Food-truck Fridays in Montreal
Labour Day festivals, food trucks highlight deliciousness
With so many stylish and accomplished restaurants, the best cheese shops this side of Paris, and the most refreshing yet luscious dessert I’ve ever tasted (more on that later), there is no bad time to go to Montreal to eat.
But there may be no better time than the upcoming Labour Day weekend.
Montreal, which started allowing food trucks on its streets about the same time as Ottawa, now has 48. They serve up everything from fabulous curried lamb tacos with kimchi and coriander from Grumman 78, Montreal’s first food truck, to Au Pied de Cochon’s famous poutine topped with foie gras.
As in Ottawa, the trucks are scattered throughout the city, except on one magical evening each month from May to October when they roll into Olympic Park for a giant party with free admission, live music, wine booths and roaming vendors selling beer. There may be no more fun and delicious way to spend a summer evening.
The next First Friday Food Truck Event is Sept. 4, the Friday that kicks off Labour Day weekend. But wait, there’s more. That weekend is also when a new three-day food festival will be held in Montreal’s Old Port.
Called Yul Eat (YUL is the airport code for Montreal), the freeadmission festival kicks off Saturday morning, Sept. 5, with three top Montreal restaurants each pairing with a food truck to offer a special brunch from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., in which you get six dishes and a mimosa or bloody caesar, for $40.
The eating and cooking continue through Monday evening, with food-truck brunches each day, a special dinner each evening (Sunday’s features chefs formerly at Toqué, Au Pied de Cochon and Joe Beef), and everything from pastry workshops to food forums and a farmers’ market in between.
All of this is set against a backdrop of a city that’s delicious any time. Here are 10 tastes, many of them new but some established, not to miss whenever you visit.
1 The best dessert on Earth
When pastry chef Patrice Demers was helping to open Les 400 Coups restaurant in 2010, he wanted to create a fresh, seasonal dessert. “But it was early spring and not even rhubarb was available,” he says. “So I thought of choosing a colour, not a product.”
The result was his now-famous dessert simply called Vert (green), an inspired layering of finely diced green apples with a splash of green and spicy olive oil, a cloud of Greek yogurt blended with white chocolate ganache, and refreshing green-apple granité topped with toasted Sicilian pistachios (“they’re so expensive I’m the only one who roasts them in the oven,” says Demers) and a sprinkling of baby coriander leaves.
It’s a dessert so astoundingly perfect that Montreal foodies bemoaned the fact that you could not get it morning, afternoon and night — until Demers opened his own pastry shop in the trendy Little Burgundy neighbourhood a year and a half ago. $9 a bowl, but priceless.
Patrice Pâtissier: 2360 Notre-Dame St. W.; patricepatissier.ca
2 Sweet treats
In a handsome old brick building in the up-and-coming St-Henri area, west of the Atwater Market, Léché Desserts is a sweet place to start your day. The made-before-your-eyes doughnuts are $3.50 each, but irresistible in such flavours as lemon meringue (with a saucy dollop of meringue on top), double chocolate brownie, and s’mores (with a big chunk of house-made marshmallow on top). Enjoy one or three with a mug of coffee at one of the café’s comfortable wood tables, to the upbeat accompaniment of doo-wop music.
