I like cities with attitude and this one had it in spades. From the slightly scary punks on lower Rue St. Denis (more on this street in a moment) to the general air of hip exuded by the young and oldsters. The streets were dirty and the people were rude. The subway was fast and real people (not the super rich) lived in the city proper. This is all to say that city was cosmopolitan; it had all the things one would want from a proper city. In the spirit of this universal cosmopolitanism, I sought out Montreal's versions of some of my favorite things. Here is a quick list of what I found:
Fries-
Poutine! I arrived hungry and irritable. All the places I was told to go to were packed with cool teens and early 20-somethings. After stomping around St. Laurent for two hours, I decided my life would be infinitely better if I was somewhere warm, eating greasy food and drinking beer. As I began to wend my way to downtown Montreal, I saw a small place called Patati Patata. When I say small, I mean miniscule, Rudy's stage small. There were 2 tables, a central bar and a window bar, meaning that any number of people constituted a crowd. Through the window I glimpsed, my future perfect evening: two cooks hard at work churning out plates of poutine anda double barreled tap of Montreal.
Poutine has an odd texture. Nothing in the mixture seems to be truly solid or liquid. The cheese melts into the gravy, the gravy absorbed into the fries and the fries decompose rapidly. Balanced with a pilsner, this was manna from heaven. The atmosphere of standing cheek to jowl with other people from Montreal also helped make this a singular eating experience.
Bagels-
As a man from New York, I am of course a bagel snob. I strongly believe that the further you get from New York City, the worse the bagels are. (The only place this does not hold for is Long Island, which seems to exist in the New York Bagel slip stream.) I was told that Montreal could field a good bagel, so I tried the Fairmount Bagel, known for its hand rolled, wood fired bagels. To be fair, I ordered half a dozen, each a different type including the New York salted bagel. Now, the simplest description I can give of a New York Bagel is crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. The Montreal bagel did not have the bite nor the crumb, yet they were bagels...good bagels...warm, soft, sweet, almost honey-sweet, bagels. They had a more uniform consistency than those in New York and I cream cheese didn't spring to mind while biting into one, but they were serious baked goods.
Beer-
Beer is important to me. The way that politics can be important to people. I feel like I failed myself on the beer front. The convenience stores all proudly sold Unibroue beer. And I had generic Montreal beer with my poutine. But I really wanted something distinct, and perhaps unavailable in the United States. Despite some digging I was unable to discover a truly beer centered bar in Montreal, the sort of place that makes drawing together an assortment of beer its priority. I did go to a microbrewery called L'Amere A Boire, which had 20 beers on tap, of which I had Fin de Siecle which, I believe was a red ale. It was pleasant, rich and not overpowering. While it did not have an expansive beer list, it had a brochure style of presenting them which made choosing difficult (did I mention that it was also in French?). Nonetheless, it was good place. There was no poutine, but they had great locally-grown Bison burgers and juicy rabbit burgers.
I suppose the mark of a good trip is a bit of regret.
P.S. This is hardly worth it's own entry, but Montreal has these Farmer's Market-esque markets. I believe there are 4 of them. I went to Marche Maisonneuve. The bakers there changed my notion of what a croissant could be. More precisely, they changed my notion of how much butter could be pressed into a pastry. I try to be resistant to saying "they make x better there" (except in the case of NY), so let's just say, it's not better, it's butter.
