia film
(3) Mont-Royal Hot Dog Special poutine, ordered in one evening

Third row
(1) 72% chocolate/raspberry soft serve from Kem Co Ba
(2) A sloppy double bacon cheeseburger from La Paryse, picked up after an exhausting day at F1 races
(3) Yet another poutine, from Decarie Hot Dog, in Ville St-Laurent

Bottom row
(1) Weekend breakfast at Place Milton
(2) Pizza from Pendeli’s in CDN
(3) Dumplings from Sushi 999

And dim sum visits! Nothing better than eating all the dim sum early Sunday mornings in the summer!

Not too mention that we also visited the food trucks who lined St-Catherine street during the Just for Laughs festival, sampling the tuna tartare and the pulled pork sandwiches:

The octopus balls and the BBQ rib sandwiches:

And mont-blancs and duck confit poutines:

We cooked at home a lot too, enjoying several BBQs in the backyard.

Top row
(1) Grilled fish
(2) Lamb, veal and beef burgers with brie
(3) Camping BBQ

Bottom row
(1) Burgers and thick cuts of bacon
(2) Corn, garlic, veggies
(3) Lobster!!

And the other food prepared at home over the summer:

Top row:
(1) Fresh salsa made in the late summer, with corn, tomatoes and jalapenos from the market
(2) Super chocolate chunk cookies – amazing!
(3) Ribs from Coco Rico, but Soli-fied, with a maple syrup sauce

Bottom row:
(1) Fresh pesto with the basil that grew in our garden all summer long
(2) Chocolate-cherry scones, with fresh cherries
(3) Zucchini and tomato bake

What else? We grew our own tomatoes, made jalapeno mint jelly with mint from our garden, and baked some cakes.

I think this hot summer of perfectly sunny days was well-spent, and am already looking forward to the next one!

We are no strangers to poutine here. Living in Montreal requires one to not only crave poutine, but to fufill such cravings on a somewhat regular basis. I lost track on how many poutines I ate over the course of the summer, but between the ones at Decarie Hot Dog and Mont-Royal Hot Dog alone, it was a fairly high number. I’ll focus on just one for today though…the smoked meat poutine at the Main Deli Steakhouse on St-Laurent (also known simply as The Main, or, the inferior smoked meat place across the street from Schwartz’s.)

While watching Foodnetwork’s You Gotta Eat Here, we saw that The Main offered up a smoked meat poutine that was supposed to be amazing, so during one of St-Laurent’s street fairs, we decided to take the quick 5-minute walk from our house to give it a try. We also split a veal sandwich, just because it sounded interesting.

The poutine, unfortunately, was not something I would return for, nor do I think it earns a spot on a television show. It was good, just not great, like one would imagine a smoked meat poutine to be.

The good parts included a pretty nice sauce, brown, salty and thick, and a lot of it. I love a lot of sauce on poutine. The fries were excellent too – thick enough to carry all that sauce and not turn to mush.

The not so great – the cheese curds were high-quality, but unfortunately, there weren’t very many of them. And the smoked meat wasn’t at all fatty enough, it was like strips of lean smoked meat. I guess given poutine is already a massive pile of fat and calories, a little lean meat would be okay….but if I’m going to eat a smoked meat poutine, I really want the smoked meat to be an important, not forgettable, part of it.

As for the veal sandwich, I really enjoyed it! The meat was very, very thinly sliced, with a somewhat fatty texture and a little bit of a gamey taste. A really fun and interesting sandwich.

I like The Main’s rib eye steak platter, and that’s something I would go back for. But I would probably skip another smoked meat poutine (or maybe, I’ll order a poutine, sneak some Schwartz’s smoked meat over there, and put some on it when no one’s looking).

Main Deli Steak House
3864, Boul. Saint-Laurent
Montreal, QC

We bought some of those coupons for Diablo’s BBQ in on St-Denis in Montreal a few months back. I got some for my dad for father’s day, and Soli and I got some for ourselves. The coupons we bought were a 3-course meal, valued at $33, and all we had to pay was $13. The coupon promised that we could use one for one person, so when we bought four, we had bought four 3-course meals.

Coupon details: You could choose one appetizer from a list of four, one main dish out of a list of five, and one dessert out of a list of two, and all of this would be covered by a coupon.

Well, when we got there, we were told that the rules had changed, and we had to take the normal menu and HAD to select enough food, PER PERSON, that equaled $33. Now, that is a lot of food. Not one of us at the table wanted to order $33 worth of food, EACH! But, if we ordered only $25, the coupon was considered invalid. Oh, and alcohol couldn’t be included, even though the coupon didn’t state that either. The restaurant decided just to make up its own rules all over the place.

