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Pictures and details on the Albums - Flushing's Chinatown.

Xi'an Famous Foods is truly repeat-worthy. And their cumin lamb burgers travel well too - though beware that the appetizing, hot, spicy smell of the food pervades the subway, the bus, and car, so make sure it is wrapped well!

They have their original location in Flushing, Queens, New York.
And now they have multiple locations in the city too - mostly downtown, in and around Chinatown.

List of all my favorite restaurants and food markets in Montreal. Some of these are described in more detail in the links. Photos are available in the Montreal Photo Gallery.

A map showing locations of all these restaurants is in the Montreal Restaurants Map posting.

Schwartz's Jewish Deli

Schwartz's Deli 3895 St-Laurent Blvd, 514-842-4813.
Food: Value:
Excellent smoked meat sandwiches -- spicy, tender, succulent meat that falls apart easily with the touch of a fork... accompanied with a black cherry soda or hot tea, it is truly an unique experience. Take a seat at the bar-stool at the deli counter, and enjoy the food amidst the hustle and bustle. More on Schwartz's

Le Petit Alep

191 Jean-Talon East, 514-270-9361.
Food: Value:
Syrian/Armenian food. Great food and excellent ambiance - the best dish is Ciche Kebab Terbialy which is filet-mignon with a special spicy sauce. Open Tuesday through Saturday. Can get crowded during lunch. Their weekday lunch specials are also excellent. Wine and Coffee available. More on Le Petit Alep

Marché Jean-Talon

7070 Henri-Julien St., south of Jean-Talon St., near the metro stop for Jean-Talon.
Food: Value:
Jean-Talon Market bustles with activity in summer certainly and winter too. It is truly a fantastic market - all fresh vegetables, fruits you need, as well as bakeries, food stalls (bison sausage anyone), maybe the best calamari you can have in a paper bag (at Aqua Mare). And cheese too - inside the market, as well as at La Fromagerie Hamel close by at 202 Jean-Talon St. East. On your first day at Montreal, get down here, get yourself a supply of fruits, continue to replenish every few days. And then to eat you have crepes, fish, pastries, cheeses, and so on. Just outside the market is Marché des saveurs du Québec selling local products, at 280 Place du marché du nord, on a side street.

Food Rating: Value Rating:

2077 Ste-Catherine W, 514-937-0156. On Ste-Catherine, just west of Rue du Fort.

This Turkish restaurant has a unique window display of the cooks making lavash - basically huge chappatis/tortillas.

The appetizers - Mezze platters - are good enough for a meal, many choices to pick from, and come with a freshly made lavash bread. The appetizers include Baba Ghannouj - charbroiled eggplant puree with pomegranate paste and roasted vegetables, Hummus - chickpeas puree with tahini, lemon, garlic, olive oil, Muhammara d'Alep - pomegranate paste with mixture of walnuts, pine nuts, pepper.

The borek - Turkish feuillette - is excellent. These are flaky phyllo dough pastries filled with feta and spinach or beef and potatoes along with a splash of hot spice - really good. The spinach and feta borek is a great accompaniment to main dishes like Manti, or to a sampling of the mezzes. With a main dish, you can request an half-order of borek so you have chance of finishing it all.

Manti is listed in the specials section - small meat filled dumplings in a thin yogurt sauce with mint, and melted pepper butter paste on the top. Looks nice, and tastes great.

Gozleme - two lavash breads with feta and spinach sounded good - but this was a bit too dry and lean - not enough feta or spinach in it. This would work well when taken along with the appetizers. The borek is much better in that it is more balanced in having sufficient quantity of fillings and is not dry like the gozleme.

Food Rating: Value Rating:

191 Jean-Talon Street East in Montreal - walk West towards St-Laurent from the Jean-Talon metro station. Phone: +1-514-270-9361.
Open Tue-Sat for lunch and dinner.

Great food and excellent ambiance in the converted garage that houses this cafe.

Syrian/Armenian food.
Filet-mignon with a special spicy sauce - Chiche Kebab Terbialy. Absolutely the best, this is always a safe choice.
Pureed eggplant, tahini, garlic, lemon - Métabal.
Chicken in tahini - Poulet Trator.

For pictures, including a picture of the menu, visit the travel gallery Le Petit Alep in the Montreal album section.

