According to chef Juneau, Montreal is a great epicurean and inspirational city but it unfortunately lacks some openness towards the rest of the country. The Pastaga team will open up their kitchen and their dining room to these invited chefs who will have carte blanche when it comes to the running of each event.

The December 3first edition of Royal Canadian Monday saw chef Marc Lepine, winner of the 2012 Gold Medal Plate award and chef of the critically acclaimed Atelier in Ottawa taking over the Pastaga kitchen. Chef Lepine created an unbelievable 6-course tasting menu for the occasion. Every dish was like a playful and beautiful work of art. I still can’t decide which of the evening’s dishes was my favourite.

There was the 46 degrees sous-vide arctic char, cherry tomatoes, red pepper gel sheet, dehydrated black olive, 65 degrees sous-vide quail egg, fried capers, caper brine sponge, tarragon aioli that was a definitive contender. But the butternut squash soup, crab apple nitro-noodles, puffed wild rice and crispy duck’s contrast of textures, temperatures and flavours was my most memorable moment of the evening.

The “crab apple nitro-noodles” were made tableside by chef Lepine himself using liquid nitrogen, which brings out the kid in all of us, no matter how worldly we may think we are. The contrast between the sour-sweet frozen crab apple noodles and the warm soup was just unbelievable. Chef Lepine’s Atelier restaurant has been referred to as “Canada’s Alinea” and it was nice to experience some of that talent at this first edition of Royal Canadian Monday.

The line-up of chefs for the upcoming events is impressive and includes Jonathan Gushue (Langdon Hall), John Horne (Canoe), Jeremy Charles (Raymonds) and Quang Dang (West) all scheduled to make an appearance at Pastaga in the next few months.

This is extremely exciting news for Montreal and its food lovers! It is a great opportunity to discover some unbelievable culinary talents from around the country without leaving home. Look out for Jonathan Gushue of Langdon Hall – ranked #77 on the San Pellegrino World’s 100 Best Restaurants 2010 – who is scheduled to be at Pastaga around mid-January.

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THE DETAILS

Pastaga Restaurant, 6389 Saint Laurent Boulevard

To reserve your table for the next Royal Canadian Monday: (438) 381-6389

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With so many options, it’s quite possible to go on a gastronomic tour of these noodle joints across the city. But to save you the time and stomach real estate, I’m going to give you a rundown of some of the best choices of pho, no matter which part of the island you’re on.

My weapon of choice is the “Dac diet” pho – usually labeled as the house specialty; served with slices of brisket, rare flank steak, tendon and tripe. Way uptown the spot you have to hit is Restaurant Nam Quan (3562 Rue Jarry East) – one of the best in the city. This literal hole in the wall operates from the basement of a single home dwelling. Quaint and cozy, they start serving tables at 10 am.

Restaurant Nguyen Phi (6260, Chemin de la cote-des-Neiges) is one of my favorites. Like most other places, the sizing system is a bit strange. Pho comes in either a “medium”, “large”, or “extra-large”. I give up trying to rationalize it, and learned to embrace it as soon as the soup touches my mouth… on my lips. Nguyen Phi shreds their tripe really fine which adds great texture and crunch to each chewy mouthful of noodles.

Another spot midtown is Pho 198 (5193 Côte-des-Neiges Road). Steps from the University of Montreal campus, this spot is taking sole responsibility for sustaining local students on a budget as well as sending them back to school ready for a nap. Being a student once before, I can attest that this option is far better than reconstituted dried ramen from a bag that looks like Justin Timberlake’s hair circa 1999 of N’Sync fame.

Making your way through to the Plateau, if pho’ing should strike you, Restaurant Pho Tay Ho (6414 Rue Saint-Denis), is where you should go. Opposed to the “dac biet”, their specialty here is their chicken pho. Generous slices of poached chicken in an aromatic chicken bone soup, there is an option for a mix of both chicken and beef in the same bowl. Pho sure, it’s one of the best chicken noodles soups in the city… yes, I went there.

Pho Bang New York (1001 Saint-Laurent) is your best option downtown and in the Chinatown area. Their soup is richer in earthy spices, which is highlighted by the generous greenery of basil, scallions and cilantro. Don’t let the tables slapped together in a mock communal dining space intimidate you. There’s something to be said about the level of intimacy that is shared when you’re sitting elbow to elbow with a stranger and having rogue neighboring spit and soup particles tickling each others faces.