We struggled for over 30 minutes, trying to figure out how to do this. Finally, we thought we had it. Soli and I decided to split a big platter that’s intended for two people…still weren’t at $33, so we had to order an oyster poyboy we didn’t even want. Well, at the end of the evening, the rather inept waitress informed us that we couldn’t each use a coupon, as we had split the platter. She knew we had coupons right from the beginning, so why she didn’t tell us this when we were ordering is beyond me. I guess money is more important than the customer’s satisfaction.

As for my parents, they were charged because my mother didn’t quite reach $33. So the coupon was invalid…we complained about that, had to wait over 30 minutes in the dark at the end of the meal, to get that charge removed. However, Soli and I were still only allowed to use one coupon, so we ended up paying $60 total, not including the original $13 pricetag of the coupon, for a meal that wasn’t very good. Had we known that would be the case, we would’ve spent our $60 in a restaurant we actually liked.

The waitress had gone to the chef, but too bad, so sad for us. The coupon we bought was not what we got at the restaurant, and the restaurant did nothing about it, except charge us. I still have a coupon left, but would rather lose my $13 on that coupon then step foot in Diablo’s again.

That complaint about the awful customer service aside, a brief review on the mediocre food we were served:

We started with a pitcher of this drink that had spruce beer in it. It was unremarkable. The bar had no spruce beer in stock, so someone had to run to the store, leaving us waiting for over 30 minutes for a drink. I couldn’t taste any alcohol in it, it was two sweet, and we couldn’t finish the pitcher, even among 5 people.

We ordered the smoked poutine (we were desperately trying to get up to that $33!), and this was probably the best thing there. The sauce was nice, and I enjoyed the sweet potato fries.

The oyster poyboy was bland, and there was too much bread, not enough oyster.

The mains had low points and okay points. The friend chicken was the best part, with a good, crunchy exterior. The pulled pork was mushy and too sweet, the ribs were forgettable, and the sauce was almost like straight up molasses. Each main comes with two “sides” – the corn salad was in a dish that was about 1 oz….hardly a side, but that was okay, as it tasted slightly rancid. The potatoes were bland.

The pecan pie tasted like an apple pie with pecans. Weird and kinda gross.

I hope this restaurant manages to improve its food, and work out its major customer satisfaction issues. I will never return though, and wouldn’t recommend this restaurant.

After attending Martin Picard’s Au Pied de Cochon cabane a sucre the past three season it has run, I was absolutely thrilled when I first heard that there would be an “apple season” at the cabane in 2012. I emailed them for reservations as soon as they started accepting them, and this Sunday, we were there for the opening weekend. The menu has been posted on their tumblr; I am will only say a little about the experience and let the menu and the photos speak for themselves. It did not disappoint!!

It was strange arriving to the cabane on a sunny and hot afternoon; we are used to heading over there on cold, icy evenings, in the dark. We had to 2pm seating, which was the ideal time, and we spent some time admiring the fat pumpkins and squash in the big green garden right in front of the restaurant.

We wandered in and started the afternoon with some of the apple cocktails being offered. Almost everyone at the table enjoyed an alcoholic apple slush kind of drink, which was sweet, tart, and way too easy to drink quickly.

Every table had three jars: marinated eggplant, a corn relish and pickled cauliflowers and pickles. My favourite was the corn relish, but others at the table preferred the marinated eggplant. I loved the eggplant’s texture, but the corn was so bright that is perked up many of the rather heavy dishes to come our way.

The service was slightly different from the cabane a sucre’s style of serving – the dishes came out in what seemed like three courses, so instead of having one dish at a time served, we were served three or four dishes all at once. One of the star dishes is one I couldn’t get a photo for, sadly. It was a big pot of cream of squash soup, garnished with crumbles of Amaretti, apples, and heavily au gratin with emmantal cheese. The soup was thick, thick, thick, loaded with cream and butter. The thinly sliced apples and the Amaretti were marvelous. We ended up bringing some of this soup home, and made a creamy mashed potatoes with it, using that instead of butter. It made amazing potatoes.

Also served at this time was the house-cured ham, draped over a skull, and topped with some pickled onions. Light and flavourful, not very salty.

We also got a fresh, creamy, light goat cheese topped with honeycomb, slivers of foie gras and thin, crispy grilled bread that had been rubbed with a healthy dose of garlic and rosemary. The honey made this dish.

The absolute star of the meal was also served at this time…ravioli stuffed with chicken liver gelee, and cavatelli apple sauce accompanied with a confit of foie gras, which was all combined in a massive Parmesean wheel at the table. It was so so so so good! The sauce was sweet, with hints of savoury, the pasta slightly dense and chewy, the pillows of confit foie gras meltingly, achingly good. I would’ve come just for that pasta.

