Joe Beef last night. Just so good. We don’t eat this richly very often but it was a wonderful splurge to do so. After a quick glass of wine at Le Vin Papillon just down the block we strode into Joe Beef and were quickly seated in the larger room in back - what a nice room.
We had the oeuf en gelée persillé, which is an impressive concoction and quite tasty, and fresh tomatoes in the most delicious house-made thousand island vinaigrette. I could have licked that plate clean. We paired the duck in sauce au poivre with an insane dish of chanterelles with foie gras and fried eggs. So saucy, so rich, so good! We drank Danjou Banessy Roboul, a crisp light red from the Roussillon that was perfect with the rich fare. The restaurant is lively and we chatted with people at both of the tables beside us. Thanks for the report @Robert_Dentice !
Back in Montreal for one more night on this Canada trip and we hit Rôtisserie La Lune. Montreal loves chicken! Super fun place, it’s large and informal and the staff are young and friendly. I agree with you Robert that the chicken is excellent, and so are the other dishes. We got half a chicken with the poulet sauce as well as Bearnaise, which was killer with the frites. We also got the haricots verts with Caesar dressing and a special plate of fresh tomatoes and cheese curds in an herbed vinaigrette, which slayed - the summer tomatoes we had in Montreal have been amazingly good! We drank Jean-Paul Gaussen Bandol rosé, an old favorite, and it was perfect with the chicken and sauces. Thanks for this recommendation!
It looks like we had significant overlap on our trips to Montreal and Quebec. Memory fails a bit, but my experience with Joe Beef was good food/awful service. It took over an hour to get our entrees and the waiter never appeared at our table in the long wait for our food. The escargot was (I am told, I don’t do snails) a standout. However, if you’re in the area, I highly recommend Badin, a speakeasy just a 2-minute walk from Joe Beef. You have to ring a buzzer to be let in and you snake your way to a dark basement. Inside you’ll find a hi-fi lounge with creative cocktails. I imagine it’s the type of bar that @Robert_Dentice would enjoy.
A couple misses from our trip. My last trip to Montreal was approximately 30 years ago and I still remembered how good the smoked meat was at Schwartz’s Deli, so I was looking forward to a return visit. Honestly, meh. The meat didn’t have nearly as much smoke as I recall. Katz’s Deli (yes, I realize that pastrami /= smoked meat) is much better.
And we also went to Monarque. The wine list is amazing, but I was dismayed when I realized the pricing online was not current, so everything was about 30% more expensive than I expected, so I decided not to grab that bottle of Raveneau and told the waiter I’d like to try another bottle of wine, to which he replied “you cannot try, you must purchase the entire bottle”. Waiter aside, the food was about what you’d expect from a quality brasserie.
And stereotypes side, for historical and political reasons I think it’s safe to say most French Quebecers will be friendlier to Americans than to non-English speaking Canadians.
We visit Montreal at least 2x/year and Canada 3-4 times. I can say that this was true until earlier this year. It’s changing. I also felt it was a language thing - Quebecois feel like Canadians not speaking Quebecfrench is worse than Americans not speaking Quebecfrench or French. But regardless, that’s changed. I no longer try to identify as an American in Montreal.
We met a nice couple at Joe Beef who were visiting from Ontario. They loved that we were from New York and that we had chosen to visit Canada and Montreal. I asked if they ever visit the US and they said they used to… and I said I could understand.
I have also experienced Canadians being very sympathetic to our plight of living in the U.S., which is definitely something new. However, I will admit to attaching a Canadian flag tag to my luggage when I travel. (I lived in Montreal for 15 years).
Without having a Canadian passport! That’s a crime in Canada. You could have done 3 days of curling without a broom, the harshest punishment dealt by our courts.
If I look at the people I interact with in Montreal, they are still able to differentiate between people and politics. So they still like 50ish percent of Americans about the same percentage of Canadians they like .
Super fun place, it’s large and informal and the staff are young and friendly. I agree with you Robert that the chicken is excellent, and so are the other dishes. We got half a chicken with the poulet sauce as well as Bearnaise, which was killer with the frites. We also got the haricots verts with Caesar dressing and a special plate of fresh tomatoes and cheese curds in an herbed vinaigrette, which slayed - the summer tomatoes we had in Montreal have been amazingly good! We drank Jean-Paul Gaussen Bandol rosé, an old favorite, and it was perfect with the chicken and sauces. Thanks for this recommendation!
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