so long, and thanks for all the poutine

When we awoke on Sunday, we both knew what had to be done. We would return to Au Pied in order to sample the remaining 30-odd dishes we had missed on our first visit. P would spend the rest of the morning practicing his French and psyching himself up to call the restaurant and make a reservation. A would spend her day dreaming up possible appetizer-entree combinations to make the most out of one last trip.

To make room for the meal that lay ahead, we set out to the base of Mont Royal to finally begin our hike to the top. Though it wasn't the peak of fall foliage, the colors were crisp and striking to people coming from the evergreen Northwest. The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape architect behind Central Park, and it showcased his highly natural style. A lake at the top of the hill provides a space for paddle boats in the summer and ice skating in the winter. Just a pretty view for us. Despite the balmy morning, which made for a stunning view from the hilltop, we ended up huddling under the single umbrella we were lucky to have brought with us.

By the time we were finished trekking up and down the park, we realized that it was well past lunch time and, quite possibly, the longest we had gone without food on the entire trip. We ran (we did not walk) to the other side of town and made it into Euro-Deli Batory minutes before they locked their doors. Your basic neighborhood Polish go-to store (doesn't every neighborhood have one?), Euro-Deli was packed with Polish toiletries, Polish food and Polish DVDs. A had been craving borscht for what seemed like years, because of P's cruel moratorium, so she knew exactly what she was getting. P had a soft spot for Pierogis, likely a result of his Polish (and Ukranian) heritage. The Borscht was excellent - a strong, earthy beet flavor countered by a generous dollop of sour cream - and P happily "helped" A with her meal. The Pierogis were plentiful and delicious with yet more sour cream on the side. On our way out, we grabbed a poppyseed kolachi and then wandered up to Marche Jean Talon. We grabbed a few bottles of ice cider (Quebec's wine industry has recently been receiving recognition, but their ice cider has long been praised) and said good-bye to Olive et Epices.

We walked back towards our B & B and ended up at Chocolat de Chloe, one of the cutest chocolatiers we had ever seen. Chloe infuses all her own ganaches with fresh herbs, fruits and spices. As we salivated over her wares, laboring over how much chocolate we could fit into our suitcases, Chloe herself was busy decorating sugar skulls for Dia de los Muertos. We finally decided on a bag of drinking chocolate fish, a bag of caramel tablets (like a decadent Caramello), and Caramel au Vanille et Buerre Sale (the most incredible caramel sauce made with salted butter, so it has a distinct salty flavor to compliment the buttery sweetness).

When we'd returned from Chloe's, P mustered it up in himself to call and make a reservation at Au Pied. Excitement led him to make it for incredibly early in the evening. So we shortly left for the restaurant in broad daylight, hoping that we wouldn't be the overeager first ones to the restaurant on our second trip in four days. One thing P had done correctly was to specify a place at the bar when he'd called. It had been recommended that we sit at Au Pied's bar for the full experience of the open kitchen, and it was wise that we did. It isn't easy to understand just how much foie gras this restaurant goes through until you see it for yourself. In between placing the final touches on various dishes, the sous chef would absent-mindedly lob lobes of foie gras into a pan to melt for sauces or chop off thick slabs as toppings. The chefs themselves all wore mechanic's button-up shirts with embroidered name tags above the pocket - no chef's whites in sight. In keeping with the rag-tag pirate crew demeanor of the chefs, P got to sit in a bar stool that had a stag's rack in place of a seat back.

But seriously, we didn't return to Au Pied for dinner theater. P went straight for the house beer, brewed by St. Ambroise and A had a glass of the local hard cider. We had staked out the menu through our cookbook and already knew what we would order. A got the poutine au foie gras, which had been our prime reason to return. After all of the other poutines we had sampled, how could we pass up one this decadent? Not only were the fries perfectly crisp and golden with a clear potato flavor, but they top the whole thing with a slab of foie gras. But that, friends, is not enough. In addition to the ubiquitous poutine sauce (brown gravy), Au Pied smothers the entire pile in melted foie gras. For balance, they have a parsley garnish. P could see the tears running down A's face. Or maybe it was perspiration. IT WAS THAT GOOD.

P threw caution to the wind and ordered the canard en conserve:

Duck in a can from stumptownpanda on Vimeo.

The chefs separate the fat from the meat on a duck magret and stuff foie gras in the middle. They then place the stuffed breast in a can with buttery cabbage and demi-glace. After sealing the can, they boil it to order, slap a label on it and bring it to the table with a plate of crusty bread and celeriac puree. They pull out a can opener and, well, the rest is pretty self explanatory from our video (sorry for the orientation - we were excited). Watching them open the can with such grace and finesse was something to behold - you could tell you were in the presence of truly masterful waiters.

