Montreal

Poutine plays nicely with lobster and bacon

Posted on by Pat and David
Poutine's simplicity seems to spur cooks to increasingly baroque inventions. Think of a preschooler fantasizing about crossing a T. Rex with a firetruck, or wondering what superpowers the offspring of Superman and Wonder Woman might possess. Fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy have a salty, starchy goodness all their own. So what happens when you cross poutine with, say, a cheeseburger? Or lobster? Or lobster and bacon? It's the kind of thinking that led to a number of the ice cream mashup flavors at Ben & Jerry, but it suits the spirit of a poutine food truck festival. Especially in Montreal. What if...? One of the more successful forays into hybridizing fast foods turns out to be the bacon cheeseburger poutine. Think about it. It...Read More

Montreal smoked meat shines at Poutinefest

Posted on by Pat and David
Maybe it was preordained. The quintessential delicatessen specialty of Montreal--smoked meat--had to meet up with poutine at some point. Perhaps the only thing that kept it from happening sooner is the kosher prohibition against serving meat and dairy (i.e., cheese curds) in the same dish. The exact origins of Montreal smoked meat are murky, but it was clearly introduced by Eastern European Jewish immigrant butchers around the end of the 19th century. In its modern incarnation, smoked meat is made from beef brisket dry-cured with salt and spices, hot smoked, and finally steamed before serving. It resembles New York pastrami, but is usually cured with far less sugar and far more spices—especially cracked pepper, coriander, mustard seed, and garlic. The flavor is so addictive that...Read More

Argentine poutine spices up Montreal Poutinefest

Posted on by Pat and David
Sandro Guerrero hails from Córdoba, Argentina. “It's a good country with a lot of meat,” he says with almost ironic understatement. The average Argentine eats nearly 100 pounds of beef annually. That equals the annual consumption of an American and a Canadian combined. When he moved his family to Montreal three years ago, Guerrero had never heard of poutine. He admits to an initial skepticism about the favorite dish of Montrealers. “I thought it was impossible to eat potatoes with the sauce,” he says of the often nondescript salty brown gravy. “But when I tried it, I had to admit that this is a very good product.” Guerrero's regular gig is as a chef at Le Smoking BBQ (see previous post). His Argentine skills with...Read More

Montreal Poutinefest rocks the waterfront

Posted on by Pat and David
Certain foods seem destined to go together. Bacon and eggs. Peanut butter and jelly. Shrimp and grits. If you are Québecois, the gastronomic holy trinity is French fries, cheese curds, and gravy. The dish is called poutine (pronounced poo-TEEN). Roger Hubert says it has become “the meal” in Quebec. That's why he and his son Greg, proprietor of the Montreal restaurant Le Smoking BBQ, launched the first Poutinefest at Montreal's Old Port in fall 2015. It was such a success that they pulled out all the stops for an even splashier version at the end of June 2016. Featuring 18 food trucks with a panoply of poutine variations, the festival took place for three days on the Quai de l’Horloge (Clocktower Quay). Admission was free,...Read More
Saffron shortbread cookies for festive season

Saffron shortbread cookies for festive season

Posted on by Pat and David
Peggy Regan of Salon de Té le Gryphon D'Or (www.gryphondor.com) in Montreal is the absolute mistress of shortbread, which you can enjoy at her tea room or order through the mail. When she gave us a shortbread recipe for Food Lovers' Guide to Montreal (see SOME BOOKS), she casually mentioned how the recipe could be adapted to add other flavors. She had in mind flavors like maple and almond. We happen to love shortbread cookies as an accompaniment to Spanish sparkling wine, or cava. So we wondered how another signature Spanish flavor -- saffron -- might taste in shortbread. Since we travel often to Spain, we tend to buy saffron when we come across a good deal or when we're in Consuegra, the premier saffron...Read More

Montreal bargain lunches

Posted on by Pat and David
Of all the guidebook series we work on, the research for the Food Lovers' series may be the most fun. Our most recent published volume was on Montreal, but we didn't spend all our time eating foie gras or dining at innovative contemporary restaurants. We're always on the lookout for good values, and we found 10 great lunches for about $10 where we could tap into various strains of Montreal culture. We recently published that roundup in the Boston Globe. You'll find the results as a pair of PDFs on our Sample Articles page. We are just about finished writing our next volume, Food Lovers' Guide to Vermont & New Hampshire, and have a refrigerator full of artisanal cheese, cured pork products, and storage vegetables...Read More

Three (delicious) flavors of ‘bistro’ in Montreal

Posted on by Pat and David
Our latest book, Food Lovers' Guide to Montreal, is finally hitting the bookstores in the U.S. and Canada. The city has always been one of our favorite places for a quick getaway, a winter shopping spree, or a romantic weekend—in large part because the food is so good. We've enjoyed watching the Montreal dining scene evolve over the years, and many of our favorite places to eat are bistros—with or without the French ''t'' at the end. They tend to be small, casual neighborhood places with hearty food and plentiful drink. The old-fashioned French bistro persists in Montreal. La Gargote (351 place d'Youville, 514-844-1428, www.restaurantlagargote.com, Metro: Square Victoria) is one of our favorites in this style. The name is French slang for a diner, but...Read More

Pouding chômeur – dessert on a shoestring

Posted on by Pat and David
One Quebecois comfort food that doesn't seem to have crossed over into fine dining is the very old-fashioned cake and syrup dessert known as pouding chômeur. It translates literally as ''the jobless person's pudding,'' although most English versions of the recipe call it ''Poor Man's Pudding.'' (Anglophone Montrealers call it pouding chômeur.) Either way, the original version is real Depression food, with a cake that's like a butter-deprived biscuit dough and a brown sugar syrup. But as pouding chômeur makes its comeback on luncheonette menus, the cake is often more buttery and the syrup is maple. This recipe brings together some of the best we've tasted. The vinegar in the syrup curdles the cream, giving the syrup an instantly thicker texture. POUDING CHÔMEUR Serves 6...Read More

Making pâté chinois the cooking school way

Posted on by Pat and David
In our most recent Montreal residency we were amazed by the explosion in cooking classes. Montrealers have always loved to go out to eat, but more and more they're also dining well at home. One of the pioneers in teaching classes for the general public was the Académie Culinaire (360 rue Champ-de-Mars, 514-393-8111, academieculinaire.com), which has its offices and kitchens in a modern facility on the edge of Old Montreal. The Académie created a modernized, jazzed-up version of pâté chinois that reflects the increased sophistication of even basic Quebecois cookery. We find it a wonderfully comforting supper dish on a cold winter night. The recipe required no tinkering at all, except that we adapted it for cooking in a 9x13 pan. If you prefer, individual...Read More

Poutine, pâté chinois, and Quebecois comfort food

Posted on by Pat and David
In the three decades that we have been visiting Montreal, the dining scene has never been in so much flux—and we mean that in a good way. One development is a resurgent pride in old-fashioned Quebecois cooking. Dishes that many Montreal foodies had considered guilty pleasures are now celebrated in fine restaurants. Back in 2007, Montreal's leading French-language newspaper Le Devoir even surveyed 500 people to determine the ''national plate of Quebec.'' (In Quebec, one always describes a province-wide phenomenon as ''national.'') We were surprised to learn that it was not poutine (French fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy), but rather pâté chinois, sometimes inelegantly translated on English menus as ''Quebec shepherd's pie.'' Keep watching this spot because we will publish an updated recipe for...Read More