Photos: Emilie Nguyen Ngoc

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The Toqué! Creators of a new Quebec gastronomy story starts with the dream team of chef owner Normand Laprise, co-owner Christine Lamarche and chef de cuisine Charles-Antoine Crête. The three work in perfect harmony to bring us the uniquely creative and elegant cuisine we have come to love. Chef Laprise was a proponent of using local ingredients unique to the land before it was fashionable to do so. He has built special relationships with his purveyors and they have all been key components in propelling Toqué! to the top.

Although both Laprise and Crête don’t seem to think so, some of the book’s recipes might be too complex for the amateur home cook. However, this is so much more than a cookbook. It is a voyage from the Toqué! kitchen in Old Montreal to the fields, forests, lakes and shores across this great province of ours. We are led on a discovery of some of Toqué!’s favourite producers who are beautifully portrayed throughout the 450-page volume. Each one of these unique individuals, from deer breeders to artisanal fishermen to foragers, has a special connection to the restaurant and its team.

I asked chef Laprise what his favourite recipe in the book was, the one he would recommend to someone if they could only make one thing. He turned to a recipe that started with “Kill the pig and wait a few minutes to make sure it’s dead”. I don’t think I’ll be trying that one anytime soon but it all goes back to Laprise’s philosophy of knowing where your food comes from and the journey it makes before it gets to your plate.

It would be a shame to talk about the book without mentioning Dominique Malaterre’s breathtaking photos, whether on site at the restaurant or criss-crossing the province in search of the perfect shot. She has managed to beautifully capture the Toqué! spirit. For a behind-the-scenes, sneak peak of this stunning book, take a look at this video:

THE DETAILS

Toqué! Creators of a new Quebec gastronomy, is available in all good bookstores as of November 28, 2012

Restaurant Toqué!, 900 Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle, (514) 499-2084

The post NEW TOQUÉ! COOKBOOK CHRONICLES QUEBEC GASTRONOMY appeared first on Tourisme Montréal Blog.

Oliver, his ex-boss and good friend, is merely a financial backer, who only visited the place for the first time a couple weeks ago. I, for one, have been back three three times since first trying Maison Publique’s brunch – and have yet to order something that wasn’t very tasty. The dishes, listed on a board, are hearty and sometimes quite heavy (like the English-style breakfast platter for two): not for the faint-hearted or the dieting nymphettes.

Some days, unctuous, wobbly bone marrow is drizzled with olive oil before being served with fat slices of toasted sourdough bread (the menu constantly changes). Foie gras pâté forms a tall mound atop more bread, in another indulgent appetizer.

The quiche, its filling nearly white from all the cream, is studded with pieces of lardons and soft, sweet onions (the very lightly-dressed greens on the side make for a nice contrast).

One night, I had a main course of tuna that was perfectly seared on the outside and raw and ruby-red inside, topped with greens, capers and fried croutons. But the specialty here is the offal, from the crisp slices of pig’s liver to the meltingly tender beef tongue served in a sandwich, with a generous pile of pillowy freshly-grated horseradish. Damman, who previously cooked at the extinct DNA in Old Montreal, is well-known for his expertise in butchering and preparing more and less common parts of beef, pork and other meats.

Desserts run along the same rich-and-rustic vein. Their cobbler served in a glass is a nice play on textures, although my favourite sweets are brunch items: the flaky apple pastry and the oh-so-fluffy pancakes with pear butter and top-quality maple syrup from Societé l’Orignal (whose foraged herbs and special oils, all local, are sold at the restaurant, during the day).

Other welcome touches are the all-Canadian wine selection and the expertly-brewed coffee. The only downside, if one can call it that, is how crowded it gets at peak hours. They don’t take reservations and there isn’t much room for those waiting, so my advice is to go very early and very hungry.

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THE DETAILS

Maison Publique, 4720 Marquette Street, (514) 507-0555

The post CHEF DEREK DAMMANN OPENS MONTREAL GASTROPUB MAISON PUBLIQUE appeared first on Tourisme Montréal Blog.

TASTE MTL, aka MTL à TABLE, aka Montreal’s first ever Restaurant Week, is all wrapped up and it was, by all accounts, a great success. From Europea to Laloux (check out all of the coverage in the Montreal Buzz gastronomy section), we did our best to show you how Montreal restaurants let you take a culinary trip around the world. We hope you enjoyed it, and judging from the 10 Best Instagram photos from Taste MTL it sure seems like you did. See you all next year!

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FoodLab has been serving outstanding food in a very casual, trendy atmosphere for the past year. The menu changes every 2 to 3 weeks and is always centered around a specific theme: French Holidays, Japanese izakaya, etc. I sat down with Michelle Marek and Seth Gabrielse, the two talented chefs at the helm of FoodLab, for a Q&A session right before the big birthday event.

