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Travel - Sub Categories

  • Buenos Aires (56)

    The home page for Buenos Aires travel tips at this site is: [l:travel/buenos-aires].

  • Mexico City (5)
  • Montreal (131)

    What a city!

    • Québec Cheeses (15)

      Local cheeses, all purchased from Montréal. Related: the [l:albums/travel/montreal/poutine Poutine!] pages contain information about fresh cheese curds. Cheese Shops

      • [l:node/1154 Fromagerie Atwater]
      • [l:node/144 Fromagerie Hamel]
      • [l:node/1162 La Maison du cheddar]
      • In a pinch and after-hours - grocery stores such as IGA, Provigo, Metro, Super C, etc. There is bound to be a good place to buy cheese from where ever you stay in Montreal.
      Note that the US has some very strange, bizarre, and restrictive food import policies - see [l:travel/montreal/schwartzs-jewish-deli#comment-5229 Meat, Cheese and US Border Crossings comment] for details.

    • Jazz Fest (29)

      Summer Jazz Festival. More than just jazz. More details at: [l:travel/montreal/montreal-jazz-festival]

    • Poutine! (11)

      A dish unique to Quebec. [l:http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20130531-how-the-quebecois-came-to-love-poutine BBC article: How the Quebecois came to love poutine]. Fries, Gravy, and fresh Cheddar Cheese Curds (fromage en grains) make poutine! An exclamation point seems necessary for this dish. The process of making cheese from milk goes through a step that results in curds. These are small chunks of solid cheese that are not yet pressed into molds for the final aging process. Fresh cheese curds only last a day or two, therefore are only available in places where a lot of cheese is manufactured. Cheddar cheese curds are available widely in Montreal, and it is the key ingredient of poutine. Fresh cheese curds are easy to recognize - they will make a squeaking sound when you eat them. From fast food joints to celebrated chefs, there is no shortage of places to get poutine in Montreal. [l:http://www.montrealpoutine.com/ Montreal Poutine] has good information on all poutine places in that city. Poutine fries should at least start crispy, and have sufficient amount of gravy to smother the fries. The run-down looking Poutine Lafleur has pretty good poutine. This is the standalone place on Rue Wellington and not the chain of the same name. Maamm Bolduc was not as good - not enough gravy or cheese - but many consider it one of the best, so worth checking out. Many places that claim to be famous, or are very old diners that should probably have good poutine, do not. French fries may be limp and not crisp, sauce may be tasteless, and they dish may not be warm enough. So for a short visit, just try the known-to-be-good places, do not experiment. La Cantine, closed in 2012. This bistro on Mont Royal had excellent poutine, in very nice surroundings. The fries stay nice and crispy to the last bite. There is a photo provided below, which now serves as a memory only! Surprisingly, some fast food joints have good poutine too - such as La Belle Province. And Frite Alors! has amazing fries, and good poutine too. 2013: Schwartz's has gotten onto the poutine act: [l:albums/travel/montreal/schwartzs-hebrew-delicatessen/schwartzs-poutine]. It is essentially fine as a novelty item, but the basic poutine elsewhere, and the smoked-meat sandwiches at Schwartz's, are both best eaten without anything else added to either dish.

    • STM - Métro and Bus (8)

      Montreal subway and bus system. External link: Photographer [l:https://instagram.com/explore/tags/mtlmetroproject/ Chris Forsyth's #mtlmetroproject]

    • Le Petit Alep (10)

      Great good, awesome ambiance. Near Jean Talon metro station.

    • Marché Adonis (4)

      Excellent middle-eastern grocery store - large selection of fruits, ready-made food, feta cheeses, tzatziki, and sweets. They now have a home page: [l:http://www.adonisproducts.com/pages/accueil_en.asp adonisproducts.com] DISCLAIMER: please note that this web page has no association with the Marché Adonis business. And this site is not in Quebec, so English readers are the majority here, and French may not be understood by most. Thank you!

    • Marché Jean-Talon (8)

      The Jean-Talon market is a couple of blocks east of the intersection of Jean-Talon and St-Laurent, near the the Jean-Talon metro station. Newly refurbished in 2005, visit this place for fresh fruit, groceries, cheeses, bread, fish, desserts. Great food available in the market itself, additionally, surrounding area is Little Italy, which has many good restaurants.

    • Schwartz's - Hebrew Delicatessen (12)

      Absolutely the most addictive food in the world, the best smoked-meat in the world.