The terbialy sauce is a nice, medium-to-hot spicy sauce,
and it makes the difference, best on the beef kababs (medium-rare), but also available with shrimp.

And then there are the weekday daily lunch specials with great soups -- just remember to get there during lunch Tuesday through Friday.
Kebbe Labanie (Kibbe Lebanese) - large meatballs in yogurt, garlic, mint sauce.
As they describe it: "boulettes de bœuf, blé concassé, noix, souce yogourt, ail, menthe".
Filet de sole Amandine
Soupe Harira - tomatoes, beef, fennel, cardamom - nice spicy soup.

Their fries, if you choose to order french fries, are amazing too - nice crunch on the outside, and soft on the inside. It is served with mayo which I presume is how they eat this in Montreal but ketchup is available too, just have to ask for it.

Ayran is my drink of choice, buttermilk with salt - "yogourt, eau, sel". I am not a coffee drinker, most everyone here seems to order the coffee, so that is probably very good too.

Google Earth users may be interested in the KML File for these locations.
Microsoft Live Search Maps is also a good way to view the KML file data.

Café Tortoni at Av. de Mayo 825 is well written about on the web, they have absolutely amazing chocolate. They serve churros too, but frankly, the churros are not as good as they are in México and are cold and more salty than sweet. On the back of the menu they claim churro is a national pastry - but this was the only place in Buenos Aires that I found serving it.

The chocolate drink is very delicious, thick, feels like it is just melted chocolate with some magical transformation so that there is no watery taste, but is still flowing liquid. This comes with a small pot of hot milk, and of course, three packets of sugar - everywhere in Buenos Aires, sugar is always available. In this case, skip the sugar, the chocolate is great just as is, and if needed, dilute it with the hot milk. This is definitely something not to be missed if visiting Buenos Aires. And then alternate between dunking the churro in the chocolate, and drinking the chocolate. This is good living!

While the cholocate is excellent, this place also has a lot of history, it has been open since 1858, visit the Café Tortoni web site for more info. The downside is that it is now on every tourists itinerary so there is a line to get in in the evening but it was never full in mid- to late-afternoon.

The Buenos Aires Photo Album pages include some restaurant and food photos.

Buenos Aires has its unique food style - anything you want as long as it is some cut of beef, and grilled. Cut of beef may be a restrictive definition, you can get any body part of cow grilled! The range and taste is not as good as one might find in New York, Montreal, or Chicago, so prepare accordingly. There was a period between 2002 and 2007 when prices in US$ were quite good, but inflation is very high in Argentina and by 2008, the mid-range restaurants would range around US$15 to US$20 (not including wine) for lunch and higher for dinner. This type of food would be a minimum for good eating as far as tourists may be concerned. And just like Europe, no restaurant serves plain water for free so have to order water for around US$2-3 per bottle.

These external links are great guides to refer to:
Guía de Restaurantes de Buenos Aires which seems to be a popular local site, with many customer comments. Even if you don't understand Spanish, they have great summaries that rate the food, the service, and provide an indication of the cost of one meal (without drinks).
Asado Argentina » Beef has pictures, explanations of different cuts of meat. Given the amount of beef you might eat in Buenos Aires, this is a good site to read about what you may be eating!

Food: Yes, grilled food is only thing they eat here in Buenos Aires! Seriously, the beef at any parrilla is excellent, Bife de lomo or bife de chorizo were good at all price points - even at under US$15. They do have better beef down in Argenttina, grass-fed cattle make better beef than US grain-fed cattle! French Fries are common side dish, but if you need ketchup, must ask for it, it is not normally served here.

Grocery shopping for this creature of habit.

My weekly grocery bag, here are all the things that I usually get:

Good Stuff

• Brown Cow non-fat plain yogurt.
  This brand is the best - perfect amount of sourness, right consistency, great taste. And for once-in-while binging, nothing beats the Cream-On-Top variety. I stick to the plain varieties, no need to indulge in the sweetened or fruit flavored versions.
  The non-fat plain yogurt is on my daily menu. Here's a link to Brown Cow website. This brand is available in the local Whole Foods Market.
• Zeppy's Bagels.
  They come from a bakery called Zeppy's Baigel Bakery, and the bagels are sold in a few local stores, for example, in the local Whole Foods Market. The nice thing about these bagels is the right amount of chewiness - not too hard, and a great taste - unlike the totally bland, tasteless bagels served at many local stores. This is very popular in the local store, so many times there are no Zeppy's Bagels left late in the evening.