What was it like at the beginning?
Michelle Marek: We took a tour of the kitchen space a month and a half before it opened, it was in construction and we were planning it all out. But really, what we got was what we saw. The same empty, completely empty, space.
So when you started out, you didn’t even have the home ovens?
Seth Gabrielse: Nothing, no tables, nothing. We had a piece of the stage from downstairs.
MM: We covered it with a tablecloth just so it didn’t look so trashy.
How did you cook with no water?
SG: We cooked at my place and Michelle and I biked everything in.
And how long did it take before you had water and ovens?
SG: When we opened officially – because we did several events before FoodLab was launched – but when we opened officially, at that point, there was water at the bar area (several feet away) and we could use one third of the bar fridge.
Was there one single moment when everything came together for you?
MM: It’s a series of moments. We had a lot of nice experiences. We’ve been building something and we keep getting proof that, yes, this is still interesting and there’s still a lot that we can do. Despite our limitations, we’ve never let that stop us.
SG: There were moments at the beginning when we looked at our kitchen and realized that it would’ve taken 3 or 4 of the tech guys who work here about half an hour to dismantle it all as if it never existed.
MM: That’s a weird feeling.
SG: Now it’s fun because we see it becoming more permanent. And for me too, it was a series of events but one of the solidifying things was when we decided to start doing the themed-menus and we had a very positive response to them.
Can we expect the same kind of theme format for year 2?
SG: I think so.
MM: What freaked us out at first was not having some sort of direction. It’s literally impossible to work like that. There was no direction so we imposed this direction so at least there was a structure within the menus, because otherwise, it’s all over the place. We’re also looking forward to more collaborations next year, more festivals and more longer-running events.
In your wildest dreams, if there was no budget limit, what would you want? Who would you want cooking in your kitchen?
SG: This is not so wild and crazy but we would love to do an event with some of the old-timers of Montreal, some of the guys who pioneered this business. You know, James MacGuire, Joël Chapoulie, etc. It would be a lot of fun to bring some these guys together and do a meal with them.
MM: We’ve always wanted to do a big dance in the dome, open it up and have a dinner and dance event, but not techno dancing, more like ballroom. We’ve always wanted an educational element to what we do here so it would be cool to explore more workshops, more cooking classes or host these micro workshops here. The demand is there and it’s a neutral space in the city. We’re only open four nights a week so we are flexible and space is not an issue.

Until November 28, Foodlab will feature a Kamouraska menu inspired by a trip Michelle took to that region earlier this summer and then again a couple of weeks ago to collect ingredients which will be part of the menu. From November 29 to December 2 there will be a Quebec Christmas menu (Pea soup, tourtière, cretons, and a lot of traditional dishes will be on the menu at FoodLab while SOUK@SAT is taking place) and in December there will family-style set menus throughout the month for all your holiday parties. These will change on a weekly basis.

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THE DETAILS

FoodLab, Society for Arts and Technology, 1201 Saint-Laurent Boulevard, 3^rd floor
Tuesday to Friday starting at 5pm

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Joining the league of extraordinary North American cities like New York, San Francisco and Vancouver who also host respective restaurant weeks, it came as no surprise when Montreal announced one of our own. For 11 days, November 1-11, TASTE MTL becomes Montreal’s inaugural restaurant week. Close to 100 restaurants scattered around the city are offering table d’hôte menus at $19, $29 or $39, showcasing Montreal’s finest talent, luring local foodies and visiting epicurean enthusiasts.

I visited Ferreira Café in the Downtown core – a popular upscale Portuguese restaurant.  Serving inspired and refined Portuguese cuisine; their “ocean-fresh” ideology resonates through all their signature dishes. If you’ve ever seen a restaurant menu that you’ve wanted one of everything, go with a friend and you’ll be able to tackle Ferreira Café’s Restaurant Week menu. Chef Tavares and team are offering a choice of two appetizers and two main courses as a part of their 11-day showcase.

Warm mushroom salad, truffle oil and Parmesan tuile. Served on a square of puff pastry, this dish is earthy and aromatic.  Toothsome bites of warm sautéed cremini and oyster mushrooms in a simple pan sauce. The mysterious notes of truffle linger long enough to be highlighted by the sharp Parmesan chip and its crunch.

