My friends crazyC and crazyPyxo have been telling me about the restaurant that they went to during their wild Montreal bachelor party weekend, Le Bleu Raisin, so I decided to bring my coworkers there last night since we haven’t had French food for a while.  It was a bring your own wine place, so we brought along a bottle of white and a bottle of red for the meal.

It was a pleasant evening, so a table in their little patio was a great start to our meal.  The friendly waitress explained the menu to us in English and we all decided to go for the $49 4-course tasting menu since the a la carte would’ve costed more money.  The tasting menu consisted of an amuse bouche, an entree, a main and dessert.

For our amuse, we were served with blood pudding, cured duck breast, and pickeled mushrooms.  I have never tried blood pudding before, it looks just like the Chinese pig’s blood except it is seared.

For my entree, I picked the escargots with wild mushrooms.  It was very yummy.  My coworkers tried the foie gras terrine and it was very very smooth!

For my main, I got the Thazard with risotto.  The fish tastes kind of like tuna or mackerel.

I think the only disappointing part of the meal was the dessert.  I was supposed to get the blueberry and vanilla creme brulee, but they ran out and they gave us jasmine tea creme brulee instead.  It didn’t taste that good because the bitter tea taste was too overpowering, but my coworker got the bread pudding and it was awesome.

My coworkers and I have been trying to get reservations at Garde Manger in Old Montreal for a long time, but have never had any success because we try to get a table last minute or the day of.  Today since I was having dinner by myself (the life of a traveller), I decided to walk over to see if I would get lucky and find a seat at the bar.  Turns out the bar was reserved but there was a table open for me for an hour before the next reservation, so I took it!

Chuck Hughes from Chuck’s Day Off owns this tiny little, unmarked restaurant.  They specialize in seafood and have a fresh menu daily.

I couldn’t say not to the lobster poutine appetizer, but I thought it would be too heavy to get another main, so I decided to go with the tomato salad with avacado and cheddar frit.  (Ok fine, their dishes were kind of pricey, so I decided to go with two appetizers instead!)

The tomato salad was very refreshing and very appetizing for a hot day.

The lobster poutine was less exciting than I expected.  There were a few chunks of lobster which I initially though tasted pretty sweet, but then I realized that it was actually the gravy that tasted sweet.  The fries were good, but the cheese curds were not as squeaky and chewy as I would have liked.  When comparing this poutine to another gourmet poutine like the foie gras poutine from Au Pied de Cochon, this is definitely the loser.

The table across from me ordered the seafood platter.  It was more like a huge toolbox full of seafood and it comes with a hefty price tag too, Small $45, Medium $85, and Large $150.

Last weekend, the girls and I went out for a day of shopping at the Shops at Don Mills.  It was a sunny and hot day, perfect for an outdoor mall.  Surprisingly, the mall has a few pretty nice restaurants!  We went to Glow Fresh Grill & Wine Bar for brunch.  Their food was pretty good but the waiter was a little flustered and got our drinks wrong.

Three kinds of spreads for our bread, olive tapenade, butternut squash and humus.

Smoked salmon eggs benedict

Lobster mac & cheese

Enjoying afternoon tea is one of my favourite things to do in life, and it is especially enjoyable if you are taking  a break from a long day of shopping.  That’s what I would typically do when I’m in Hong Kong.  Some of my university roommates were visiting Toronto from Hong Kong and Scotland earlier last week, so we went to have English-style afternoon tea at this place called The Old Curiosity Tea Shop at the Main Street in Markham.

This tea house is very old English style indeed.  I actually think they should update their decor so that it is more classy than old looking.  We started off with a huge menu with over 80 different types of teas to choose from.  They have many different types of black, white and green teas, as well as some African and Asian teas.  I chose my go-to tea English Breakfast.  They served the ladies and gents with different styles of tea cups.  The ladies got floral-patterned tea cups and the gents got a more masculine design.

First came the finger sandwiches.  They tasted ok, but I was expecting some smoked salmon sandwiches but they didn’t have any…

After a long wait, we finally got the scones.  These tasted pretty good, but they were a lot flakier than normal scones which are usually more dense in texture.

Overall, it was a fun experience, but next time we’ll have to try the King Edward Hotel’s afternoon tea!

On Tuesday night, we went out for a celebratory team dinner.  Our manager wanted a place that was “cool & casual” so one of our Montreal coworkers suggested BBQ, which is a cheaper, more casual version of the high-rent Bar & Boeuf, both in the Old Montreal area.