Léché Desserts: 640 De Courcelle St.; lechedesserts.com
3 Tantalizing tarts and more
You’d be risking sugar overload if you went during the same outing, but it’s worth going back to the St-Henri area for an indulgent stop at Rustique Pie Kitchen, just around the corner from Léché Desserts. Although it’s billed as “a country pie stand in the city,” it’s a bit more sophisticated than that. Impressive tiered plates are laden with artful meringues; you can also buy seasonal fruit pies, tiny perfect tarts and Hello Dolly and lemon bars that taste like the best from grandma’s kitchen. Rustique Pie Kitchen: 4615 Notre Dame St. W.; rustiquepiekitchen.com
4 Mile End magic
Montreal’s Mile End area has tasted good for a long time: it’s home to Wilensky’s Light Lunch, immortalized by Mordecai Richler in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and St-Viateur Bagels, where Leonard Cohen picks up his bagels hot from the wood-burning oven. But the area that was somewhat shabby a decade ago is booming now, thanks to Ubisoft, famous for such video games as Assassin’s Creed. Nearly 2,000 well-heeled workers spill out onto Mile End streets each lunch and dinner and delicious businesses have sprung up to answer that appetite. Exhibit A is Drogheria Fine, a tiny temple to tomato sauce like Nonna used to make. Pick up a $10 mason jar of sauce, and some exceptional house-made gnocchi, to take home. Drogheria Fine: 68 Fairmount Ave. West; lasalsadellanonna on Facebook
5 Kem Coba
How popular is this new ice-cream shop? A Twitter account was set up just to offer updates on the length of the lineup. Two doors down from Drogheria, this colourful collaboration between a French and a Vietnamese pastry chef (Kem Coba means “third auntie’s ice cream”) offers an ever-changing menu of tantalizing fresh ice creams, sorbets and homemade soft serve in such flavours as fresh blueberry, Indian chai or 72-per-cent-dark-chocolate-and-raspberry. Kem Coba: 60 Fairmount Ave. W.; kemcoba.com
6 A butcher store and more
The chefs behind the popular Restaurant Lawrence spent years developing relationships with farmers who raise animals humanely. So when customers expressed interest in getting their products, it only made sense to start selling their house-butchered meats directly to the public, in a shop a few doors down. Stop by Boucherie Lawrence, just around the corner from Drogheria and Kem Coba, to pick up a sandwich, or charcuterie, or a bottle of Quebec maple syrup, or a whole range of products that showcase the best of Quebec’s artisanal foods, and know that everything was raised and processed with care. Boucherie Lawrence: 5237 St-Laurent Blvd.; boucherielawrence.com
7 Code for delicious
This two-year-old collaboration between one of Montreal’s top architecture firms (Dimension 3 Architecture + Design) and chef Dany Bolduc resulted in a renovated post office (postal code H4C) that looks as fabulous as the food tastes. Ogle the stone walls, warm wood and subtle lighting while you dine on lamb saddle with bacon, fresh almonds, green peas and kebab spices or, for brunch, scrambled eggs with lobster, Nordic shrimp and Swiss chard. H4C: 538 Place St-Henri; leh4c.com
8 Pretty pastries
This once-derelict stone building in Old Montreal near the port was recently renovated to house a Parisstyle pastry school run by chefs who have been awarded the prestigious title Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, making it Canada’s first Maison Internationale d’Enseignement Spécialisé dedicated to French pastry. Stop at the main-floor café to sit down to enjoy a lovely salade Niçoise or an individual quiche. The stars, though, are the sweets to eat in or take out: lemons filled with house-made sorbet, delicate macarons, chocolate tarts and traditional mille-feuille. Maison Christian Faure: 355 Place Royale; christianfaure.ca
9 Creative and comforting
One of Canada’s best new restaurants according to Air Canada’s enRoute magazine in 2012 and raved about by Montreal Gazette restaurant critic Lesley Chesterman, Pastaga is wonderful way to wind up a day of deliciousness. Chef Martin Juneau turns out upscale dishes — lacquered pork belly on a parsnip pancake and meltingly tender octopus — in a hip, casual setting, with the kitchen on full view. After dinner, pop around the corner to check out Juneau’s new passion, a shop specializing in natural wines. Pastaga: 6389 St-Laurent Blvd.; pastaga.ca
10 Big cheese
Before heading home, make a stop at the art-deco Atwater Market to stock up on everything from fresh croissants to chocolate, but mainly cheese. The several cheese shops compete for price and the selection is sensational: I found a whole wheel of Laliberté, the Quebec cheese that won 2015 best cheese in Canada, for less than you’d pay for a wedge of it — if indeed you could find it — in Ottawa. La Fromagerie Hamel sells inexpensive insulated bags for your haul. Atwater Market: 138 Atwater Ave.; marchespublics-mtl.com