What better way to end a rich meal than with a dish even richer than the main courses? There was no question as to which dessert we were ordering. Last time, we had been distracted by the romance of the maple tart for two (we were on our honeymoon, after all), but this time, we went for the true Quebecois classic: pouding chomeur. If anyone has ever tried the British standby, sticky toffee pudding, you have a sense for what this Quebecois dessert is all about. Sugar, butter, and sugary-butter sauce. Au Pied's version was borrowed from a Montreal cafe, "Soup Soupe," and they are lucky to have the recipe. It was like eating butter and maple syrup cooked together and baked to a molten heat. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we didn't even feel the painful burns. Luckily, we now have the recipe, so our scars may never fully heal.

This meal may sound less decadent than our first - there were, indeed, fewer courses - but pound for pound the dishes were richer and even more satisfying. We left Au Pied du Cochon (for the second time) feeling stuffed and euphoric, our cholesterol levels glad to finally bid Montreal adieu.

Ta Da!

montreal journal - day 5

We awoke to sunny weather with plans to finally hike up to the top of Mont Royal Saturday afternoon. However, by the time we'd stepped off at our first metro stop, we were in the midst of the worst rain of our trip. Maybe Mont Royal was out of the picture for today, but a little rain certainly wouldn't stop us from eating. On the other hand, the fact that it was only 10 in the morning and we'd just finished breakfast might slow us down, so we headed to L'Oratore St. Joseph to see the view. The oratory is a massive church on the Western side of Mont Royal whose Romanesque exterior belies the spare, cavernous, and a tad dated 60s chapel inside. From the top of the dizzying stairs, there was an expansive view of the West, from which we could spot one of our later destinations (hint: it's big and round and orange).

Somewhat nonplussed by the architecture, we headed out to the more impressive landmark that we'd seen from the stairs. But first (because it was a decent hour for lunch) - a little Trinidadian pick-me-up after all the stairs we had climbed. Amidst car dealerships and chain thriftstores like Village du Valeur, we found Mister Spicee tucked away in a tiny basement storefront. Walking inside was like stepping into a foreign country, but not because of the Trinidadian heritage. Everything was in English! Wow, we had forgotten how easy it is when you speak the native language. We honestly spent a moment trying to decipher the menu from French before realizing we understood it. We both ordered "doubles" - two chickpea flatbreads sandwiching spicy curry stew, smothered with hot sauce and tamarind sauce. A got the chicken and potato and P got the goat and chickpea. We shared a ginger beer - the spicee-est either of us had ever tasted. It was a bit too harsh on its own, but it stood up perfectly to the spicy curry. Since we noticed that everyone who came in left with some coconut bread (cakey, nutty cookies), we made sure to get some on our way out.



Gibeau Orange Julep from stumptownpanda on Vimeo.

Gibeau. Apart from our love of foreign strip malls, this was the reason we'd traveled so far from the city center. It's like a giant orange was dropped from space sometime in the 50s just to bring us joy, but the taste of this drink was anything but alien. The Julep was like what you always wished an Orange Julius would be - pulpy, fresh juice and oh-so-creamy froth. In fact, maybe it was alien, because we both agreed it was totally out-of-this-world. Aw, snap. Plus, the teenagers who served us squeezed the drink from a silver tube that seemed to originate from somewhere in the giant orange overhead. A wanted to set up her home inside the orange and live our her fantasies of a citrusy future (A and the Giant Orange?). P was tired of sitting out in the wind and rain with a drink that was more refreshing than warming. Well worth the trip to what was basically Montreal's strip mall outskirts.

After getting back to the downtown, we thought a walk around the McGill campus might be nice in the torrential downpour. It wasn't. But we didn't stop. We passed a wedding on the way back and thought to ourselves, "Suckers."

Since the rain didn't appear to be letting up any time soon, we escaped into a bar to drink it off. Despite the fact that it was a Saturday afternoon (edging into the "happy" hour) and the weather was miserable, the bar was completely deserted. Le Cheval Blanc is the older sister bar to Bily Kun, which we had visited earlier in the week. The decor was a mix between retro 50's and Asian hipster, with formica tables and red, Chinoiserie lanterns. We enjoyed our cream ale and house amber (all the beers are so smooth here - where are the hops?) while listening to the lone bartender sing along to Bob Dylan and bluegrass.

Nap.

We went back up towards the Jean Talon market to Le Petit Alep, which we had passed earlier in the week and made a note to return. The hipper side cafe of Restaurant Alep, they served Syrian-focused Middle Eastern dishes. Many of the items were familiar to us (mezze, kabobs, etc...) but were inflected with unique flavors like pomegranate and walnut. We started with plates of moussaka (tomato and spice-stewed eggplant) and muhamara (pomengranate syrup, walnuts, cumin, bread crumbs and garlic), which was possibly our favorite part of the meal. For mains, A had a grilled pita stuffed with spinach and cheese and heavy on the garlic and P ordered the shish taouck - tangy grilled chicken kabobs between two buttery flatbreads. Over the course of dinner, we spoke more and more urgently about how much we both enjoyed Au Pied de Cochon and how we had barely skimmed the surface of their offerings. And that was how our plan began to form.

montreal journal - day 4

Ostensibly in search of a French paper mill, but really just wandering around because it was too early for lunch, we began the day by walking along Canal Lachine. To our right, the view looked very much like the picture you see here. To our left, were worn down warehouses and graffitied buildings lining a busy truck route. The walk was blustery and we almost gave up hope of finding the paper mill, until we noticed a poorly marked stairwell leading below one of the buildings. After all of this, we decided not to go inside, because a.) it looked closed (and, let's be honest, a bit creepy), b.) we didn't really need any paper, and c.) we decided we couldn't speak "paper mill" french and wanted to avoid looking like fools during the inevitably awkward tour.

Quaint French paper mills aside, the real reason we were wandering around an industrial warren of warehouses was because we wanted to get lunch at a place in the neighborhood. Paul Patates is a 50's era diner, all chrome and neon - a very classy establishment. Because it sounded the most satisfying, we both ordered the number three combo: an "all-dressed" [with nowhere to go, but in our mouths] toaste - a grilled hot dog with mustard, ketchup, relish and homemade coleslaw; a plate of poutine, in place of the ubiquitous fries you might see in an American diner; and a bottle of homemade spruce beer. More places in Quebec used to brew their own spruce beer, but this practice has nearly gone the way of the Dodo. Paul Patates is one of the few in town that continues the tradition and their soda is crystal clear and lightly sweetened, with strong carbonation and a back of the throat resinous flavor that finishes off each sip. It was incredible. And, their poutine was among the squeakiest that we had.

Each with a full belly, we decided to go to a place where we wouldn't feel pressure to eat more. We dropped in at the Musee de Beaux Arts, which is free this fall. This was fantastic, because we could reserve that extra money for more meals. The museum's collections were pretty small, but luckily, they were currently hosting a clever traveling design exhibit. Focusing on the idea and imagery of streamlined speed, the exhibit juxtaposed items from the 30s and 40s like toasters and typewriters with the airplanes and trains that inspired their aerodynamic lines. These were the fastest appliances we had ever seen.

Since we enjoyed trekking all across town, we left the museum to head back in the direction of Canal Lachine, in order to drop by another of the city's markets - Marche Atwater. Though this market was in all of the guide books as having a beautiful building and being filled with gourmet food, we preferred the slightly more utilitarian, but much more international and interesting, Marche Jean Talon. After all, there was no Olives et Epices at this market... However, we did grab a jug of tart cider, which was a perfect compliment to our evening meal.

Although we had sadly missed the Pop Montreal music festival the weekend prior to our arrival, our trip did coincide with the Festival du Nouveau Cinema, an annual week of independent and progressive international films. We had read an article about a short film by two Montrealers and tried to get to it only to find that it was already sold out. Determinedly, we waited in line and managed to slip into the film. What we thought was a showing of one short film, was actually a competitive short films program. The piece that we had gone to see, Madame Tutli-Putli, was a mix of live action (just the eyes, disconcertingly enough) and stop motion animation. The film started out as a woman's darkly comic train trip, but quickly took an eerie turn. Neither of us had ever really seen an animated film that was actually scary. The animation was realistic enough to be frightening, but also had a certain doll-like, make-believe quality that was equally spooky. It did not disappoint. Among the rest of the films, we both enjoyed a short documentary about a rural French hunting club, as well as the film about the Balkan War. The rest of the films were a mix of bleak locales and bleaker experiences.

We returned from the films somewhat later than expected to a simple meal of market bread, cheese, cider...and a few of our Au Pied du Cochon leftovers. As we always say, some foie gras each day keeps the doctor away.

montreal journal - day 3

Another late morning, another great breakfast. P desperately wanted to relive the modernism of the old world's fair site, so we took the metro to Parc Jean Drapeau on the Ile Ste. Hélène. As we rode out, we watched as person after person departed at previous stations until, by the time we arrived, there were only a few souls left. Walking in Parc Jean Drapeau was like stepping into a ghost town of the former world's fair. The park was nearly deserted and every building looked as if it had been unoccupied since '67. Granted, this island is still home to a modern-day Six Flags and tourist season had only ended a month prior, but we were completely on our own.