This is such a cool new restaurant for enjoying a night out with friends and great food.  They have an extensive beer and cocktail menu and the food prices were quire affordable.

I loved my coriander and cucumber gin and tonic very much.

We ordered a bunch of appetizers to share.  BBQed octopus, charcuterie plate, foie gras terrine, and escargots with gnocchi, which I didn’t get a picture of, but they were all delicious.

For my main, I decided to give the BBQ carbonara a try.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the nice crispy piece of pork belly!  The dish also came with tuna, which I thought was kind of weird, but still tasted great overall.

For dessert, we went with the BBQ carrot cake, which came with yummy cream cheese icing, carrot confit and carrot jelly.  Dessert is always the greatest part of the meal!

Over the Victoria Day long weekend, a group of girls and I went to Las Vegas for my friend’s bachelorette bash.  Well, you know the saying, “Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”  So, I’m not allowed to disclose any details in this post, but I will share with you some of the things that I loved…food and shopping! Read the rest of this entry »

Since I fly Air Canada every week, I get excited whenever there is a new enRoute magazine in the back pocket of the seat in-front of me.  This month’s issue had an article on Montreal.  A lot of times, this is where I get my food sources from.

When I saw that Le Chien Fumant (The Smoking Dog – not the cigarette kind of smoke, the flaming kind of smoke!) was mentioned in the magazine article, I decided to look it up for some reviews.  The reviews, the chalkboard menu, and the whole look of the restaurant looked promising.  Even the house cocktail of brandy, sugar water, sparkling wine and lemon juice boosted our expectations for a great meal.

I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed by the food, but more so by the long wait time for my food.  We ordered Cajun-style crab cakes to start, followed by baby-back ribs.  They also served dishes such as deep fried Cornish hen cooked Southern style, lamb filet, lamb shank with pasta, and clams in black bean sauce.  With our appetizer, we got a free order of Chinatown calamari.  Both tasted very good, but I didn’t get to snap a picture of the calamari.  The food doesn’t sound like conventional bistro food at all which gives this restaurant a distinctive twist in the menu.

While we waited impatiently for our mains to show up, they served us another free appetizer, the beef carpaccio cut thick.

Here’s my ribs served with tamali and corn.

The food was pretty good.  We had to wait but at least we got free food and enough food to pack lunch the next day!

It’s been so many years since I’ve last visited Quebec City, and this was my first visit ever since I started working out of Montreal a year ago!

Based on reviews from Trip Advisor, I decided to book a room at Auberge Le Vincent.  This is a very comfy boutique hotel with 10 rooms for you to choose from.  We stayed in room 10 for a reasonable price and free breakfast.  The hotel owner was super friendly.  He showed us exactly where we should walk in the old city and recommended a great local restaurant for dinner. Read the rest of this entry »

After reading about the Gold Medal Plates Canadian Culinary Championships win by the chefs at Kitchen Galerie, our team has been meaning to try out this restaurant for months, and finally found the time last night to pay the tiny restaurant a visit.

We were served by owner/chef/waiter Mathieu Cloutier who explained their menu consisting of a three-course meal created fresh daily with whatever ingredients are available at the close-by Jean-Talon Market.  Given choices of several different types of foie gras, oysters, pork belly, scallops, and short ribs, the team had high and hungry expectations for an unforgettable meal.

My foie-gras-loving coworker jumped on the dishwasher foie gras bandwagon as soon as the chef introduced it to us.  I was a little skeptical myself because I couldn’t get around the idea of a piece of foie gras being literally poached in a jar inside a dishwasher…I much prefer pan seared foie gras myself, so I opted for the porsciutto bits, melon and arugula salad as my appetizer.  It turned out that the dishwasher foie gras tasted much like a foie gras pate, but my arugula salad tasted awesome.

The chef recommended that I “super-size” my scallop main dish with black truffle shavings, so you could smell the wonderful scent of truffles from a mile away.  The vegetables were cooked with big chunks of bacon, so needless to say, they tasted amazing.

We were disappointed by the dessert though.  It pretty much eliminated Kitchen Galerie’s chances of becoming one of the restaurants in our top-3 list.  The desserts were simple and unintriguing.  I had the creme brulee and I’ve had better.

Recently, I made a short trip to Hong Kong to visit my dad and brother because they underwent surgery.  Besides visiting the hospital during my short stay, the rest of the time I spent on eating, drinking and shopping!

Here are some of the places that I tried out:

Read the rest of this entry »