Salmon “en papillotte” (in newspaper!) with escargots and apple cider sauce, apple slices and basil. This was a big hunk of salmon, very fresh, wonderfully cooked. Also one of my favs. It was served alongside salty eggplant pancakes, a dish of creamy clams, a massive saucepan of apple-glazed roast beef, carrots and warm oysters, some heavily hazelnut-crusted broccoli and a somewhat bizarre bowl of lettuce. Together, it all worked. But really, I just wanted more pasta.

This time, I actually had enough room to enjoy dessert. The warm apple pie’s crust was a heavenly. An ice cream and an apple sorbert was served in a cream carton, topped with apple cotton candy. There was a warm sticky apple-toffee pudding that was popped out of a can and drenched in a caramel sauce, and we all dug into an apple and chocolate soufflé.

Without drinks and with tax, this meal cost $57/person. That is pretty unbelievable, and so completely worth it. I wish I was going back, or at least, sneaking in for some more of that pasta.

Cabane 2010

Cabane 2011

Cabane 2012

Along with the Algarve (Parts 1 and 2), we spent several days in Lisbon (including a daytrip to Sintra). I preferred Lisbon to the Algarve area – even though the beaches along the shore were amazing, there’s just something appealing about a bustling, pretty European city. The views from our hotel room was pretty nice!

When we first landed, we had the entire afternoon and evening to explore the area around the hotel, which was pretty much as central as one could get in Lisbon. Right outside of the hotel was a small pedestrian cobblestone street that led right into Rossio Square, which was surrounded by churches, bakeries and little restaurants with as much cod as one person could eat in all the windows.

Along with sampling some of the cheeses and the fish, we tried the ginjinha, a cherry liquour that was definitely quite potent. I thoroughly enjoyed the cod balls!

Between all the snacking, we wandered around and checked out the touristy sites/sights that were close by.

São Domingos Church:

The amazing Carmo convent, a gothic church in ruins:

Our first dinner in Portugal was at the renowned Bon Jardim, apparently one of the best places to go for piri piri chicken. It took us a while to find the restaurant, and we had to traverse a gauntlet of unrelenting restaurant greeters trying to pull us into their restaurants, but we made it there and enjoyed some fine piri piri chicken and red wine. The wine was cheap and so good. The piri piri sauce comes in a separate klittle jar that you briush on your chicken yourself – and it was SPICY! Very delicouys though!

We sleepily walked back to the hotel as the sun set and explored the rooftop bar for a bit before falling straight to sleep.

We have visited and reported on many sushi restos in Montreal…from the more high-end ones like Jun-I and Mikado, to more middle of the road ones like Tataki, and then the all-you-can eat places, like the abysmal Odaki and the ridiculous Kanda (two locations). I’ve been thinking that all-you-can-eat sushi and Montreal are just never going to be partners, and if you want decent sushi in Montreal, you’re going to have to pay the high price tag. Well, this past weekend, I was proven wrong, and I enjoyed the best all-you-can-eat sushi experience that Montreal has offered me so far, at Sushi 999.

We stopped in for a late lunch on Saturday, around 2pm. We were worried the place might not be serving food at that weird time, but it was, and for $13.99 per person! It’s more expensive to eat dinner there (about $25/person, the Montreal norm), but for a weekend lunch, $13.99 is hard to beat. While the don’t offer sashimi during the lunch menu, they offer plenty of other choices that make up for it. They even give a card that they stamp, so that if you go 9 times, the 10th is free. And it seems as though the place is BYOW as well…and finally, the food is great! The sushi is fresh, the rice well-seasoned, and the fried food we tried were all perfectly done. I don’t have a single complaint about the place, only praise.

We started by sharing two of the salads, the wakame (seaweed) salad and the fish egg salad, and both were delightful and refreshing. The wakame salad was excellently seasoned, and the fish egg salad, with strips of “crab” and lettuce needed only a splash of soy sauce.

As I said, the sushi was perfect. The tuna was fresh, the salmon buttery and rich, the eel luxurious.

We also really enjoyed the sushi pizza, with salmon atop a crispy, fried ricecake. We had ordered a handroll by mistake, but it was fortunate one, since it was one of the best things to come our way (stuffed with shrimp tempura).

We indulged in some of the fried options, such as the scallops, topped with a dollop of Japanese mayo and the dumplings, wrapped in super-crispy wontons.

The edamame was lightly seasoned and the shrimp tempura had a sweet and light, crispy batter – both were excellent.

The fish head had little to it, but its skin was fun to eat. They even have a small dim sum menu, so we tried the shrimp dumplings and loved them. The wrapper was a tad gelatinous, but I enjoyed the texture.

I am seriously looking forward to returning this Saturday!! They are only about 6 months old, but I hope the place sticks around for a long time to come. Oh, and sorry about the quality of photos…all I had was my phone with me…

Sushi 999
405 Sherbrooke Est, Montreal, Quebec
http://www.sushi999.ca/