We took in the sites that remain of the fair: a giant Calder sculpture that frames a view across the St. Lawerence River of old town Montréal and Bucky's geodesic dome, which is now home to an environmental museum. Seemingly alone, we wandered through the park and happened on (it wasn't difficult to miss) a fenced field where every schoolchild from the greater Montreal area was being held prisoner - er, playing. Playing and screaming. Mostly screaming. In French.

We made our way back to the city and to a former iron foundry that now houses galleries and a lunchtime hot spot called Cluny Artbar. A very raw industrial space with a comfortably bustling vibe, pictures of their pug mascot grace the walls and all of their tables are made from reclaimed bowling lanes. We ate a simple panini with Italian meats and fresh mozzarella and a heaping plate of roasted vegetable antipasti. The real standout, though, was a cream of chicken soup with chipotle chilies. It was like 1950s comfort food but with a smoky, spicy bite and incredibly fresh flavor.

Afterwards, we cut across the financial downtown to do a quick tour of Old Town. It was very pretty, but more in a living-working-city way than the picture-book charm of some European cities. We found Notre Dame cathedral, which was a very New World, if a little overdone, homage to Ste. Chapelle in Paris. Unfortunately, we missed the laser light show. We went down to the waterfront and sauntered (jauntily) through a decidedly shuttered-up Old Port. From what we can tell, Montreal has two seasons (according to the tourist bureau) - Summer and Winter. In Summer, you can rent paddle boats on the canals and enjoy "crème glace" while walking down quaint Euro-inspired streets. In Winter, you can ice skate on those same canals and, one can only presume, buy warm cider and spiced nuts on those same quaint lanes. In Fall, you can look upon the boarded up windows of summer tourist shacks and read the advertisements for the winter amusements yet to come. This was probably for the best because both Summer and Winter attractions seem to consist of a lot of overpriced bottles of maple syrup and plush mounties. Still, a quiet walk among abandoned canals and vacant historic streets was pretty nice.

Walking back through Chinatown, we stopped at Camellia Sinensis in the college-y Latin Quarter. Just like our with coffee experiences, coming from Portland we were spoiled in our expectations. To their credit, they did have a nice tea menu (we had a mellow wulong and a very fine 1995 Pu-erh), but Asian-tradition tea parlors tend to make us tense. Too quiet. Too many good vibes. Too many bodhi seed bracelets. Maybe we really are just high tea sort of people - the Brits got it right with the scones and sandwiches and cream and crumpets. Asian tea is just too austere. With that in mind, we decided to go about as far on the opposite side of the spectrum from austere as we could.

Au Pied de Cochon. This restaurant was the reason we first became interested in Montreal. Years ago, P had seen an episode of an Anthony Bourdain food show set in Quebec and Martin Picard's Montreal restaurant. The moment that stood out in P's memory? Chef Picard telling his staff to "kill" Bourdain by serving him every dish on the menu. Now remember, we said we felt too austere - Picard's dishes are Quebecois comfort food (not light too begin with) of the most decadent variety. And so platters of foie gras-stuffed pig's feet, boudin noir, entire guinea hens, duck pot au feu, and maple candied pig's heads came right off the line and onto Bourdain's plate. P was transfixed.

If we lived here, we both agreed we would have to designate a "PDC" budget. This is the sort of place you could eat at every night of the week (if your arteries could withstand the onslaught). The space was a warm and inviting room with a long bar, lots of rustic wood finishes, a huge brick oven, and a cold display case packed with lobes of foie gras. Others have aptly described the interior as resembling a sugar shack cabin - just one that is overflowing with crowds of people who all seemed to know one another. The staff were all incredibly attentive and accommodating, but the menu itself is what is truly sublime.

We began our meal with two well-advised cromesquises du foie gras - easily the stand-out of the evening. With the appearance of small croûtons, they were actually cubes of breaded, deep-fried, liquefied foie gras. Toss one in your mouth, close your lips and it is the damn most rarefied popper experience of your life. We followed it up with a salad of local blue cheese, walnuts, apples and endive, imagining it to be a bright counterpoint to the meat-heavy rest of our meal. Not here. The mountainous salad was the size of A's head and was really just a pile of some amazing cheese and nuts doused in rich dressing. More salads should take a cue from Au Pied. When our mains came, we were already stuffed, but we are professionals, so we didn't let it phase us. P had the potee du PDC, a cast iron pot filled blood sausage, French-style saucisson, pork, mushrooms, onions, and cheese-curd laced mashed potatoes. You know, for balance. The deep sweetness of the boudin and the rich pork fat were cut by a bright vinegary note in the broth that laced the pork roasts. And the fact that you could get a bite of garlicky, cheese-y potatoes with each forkful made it all the better.

