phragmentation

Our first night in Montréal, we had the ultra-decadent dinner at Au Pied de Cochon. No pig’s feet, but we did have the enormous seafood platter with bbq octopus, king crab legs, mussels & oysters of all preparations, sea snails, creamy urchins, and crayfish. Followed by bison tartare, the foie gras duo of a burger and poutine, with a side of asparagus (to cut the richness). The foie gras burger was served in a pool of balsamic reduction. The poutine, as I learned, is a traditional quebecois dish of french fries and cheese, smothered in gravy, and often with meat, in this case, foie gras. Good thing it was the only meal I had all day. After our massive dinner, we worked it off with a few games of pool at the bar across the street, where we met a french truck driver and his bosnian friend, a mexican student and the waitress from the restaurant.

Yesterday we started with brunch at Cafe Cherrier (a bagel for david, quiche for me) and walked all over town in the beautiful weather, enjoying the ancient churches and other impressive buildings and houses here. For dinner, we went with Russian, although the one we wanted to try, Kremlin, closed early, so we settled for the fancier Troika, where our waiter spoke every language (french, russian and english) faster than I could barely understand. We feasted on just appetizers, including borshch, terrine de foie gras, pelmeni, piroshki, ravioli… opting out of the very expensive caviar, and although starting with a shot of petrossian, we drank substantially less than that night before. Later in the evening we found a Czech bar, Bily Kun, which had stuffed ostriches on the walls and an excellent selection of exotic ales.

Today we had crepes for brunch on Rue Prince Arthur, a cute pedestrian strip of cafes. Then caught the excellent Cuban art exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts.

But tonight, I’m alone so I decided to cook for myself, and use up some of Annie’s leftovers. Turned out she had potatoes and cheese, so I created my own poutine. I ventured to the mini market across the street and picked up another essential ingredient: bacon. And a cheval blanc to wash it down. Chopped up a few pieces, fried them up, added some chopped garlic, red onion, potatoes, red bell pepper, and a few grinds of black pepper. Cooked it all for a bit, added some chunks of parmesan cheese and let it melt and burn into a crunchy caramelized mess that did take a bit of effort to scrape out of the pan: