Montreal and Air Canada

April 18, 2010 webmaster 6 comments

Location: Inflight and Montreal, Canada

Author: My Husband

Hi there dear readers! No, we haven’t gone off the air, it’s just that we’ve been busy with a whole bunch of offline stuff. I’ve been doing quite a bit of travelling, and my wife has been busy launching a new product. And when we have the chance to surface for air, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff to catch up on…

…like watching TV. We’ve been following LOST since season 1, and we’re eagerly anticipating the big reveal. However, the last few episodes have been quite uneven, and I’m starting to wonder if viewers will get all the answers to the questions that have been raised. We’ve started watching Fringe, which sorta picks up where the X-Files left off with the pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. And our latest guilty pleasure is a HK TVB dramedy serial called “Off Pedder” (畢打自己人) – it’s long-lived, with over 300 episodes, and one of the better TVB productions we’ve watched recently. We’re hooked!

We know there are some people in HK that read this blog – can you comment on how closely 畢打自己人 reflects real-life in the office, especially in locally owned conglomerates?

For this post, I’m going to take a break from our trip report and write about food in Montreal, which I’ve been travelling to quite a bit these few weeks. Now, Vancouver residents like to boast about the food scene in their city, and there is quite a bit to boast about. Because Vancouver is so multicultural, there is a huge variety of cuisine types to choose when eating out. However, in Vancouver, it is a crapshoot – sometimes the food is good, other times not so much. Montreal, with less ethnic diversity than Vancouver, offers less variety in terms of ethnic cuisine. However, what is available is often very good. According to one of the locals, eateries that serve ho-hum food will go out of business very quickly. And I can certainly see that happening, because from my observation, a large swath of Montrealers certainly know their food.

These last several trips have been pretty punishing schedule-wise. I’ve been managing full-day workshops that start at 9:30 and don’t finish up till well after 5, and then I’ve had to catch up on other matters requiring my attention after hours. It is all part and parcel of work, and it is for the most part fun, but the net of it is that I did not have the desire or opportunity to have leisurely dinners. Here are examples of some of the meals I’ve had:

Flamm
The “Alsatian” flamm I had at Les Trois Brasseurs, a gastro-microbrewery-pub on Rue St. Catherines. The flamm was topped with sauerkraut, onions, gruyere, and bratwurst. Sorta like a pizza, but on a thin bread-base as opposed to a pizza dough base. Wikipedia has a pretty interesting writeup on flamms.

Moules
The Moules Frites, again at Les Trois Brasseurs. The mussels were small compared to the fleshy ones we usually get on the west coast, but the flavours were good. The frites were very very good.

Dunns
The famous Reubens sandwich at Dunns Smoked Meat. I choose the medium fat option, which turned out a little dry. The fat option would most likely have resulted in a very moist stack of meat. The flavors were very good though.

While the food, even in chain restaurants like the one I had my dinners at, was very good, it did not come cheap. So, in Montreal, you gotta pay to play.

Since this is a domestic travel writeup, I thought it might be interesting to provide an update on Air Canada food since my mention of it on a previous post. Then, in 2008, AC food was sadly uninspiring. Has it gotten any better?

Air Canada
Biz class on a trip to Toronto in between the Montreal gigs. The herringbone layout works well, especially when the seat works. Obviously, legroom is very generous.