Cured Mediterranean sea bass, yuzu and fresh coriander – thin slices of fresh sea bass topped with strips of next-to-candied yuzu.  The Japanese citrus awakens your palate as it intermingles with the bitters of diced radish and shaved celery tops.  The fish was sweet standing alone – a true testament to the quality and freshness of the fish.

Ferreira Café’s famous pork and clams. Slow-roasted and seared, the pork was fork tender and delicate as you make your way through the slightly crisp pan-sear. Briny little morsels of clams took on the richness of the braising liquid as did the potatoes did the rosemary from the roasted pork.

Pan seared fresh cod, “new potatoes”, roasted red pepper marmalade and a bouillabaisse broth. A thick cut steak of cod, the meat was supple and sweet. The savory marmalade balanced the broth whose spicy notes were reminiscent of Portuguese piri piri sauce. You could smell this dish coming.

For dessert, caramel and Ferreira white port flan.  The tartness of the berries were able to take away what we thought was an overly sweet flan.  However a great way to round out the back and end a great meal.

The Montreal Restaurant week – Taste MTL initiative is an amazing opportunity to explore Montreal’s culinary landscape featuring some of our city’s finest and most talented chefs and Ferreira Café’s refined menu is no doubt a great way to start a week of culinary hedonism.

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With a few major players in the smoked meat game, people who pledge alliance to a particular restaurant will argue and fight without shame with anyone who opposes their discerning palate. One of these institutions is without a doubt, Schwartz’s Hebrew Delicatessen. This landmark on Saint-Laurent Boulevard has been slicing up smoke meat and satiating Montrealer’s smoked brisket void since 1928. This deli boasts a 10-day brine to their meat, which in tandem to their spice mix, produces the signature taste exclusive to Schwartz’s. The meat is then smoked, chilled, and then placed in a steamer ready to be served.

You can order your meat on a scale of “lean” to “fat”, and locals usually order “medium-fat”; the sweet-spot at which die-hard smoked meat aficionados swear the stars align and magic happens. Sliced from the middle of the brisket where the meat is covered by the fat-cap, it yields thicker and juicier slices – medium-fat is where it’s at.

The classic smoked meat sandwich is piled high, served on fresh rye bread with a schmear of straight up yellow mustard.  The clicking of the precision chef’s knife bouncing off the carving fork, slicing meat to order is as intoxicating as the whiffs of steam rising from your sandwich licking off the tart hints of mustard.

Directly across the street from Schwartz’s is another and just as famous Montreal landmark, The Main Steakhouse. With a smoked meat recipe of their own and equally as secretive preparation technique, the ongoing claim for bragging rights on the strip has remained friendly and neighborly for the past 40 years. Montreal’s smoked meat alliances run far and run deep, and many schools have been forged through generations of conditioning and consumption.

Another Montreal smoked meat institution is Lester’s Deli in the Outremont neighborhood. Still family owned and run (for over 60 years!), their spot highlights a great terrace in the summer and fun and kitschy artifacts that line the walls of the restaurant that rival the china cabinet of any bubbi.

Wherever you get your fix, a trip to Montreal isn’t complete without stuffing your face with our famous smoked meat.  You can try to order your sandwich with mayo if you’re brave enough to face the glares of locals, but what ever you do, don’t call it pastrami.

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Chuck Hughes, as everyone knows, is the Montreal restaurant scene’s very own wild child. Once a busboy at glam Le Globe on St-Laurent, he then opened Garde Manger, favourite hotspot stopoff for clubbers in Old Montreal. He became TV spokesman for Hellmann’s Mayo, then became only the second Canadian to win Iron Chef (he beat Bobby Flay!), got his own Food Network show, Chuck’s Day Off, caters for backstage rockstars and their entourage at Osheaga every summer (I saw him doing dishes just hours after making Elvis Costello a poutine), and just wrapped shooting in Mexico on his new TV show for Cooking Channel (in the U.S.) and Food Network Canada.

But what Chuck loves best is being in the juice (a Montreal term for being very busy in the kitchen!) and I suspect he opened Le Bremner for a chance to get back to basics after his runaway TV-star success and the packed scenesterliness of his flagship restaurant, Garde Manger.

“I love to work, and so it’s important to me to be able to always be looking for new challenges,” he says. “We wanted to open a place that would have a mellow buzz, you know, where people would like to hangout, and where the menu could be a bit refined.”

He and his partner, James Baran, and their kitchen staff want to cook good food for old and new friends in a gorgeous, cozy space in a historical neighbourhood, every night of the week (pictured at top with matching tattoos that read 275, the perfect temperature at which to fry their signature pommes allumettes, or matchstick fries) So that’s what happens at Le Bremner.

Named after Alex Bremner, a mid-20th-century construction baron in Old Montreal, Chuck’s new place is across from the Bonsecours Market, on beautiful, cobblestoned Rue Saint-Paul. Identified only by a pink neon sign that reads “Restaurant”, you find it mostly from the human sounds and heavenly smells coming from the 40-seat dining room and 25-seat terrasse. Both of these are beautiful spaces in which to chow down (in the dining room: original beams, mood lighting, and sumptuous banquettes, while the cozy, verdant terrasse is heated year-round.)

Order food, and let yourself get carried away on the menu, which is organized into sections–Chilled Items, From Outside, Bread & Cheese, From the Stovetop, From the Broiler, Vegetables, Dessert)—keeping in mind that the dishes are meant to be like “large appetizers”—2 or 3 per person can be the norm. The raw section is especially prodigious, because Montreal has great seafood, which is a theme throughout the menu. A trio of tasty piles of crab kimchee on chewy rice cakes is a great Asian innovation, while their cheeky sardine cheek and asparagus with a lemony dressing) take on a portugese panela (frypan) was especially fishlicious.

Some of the dishes are straight-up, stone-cold comfort food—a Naan-bread pizza with daily-rotating toppings (we had rapini, mushrooms and lardons, yum) and a sumptuous lemon-curd filled strawberry shortcake, and you’ll be ready to happily curl up in the belly of the Chuck’s expanding food empire, which is, quite rightly, one of Montreal’s worst-kept secrets.

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THE DETAILS

Le Bremner, 361 Saint Paul Street East, (514) 544-0446

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Us Montrealers are busy pickling the bejeezus out of the fall harvest—recipes for dills, pickled beets, picalilli, tomato sauce, and a local specialties, ketchup vert, are being traded around. Ketchup vert is especially close to our hearts—it’s the relish, made with green tomatoes and spices, that goes with our winter meat-pies that are called Tourtieres. Young chefs like Ségué Lepage of Le Comptoir Charcuteries et Vins was talking about making his own batch for service this fall.

But if you’re just visiting and you don’t have your own larder, don’t worry—it’s just as easy, and possibly more delightful, to get your harvest on at various restaurants around town. Below, I’ve made an ideal fall meal from my wanderings: Each one of these places is good for a whole meal, of course, but let’s pretend.

Renard is the newest kid on the block, taking over a prized spot on Rue Mont-Royal where Cinquieme Péché, a beloved bistro, used to be (it moved around the corner). Chef Jason Nelsons is obsessive about sourcing his food from the most quality driven small producers in the province, as you can tell from his idiosyncratic and totally passionate blog.

On my last visit, he served me an amazing combo of two of my favourite things: Crispy veal sweetbreads with a bisque of crawfish from Lac St-Pierre. He was also doing all sorts of nice things with mushrooms, including chanterelles with lardons as a main, and his classic homemade smoked tomato soup—the stuff dreams are made of.

Though the best corner bistros and neighbourhood joints will be cooking with seasonal ingredients this time of year, the award goes to Normand Laprise for sheer inventiveness, and tastiness as well. Laprise, Montreal’s marquee chef, has been cooking with exclusively local produce for almost two decades—well ahead of the locavore curve.

In September, the kitchen at Toqué leaps into tomato-processing mode, canning and preserving things for the winter. They serve fresh tomato dishes, like their classic BLT inside a tomato and my personal favourite, Halibut with Tomato Scraps- which may sound scrappy, but they make the “scraps” into tomato caramel, paste, oil, sauce, pate de fruit, and other treats. When I went to visit their kitchen this week for the article, Toqué’s firebrand chef de cuisine, Charles-Antoine Crète, made some art out of their tomatoes to whet my appetite.

Montreal’s newest ice-cream sensation is Les Givrés, which we covered in detail this summer…so why should you want ice-cream when the fall winds start blowing, you ask? Answer: Because they’re doing some serious things with apples. They have a special way to make soft-serve ice-cream, and the flavor of the week this week is a pure-apple soft-serve, which owner Julien recommends you eat on a cinnamon ice-cream cone (homemade of course).

The other feature, pictured here, is possibly the best idea ever: Apple-pie ice cream. You know how good a homebaked pie is à la mode, with vanilla ice-cream on top? Well, they’ve skipped a step, and rolled the pie, crust, and ice cream all into one magnificent scoop. It’s crazy that the pie crust stays crispy in all of this, too—it will possibly blow your mind.

Happy fall!

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