A went the dainty route and ordered a pizza. Pizza with a full slab of foie gras on each slice. Saying no to the exclusivity of certain ingredients, Picard easily has over a dozen preparations involving foie gras, and the helping is always generous. Picard has rejected the pretenses of so many new restaurants and opened a place where people can just revel in the full sensuality of simple food. But to fully understand this, you need to think about "simple" the way this man does. When you get over the cost, foie gras is about as simple as you can get - it just tastes good, all on its own. "So", Picard thinks, "why not capitalize on that and use it as liberally as you would butter?" And that is exactly what he does. The foie stands in for the more traditional anchovy on Italian-style pies, and all of the other ingredients are orchestrated around it to play off of its richness. Figs provide the honeyed sweetness, arugula offers a bitter edge, goat cheese adds a nice tang and paper thin prosciutto serves as a basil chiffonade garnish.

Not wanting to miss out on a single aspect of Au Pied, we didn't shy away from dessert, even though our digestive tracts were ready to resign. We chose the tarte d'érable (pour deux!), whose humble appearance belied its decadence. Its flavor and consistency struck all of the notes of a classic pecan pie filling (sans the nuts) - buttery and custardy, but heightened by that unique maple sweetness. Paired with a glass of barely-frozen ice cream, it really was luxurious. A is quite the crust aficionado and she could have sworn theirs had a generous helping of leaf lard, but we looked into our PDC cookbook later (yeah, we bought a souvenir from dinner) and found only butter. That is some masterful crust. We paired the dessert with a 1994 French ice wine (their one and only dessert wine) because that's just the way we roll. We aren't sure what more we can say about Au Pied de Cochon than that we had superlatively high expectations going in and they were completely warranted in every respect.

montreal journal - day 2

We woke on our second morning in Montreal just as late as we had the day before. When we had told Louise that we'd take breakfast around 9:30 our first morning, we thought of it as a one-time occurrence to allow ourselves to recover from jetlag. For two people who typically wake before their alarms on weekends, we actually rested on this trip (that's probably the point) and fell into the habit of taking the latest breakfasts of almost all of the b & b guests. We were only outdone by a woman who arrived from Toronto late in our stay and may still be sleeping for all we know.

At breakfast (light crepe-like pancakes with fresh berry sauce), Louise offered us a few suggestions for the day. She had good things to say about the Marche Jean Talon (the largest of the markets in town) and let us know that Wednesday nights were free at Montreal's Contemporary Art Museum. For those of you out there who aren't really interested in reading all of these long posts, aren't you glad we just gave you an elevator speech version of our day? If you truly love us and think we're pretty damn funny, read on.

We caught the Metro up to the market from the Mont Royal stop, which is very nearly the bleakest station in town (that dubious distinction is reserved for the gulag that is Cote-des-Neiges). Jean Talon is out on the Northern end of little Italy where a larger ethnic population is evident in all of the international restaurants and African internet cafes. After coming from the abundance of artisan produce of the Portland Farmer's Market, the outdoor farmers' stands didn't captivate us. The real draw here was a small spice importer run by the deVienne family named Olives et Epices. This shop was a veritable wonderland of seasonings and we spent a good hour staring in rapt admiration at the array. After having devoted over 15 minutes to discussing whether we should get the Madascar or the Tahitian vanilla bean, we knew it was time for us to make our purchases and move on with our day. We selected some gifts and decided on a box of Thai and Indonesian spices for ourselves (oh - and we went with the Organic Madagascar vanilla bean).

Post-market we were feeling a bit peckish, but of course any old restaurant would not do. We headed out into the surrounding neighborhood in search of an Armenian bakery. [Perhaps it is worth mentioning here that we weren't as savvy as we seemed when it came to finding local favorites. We had the amazing assistance of ...an endless banquet, a great food blog written by two Montrealers. Without their guide, we wouldn't have eaten nearly so much. It was like having a friend with great taste offer you all of their recommendations.] On the way to the bakery, we came upon this sign, which caused A to sing "faites la pause, faites la pause, faite a faite a faite a that kit kat bar" for the rest of the day. This caused P to declare, "Faites la pause from that song." Ah, love. Turns out, Armenian pizza is fantastic. From Chez Apo, got take out lamajoun (a flatbread covered in spices, spinach and cheese), sesame-studded falafel and tzatziki. This photo from lunch pretty much captures A's trip experience.