Guilty Pleasures

• Butter-Rum muffins from the local FoodMaster.
  Don't even ask how many calories for each muffin, half-a-muffin is probably the right serving for once every two days! Having tried so many muffins from so many local bakeries, this was a incredible, serendipitous find - local grocery chain with heavenly muffins! These are made fresh daily, and invariably, by late evenings sometimes even by afternoon, the butter-rum muffins are all gone, so have to get them early. The FoodMaster also increased the cost of these muffins 40%, and made them slightly smaller in 2006! Other types of muffins are still the old price, so I suspect they have caught on to having made a hit with these butter-rum muffins.
• Banana-Nut Bread, from the local Stop&Shop
  Another find that is unexpected - local grocery chain, with pretty good banana-nut bread.

This happens to be a Punjabi dish, and my recollection of eating this in Maharashtra and Gujarat is in a combination of Rajma, Rice, and bibaDa.

bibaDa (बिबड़) is a Jowar pappad (ज्वारी, sorghum pappad) - certainly can't get it anywhere in the US, nor it is easily available in India, have to travel to interior towns in Maharashtra to find someone who even knows about this. Like pappads, it is a crispy snack, can be baked or fried. I prefer the baked variety - put this in a toaster oven, watch it very carefully, one or two seconds more in the toaster oven, and it will burn completely to black. Cooking time in a toaster oven is around 30-60 seconds - keeping a watch all the time. It has a smoky, crispy taste, and closer to a tortilla chip than to the more popular chickpea pappads.

Rajma (राजमा) is kidney beans - an amazing store house of good nutrients - high soluble fiber, fat-free high quality proteins, minerals, and lots more as a search on the web reveals, and in the curry dish below, with rice and bidaDa, it tastes great too!

Rajma (राजमा) Curry

Time: 2 hours
Serves: 4-6

Red kidney beans soaked overnight - 2 cups
Onions, finely chopped - 1-2 large
Tomatoes - 1-2 large, chopped
Ginger and Garlic - 1 tablespoon each, finely chopped
Cumin seeds - 1 teaspoon
Red chilli powder - as needed
Coriander Powder - 1 teaspoon
Cumin Powder - 1 tablespoon
Garam Masala - 1 tablespoon
Oil - 3 tablespoons
salt to taste
finely chopped coriander leaves for garnishing
5-7 cups water

Had enough of rich buttery high-fat foods, loaded up on red-meat and sugary snacks, and now looking to fix everything wrong in your body?

Have no fear, oats to the rescue - it has soluble fiber to help reduce harmful cholesterol. So, fix yourself up with a regular serving of oats. Additionally, filling yourself with oats means less space in your stomach for all that other stuff that you crave but is not good for you.

Rolled oats, as well as instant oats, in my opinion, don't taste very good - soggy, no texture, insipid food. Steel-cut oats are a world apart - they have a hearty taste, nice chewy and nutty texture - good taste, and good for you - and there is no catch!

Steel-Cut Oats are whole grain groats (the inner portion of the oat kernel) which have been cut into two to three pieces.
A popular brand is McCann's Irish Oatmeal. But for those eating this regularly, look for steel-cut oats in your local bulk-grocery store - bulk-bin purchase, in stores such as Whole Foods, will get you 5 times more oats for the same price.

There are many ways to cook steel-cut oats, here's the way I cook them. Other alternatives for faster cooking involve soaking overnight (in hot water - in cold water it does not help at all), or using the pressure-cooker.

Each quarter- to one-third-cup dry steel-cut oats is one serving, around a cup of cooked oats.

Time: 40 to 60 minutes - but varies with size of the cut - larger grains take longer time. Just be very careful, overcooking makes everything too mushy and very easy to overcook in a covered pot and under-cooking oats taste too raw.

Servings: 6-8

1.1 to 1.5 cups steel-cut oats
4-5 cups water

Bring the water to a boil in a covered pot. Good to use a glass cover to watch when oats start to boil over in the next step.

To the boiling water, add all the oats.
Pot should be watched when boiling - use a large pot, and lower the heat to medium, to prevent it from boiling over.