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 Deli 3895 St-Laurent Blvd, 514-842-4813.
Value: 
191 Jean-Talon East, 514-270-9361. Value: 
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.
. . . read moreFood 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.
Great food and excellent ambiance in the converted garage that houses this cafe.
Syrian/Armenian food.
Filet-mignon with a special spicy sauce - Ciche 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.
. . . read more
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.
. . . read moreGrocery shopping for this creature of habit.
My weekly grocery bag, here are all the things that I usually get:
Good Stuff
Guilty Pleasures
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 know 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, 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: 60 to 70 minutes
Servings: 6-8
1.5 cups steel-cut oats
7-9 cups water
Bring the water to a boil.
To 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.
First 10 minutes - let it boil freely on medium, adjust heat as needed.
Then next 15 minutes, skim off the skin (like clotted cream) that keeps forming on top. This is why I use a lot more water - around 9 cups for 1.5 cups oats, the skimming off the top, and cooking in an open pot, ends up reducing the water a lot.
There are literally millions of chicken curry recipes out there.
The key to this one - slow cooking. Found this in the book by Khalid Aziz, titled "Step by Step Guide to Indian Cooking". Modified it a lot, but kept the slow cooking part.
Time: 2-3 hours.
Chicken - 1 pound boneless, skinless, chopped to bite-size pieces
or equivalent (1.5 to 2 pound) with bone
Onion - 1 pound, chopped
Tomatoes - 1 pound, chopped
Turmeric - 1 teaspoon
Black Mustard Seeds - 1 teaspoon
Cumin Seed - 1 teaspoon
Cinnamon Sticks - 2
Coriander Seeds - 0.5 teaspoon
Garam Masala - 1 teaspoon
Ginger - 4 tablespoons
Garlic - 4 tablespoons
Red Chilli Powder - as needed
Oil - around one-fourth cup
Salt
Heat Oil, when hot, add black mustard seeds.
Use electric chopper to chop all the onions, leave one cup of onions aside, and then add the chopped onions, with the cumin seeds, to the frying oil once the mustard seeds start popping.
Add 1 cup of onions, roughly cut ginger, and garlic (skin removed) to the electric chopper, and chop this mixture real fine.
Once the frying onions are nearly transparent, add the finely ground onion/ginger/garlic mixture to the frying pan, cook for 5-10 more minutes.
Then add the dry spices - turmeric, garam masala, cinnamon sticks, coriander seeds, chilli powder, all as needed.
Cook for a minute or two, and then add chopped tomatoes.
Cook for 5-10 minutes, all this on medium heat.
Then add the chicken pieces, cook for 3-5 minutes, then lower the heat, add water as much as needed to make the curry, and cook on low heat for 60-90 minutes - more if using chicken on bone (2-3 hours).
Variations:
1) Add half to one cup of plain yogurt after adding the chicken.
2) Add chopped spinach - during the last 30 minutes of cooking.
3) Add half-stick of butter
4) Add chopped cliantro at end