Strolling back through Petite Italie, we stopped into a Montreal institution - Quincaillerie Dante. This is one of those places that we keep telling people about when we try to describe Montreal. It is a cooking supply store in an Italian neighborhood with a difficult to pronounce French name ("hardware store") and a large stock of guns. That's right, it's a hunting/cooking shop where old women bickered in three languages over stockpots as businessmen on their lunch breaks stared down the sights of rifles.

After the superlatively good bagels from breakfast the day before, we knew we'd have to get some from the source. We'd heard good things about both St. Viateur and Fairmount bagels, but as Fairmount proved much harder to find, we chose to go there. We got one black (poppy) and one white (sesame) and wished we'd gotten a bag. Taking them back to our room, we tore into them immediately and found the crust to have a great snap to it and their interiors to be chewy like a soft pretzel. Seriously good bagels. We'll have to do a little comparison with stateside ones.

Once we felt revived, we ventured out to the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art to horn in on the free admission night. They were showing a great exhibit by Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz, who recreates photos and famous paintings in a variety of "unique" mediums (coiled string, dust, spaghetti sauce, trash, colored plastic toys, chocolate syrup, Pantone color chips). Apart from how great it was to see Warhol's Jackie series in ketchup, the most striking of his pieces was a series of graphite sketches of famous TimeLife photos he drew from memory then photographed in soft focus. Among them were images that are familiar to American society - the flag raising over Iwo Jima, the Vietnamese girl burned by napalm, John Lennon in New York. But all of Muniz's renderings were slightly off from their reality, revealing that our memory of these images was comprised of their emotional impact much more than their visual intricacies. But seriously, chocolate sauce Jackson Pollock. Seriously.

Returning to Little Italy for dinner, we stopped in at Bottega, a chic looking Italian place with a powerhouse of a Neapolitan wood-fired oven that cooks a pizza in 90 seconds. We devoured their housemade sausage with a lightly dressed broccoli rabe, followed up with a simple mozarella, tomato and anchovy pizza and topped off our meal with a slightly exotic chocolate and pear tart (it had a starfruit garnish). All in all, the place reminded us so strongly of trattorias we had visited in Italy, from the simple, fresh presentations to the pleasantly boisterous atmosphere.

Despite our illnesses, we still had it in us to stop by a local bar for a drink. In an old bathhouse, Bily Kun (Czech for "white horse") had white tiled floors and mounted ostrich heads graced the walls. It was the kind of place that made you feel cooler for being there. We had two great local beers, which, by the way, Montreal has a lot of. Neither of us gravitate towards fruity beers, but the St. Ambroise apricot wheat beer was one-of-a-kind. The Cheval Blanc (French for "white horse" - coincidence? no.) blanche was like an adult Corona - malty, crisp and served with a lime - and a terrible choice for cold Montreal weather.

we're just here for the food

You all thought we were kidding, didn't you? You'd ask, "Montreal for your honeymoon? Have you been before? What's the draw?" And we'd blithely respond, "For the food." You probably laughed and thought to yourself that you would have chosen Hawaii this time of year.

Did you attend the same wedding we did? Between the banquet spread (thank you, Simpatica) and the toasts that focused on Amanda's appetite, it was kind of hard to mistake the true purpose of our big day: the food, we mean, our undying love for one another. So if it wasn't already clear, we love food and we love each other. And we celebrated both on our honeymoon (follow along and see if you can figure out which love outweighed the other)...

TA DA! DAY ONE (with parts of the first night)!

After a poorly thought-out and incredibly long trip on which we left at midnight Sunday, went through two Northeast cities, and hopped a bus to Montreal, we got into the city late Monday evening. As we often do in unfamiliar places, we arrived at a time of day when everything appears large and scary, and every person we pass seems to be speaking in a foreign language. Oh wait, that was French. We happily found our b & b, made a run to a drugstore for cold medicine and tissues and decided to begin our Quebecois dining experience properly. With poutine.

La Banquise 24h was luckily only a few blocks from our place, so we headed over to this all-hours hipster casse-croute (fast food joint). It had the vibe of a late-night college hang-out, like a college-town burrito joint, only this place had a menu of 22 poutines (and a couple dozen ways of cooking hot dogs that we can't remember). A went for the classic, literally, the poutine classique - fries, brown gravy, snowy white cheese curds. P felt like a little fusion and went for the poutine kamikaze, which delivered a wallop of merguez sausage, pickled hot peppers and tabasco sauce on top of the basic poutine. That is the beauty of poutine - no matter how many toppings you add, you don't subtract the basics.

In the light of the morning (which was beautifully clear to all of you "go to the tropics" naysayers), we awoke to a spread of coffee, juice, fruit, scrambled eggs, yogurt, and our first taste of Montreal bagels. Unlike in New York, where bagels are boiled, the bagels here are dipped in honey water then baked in a wood oven. The result is a crisp sweet exterior with a pleasantly chewy interior. We knew we'd have to get more on this trip. Our b & b, Le Plumard, had comfortably modern furnishings, cute style and a Portugese host with a broken arm and a penchant for making bad jokes about her cast. Louise was a warm and gracious host and her breakfasts each morning were such a great respite from traveling and eating out every meal.

We set out after breakfast to get a sense of the neighborhood our b & b was in. The Plateau is a vibrant mix of brownstone apartments and neighborhood restos (not an obnoxious abbreviation, just what they say in Quebec) that runs along Ave. Mont Royal and Boul. Sant Laurent (the Main). The Main used to be the dividing line between French and English Quebec (and by used to, we mean "early 90s"), but has recently been repopulated by families and hipsters moving back into the city. We kept saying that parts of it looked like New York while other parts looked like London. Some guidebook we saw described it as "Williamsburg in a beret," but like all of Montreal, it was actually unique to itself.

After getting the lay of the land, we dropped into Montreal's most famous Jewish deli for lunch. What distinguishes Schwartz's is their smoked meat. No, its not pastrami. No, its not corned beef. We probably would have called it both, but they were very particular about their product. Schwartz's is just that kind of democratic lunch counter you find in New York, where locals and tourists alike put up with gruff treatment for the outstanding food. A got the "stuffed chicken" sandwich - the biggest stack of cold bologna between two mustard slathered pieces of white bread she had ever seen. P went for the house special, which you don't order by size, but by fat. P got the full fat. We both ordered half-sours and black cherry sodas to go with our sandwiches and because we hadn't had poutine in almost a day, we rounded it out with fries.

What to do after a meal like that? We waddled back to our b & b for a nice little nap. Now, mind you, A had gotten horribly sick the day after our wedding (who among you was sick? fess up, because you aren't coming next time...) and P was only a day away from following suit. This was but the start of a full week of dozing off around 9:30 or 10 and not rousing from bed until 9 the next day (including daily 4 o'clock naps).

Because A was still a bit drowsy, even after her hour-long nap, P dragged her up to Mile End to an Italian cafe Louise had recommended. Club Social was in the heart of a predominantly English neighborhood, served an Italian clientele and was filled with markings of the dominant French presence. If we thought we were having trouble with French, now we had a room full of people speaking three languages we had experience with. Now Montreal is many good things, but a town of excellent coffee and tea it is not. We were yearning for those Portland-style small batch roasts we so loved, but at least an Italian place like Club Social made a decent espresso.

Well, after brunch, lunch, and coffee, it seemed high time for dinner (trust us, you'll begin to notice a trend here). Exhausted after a long day of struggling through French, we went the take-out route from Chuch, the casual cafe side of Chu Chai, a vegetarian Thai restaurant in our neighborhood. Neither of us had ever seen such a panoply of fake meats as Chuch offered and the verisimilitude of those little TVP duck breasts was uncanny (right down to the fake layer of fat). They didn't taste like duck, but that was probably fine, since this was one of the rare meals we managed to avoid meat on this trip. Seitan a l'orange, ginger green beans, curried eggplant, udon and tofu - you'll just have to imagine how good it all was because we forgot to take pictures of this one meal. Since there is nothing classier than Thai takeout when you're jet-lagged, we popped a bottle of champagne and enjoyed some truffles that A's parents had arranged to have waiting for us. And, seeing as it was around 9:30 (6:30 Pacific?!), we promptly fell asleep.

(PS. Hopefully you've noticed the changes around the site, but if you haven't yet seen, there is a link on the left to our flickr page. Follow the link to view the full set of images from our trip. We'll keep posting on the rest of our honeymoon and as soon as we get our pictures from the wedding back from our photographer, we'll post those as well. Thanks again for sharing our wedding with us and making it such a memorable event. -P&A)

i feel just like peter mayle, only i don't think i'm making any progress.

With all of our talk of two-month marks and the stresses of August, I didn't even realize that it was September. But maybe that's a good thing, isn't it? Amanda is probably right - we are reasonably organized and we are being pretty efficient. We're looking ahead at the final month to our wedding with no illusions. We are prepared to face it together. Just 36 more days, then a big party (with, you know, a ceremony and some minor speaking roles for both of us), and then we are off on our honeymoon, free to relax is Montreal.

IF ONLY WE KNEW HOW TO RELAX IN FRENCH!

Suddenly, September isn't quite enough time to accomplish everything we need to, which now, in my mind, consists of gaining conversational fluency in French.

In high school, I took French for four years because it seemed like a better way to meet girls than Spanish class. I traveled to Paris and Rennes and watched Beethoven dubbed into French with the young daughter of my host family. And I understood it. I continued studying the language when I went to college and there I plateaued. In intermediate classes it felt like we were covering the same rudimentary grammatical rules ad nauseum, but to move up to the next level of courses meant translating 50 pages a night of A Remembrance of Things Past. At a certain point, the classes became far too much work for a non-major - nightly essays, five days a week of instruction time, conversation circles, presentations. "Patrice," the professor would say, "we need more majors like you - those literature courses are when the language really gets interesting." I dropped French that year. I planned on keeping up with the language on my own, reading Tintin comics, convinced that the classes weren't all that useful. "Study abroad?" I'd think," I'll just go somewhere English-speaking."


After returning from an American art school in Florence, I began to realize what a mistake it had been to abandon French. While I was Italy, I'd seen the result of an American education exclusively in English. It was bleached-blonde girl wearing her boyfriend's ASU sweatshirt and throwing up outside of the American bar across the street from Piazza Santa Croce. I was terrified - I couldn't be one of them, I was meant to be a polyglot. Remembering how easily French once came to me, I decided to audit an intermediate class, hoping to refresh my skills.

On the first day, the underclassmen around me passed the time until the class began recounting their high school boarding experience in the south of France. When I'd taken intermediate French my Freshman year, most students couldn't count past 17. As an icebreaker, we were supposed to say something we enjoyed eating that began with the same first letter as our first initial. Do you know what I said?

Je m'appelle Patrice, et j'aime manger du pizza.

There was no way I could blame that on just having lived in Italy. It was the only food I could remember. I slept through class the next day.

What can I say now?
Desole, je seulement parle un peu de francais.

* * *

Feeling ahead of the game, back in June, Amanda and I set out our plans for learning French. We'd listened to tapes before we went to Italy, and while we did struggle the first few days, we at least learned to yell "fire!" in a melodramatic Italian accent. I said I'd dig up my old conjugation guides and grammatical dictionaries and we could practice with one another. Amanda's idea had something to do with unlocking the subconscious learning zones of your brain, where language flowed intuitively. It also involved a bottle of wine for each practice session. After a few nights of rousing Amanda out of her early evening, French lesson slumber, we kind of let it slip. And now we have 36 days left.

The other day, I did a Google search for a campy image of an old "Learn French Quickly!" kind of ad, that I would put as the image for this post; something we could all laugh about. The image above is what I found and it in no way comforts me or soothes my nerves about my lack of French proficiency. Okay, deep breath, I recognize some of the words, right? Eat with pleasure ... without .... fatigue ... the good sausages ... of the ... prodigal pig? What the hell does that mean? There is no way I will ever be able to follow French directions if I can't even explain why the pig is so bountiful.

Understanding written words will probably be the least of my problem in Quebec, a province that has made a case for separatism on the basis of linguistic differences. From what I understand, Montrealers have surmounted much of the former divide between Anglophones and Francophones, but even if the two languages coexist in relative harmony, Quebecois French is a separate dialect (a basilect, in fact, since I spent so much time on Wikipedia today) known as joual, that developed pretty much independently from continental French since the 1600s. There goes any academic French that may still be lingering in my brain.
Additionally, the province has the Office québécois de la langue française, a governmental department that patrols signage and storefronts, ensuring that English does not eclipse written French either in order or size. Tirer must appear first and in larger letters than Pull on doors. Yes, they have english on signage, but I'll probably have to bring along a magnifying glass to find it.

So I am clearly in the right mindset for a honeymoon, eh? We could have gone to Hawaii and lounged on the beach, our lips veritably playing with the sounds of the Hawaiian language - words that are far from being essential to getting around on the islands. But no, I wanted to go to a city that will probably be waist-deep in snow when we arrive. I now spend my breakfasts studying my old textbooks and grammatical guidebooks. I whiled away most of a slow afternoon at work quietly reciting the name of a Montreal ice cream place to myself, trying to understand the bilingual double-entendre. Havres aux glaces. Havres aux glaces. Havres aux glaces. My tongue felt clumsy against the roof of my mouth with the -re sound. Late in the day, I found this demo of a natural-sounding online vocalizer that AT&T is developing. I listened to the pronunciation. That's it? Have a glass? I could have figured that out just by looking at it. Maybe I have less language troubles than I think, so long as I can figure out a way to have this program do all of my speaking for me. Still, if that's Montreal's idea of a pun, maybe humor won't translate.