  • New York (19)
    • Flushing's Chinatown (9)

      Discover a variety of Chinese (and Korean, etc) food on Main St, Flushing - last stop on the #7 Subway line. This is the second Chinatown in NYC, probably because downtown NYC was not big enough to hold all these new restaurants. Good references: [l:http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/29/dining/20080730_FLUSHING_INTERACTIVE.html NYTimes Flushing Interactive] graphic which also has a nice printout to take when visiting, and which links to the [l:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/dining/30flushing.html main article], which also has more tips from the readers in the article's comments section. A later article describes [l:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/dining/10chine.html Dongbei cai, or the food of the Northeast], the area was known earlier as Manchuria. The absolutely great things in this area: Sichuan food - spicy-hot with tongue-numbing Sichuan pepper ma-la experience, awesome lamb burgers with cumin and green chilies (in the Golden Mall, a collection of fast food restaurants in the basement off Main St - details in the NYT article), peking duck in snack form on a small pancake (fantastic Peking Duck, and sold at a window in a restaurant on the street), all sorts of dumplings, and the street stalls with $1 skewers of grilled spiced-meat ("Mongolian Barbecue?"). Finish off with bubble tea. And if you want to avoid eating out on the street, visit the Food Court in the Flushing Mall which has most of the similar foods. Best items here? 1. [l:http://xianfoods.com/ Xi'an Famous Foods] at 41-28 Main St Golden Mall Booth #36. It is confusing to find, enter the basement mall, take the left, cross two/three food booths, take a right, and this place on the left, probably the second/third store on the left. Just follow your nose and look for the sandwiches - their web site has pictures of their food. [Sep 2009] They are now in multiple places in Downtown Manhattan too! Those are easier to get to, still, worth visiting the original location to get a true Chinatown experience and better food (I think). NYT says: "His lamb stew is infused with fresh green chilies and cumin: stuffed into hot, griddled bread rolls, it makes the best sandwich in Flushing." ... "In the food court of the Golden Mall — a grand-sounding name for a basement warren of folding tables — is a man who goes by the name Shi Liangpi". Also good here: "his signature dish - liangpi, a dish of cold noodles in a sauce that hits every possible flavor category (sweet, tangy, savory, herbal, nutty and dozens of others)... in addition to four different sauces, and mountains of bean sprouts, slivered cucumbers and sprigs of cilantro. " My best choices: "N1" - Spicy Cumin Lamb Hand-Ripped Noodles (around $6), and "B2" Spicy Cumin Lamb Burger (around $3). [Prices as of Nov 2011, Flushing location.] Pictures: [l:albums/travel/new-york/flushings-chinatown/xian-famous-foods-41-28-main-st] and the new sit-down restaurant [l:albums/travel/new-york/flushings-chinatown/biang-restaurant-41-10-main-st]. 2. The Peking Duck from the street window at the Corner 28 restaurant, picture present below. 3. The unassuming Spicy & Tasty restaurant at 39 07 Prince Street, just a block or two up from the Main St Subway station. Good Sichuan food - nice and spicy. 4. New World Mall at 40-21 Main St, and another entrance next to Macy's on Roosevelt Ave, right outside one of the subway entrances. This is all brand-spanking new , as of 2011. The mall has a enormous food court at the basement, with a huge variety of Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese etc food. If you like hot-pot - there are multiple restaurants selling hot-pots! This Mall also has the excellent and huge grocery store J-Mart which is also worth a visit. 5. The Flushing Mall at 13331 39th Ave, Queens, NY. Three blocks from the Main St station. The lower level has the food courts - again, here too some menus are in Chinese only but there are pictures to order by. And you can eat in the mall which is good in summer, avoid the street heat and smell!. The food in this mall's food court is certainly unlike any other shopping mall in the US. And of course, it is a mall so has restrooms - certainly one thing that cannot be found on the street or in the Golden Mall. [Nov 2011] Still worth a visit, though I heard this place might be going away? The only problem - many places in this are of Flushing have menus in Chinese only.

À propos de Stern - Montreal High Lights 2012

À propos de Stern - Montreal High Lights 2012

The 2012 Montréal en Lumière (Montreal High Lights) Festival - visited it the weekend of Feb 18.

It is cold, yet Montrealers find no problem enjoying live shows and music and food out on the streets!
Here's one of the cool shows: A Propos De Stern
It takes something I noticed just this year to a new level. This year I noticed a some buildings in Montreal showing animated pictures projected on the side of buildings.
This specific show is really engrossing. And the props and movement in the images fit very well with the windows on the wall of this building!

In addition to that they had a number of other activities. The program was dedicated to Wallonia-Brussels regions, so they were selling Belgian (French? No!) Fries, with Mayo of course.
Their blurb states: "Among the multitude of attractions, get ready for a mind-blowing new-generation interactive slide, projections and lighting displays redesigning the facades of the surrounding architecture, spectacular video mapping displays on the Maison du Festival Rio Tinto Alcan (3 displays nightly), illuminated musical spectacles, characters in illuminated costumes created especially for the MEL…"

I could not stay for the full festival - on Feb 25, they have a whole night of festival activities! Nuit blanche à Montréal: "Calling all nighthawks and nocturnal friends—Saturday, February 25, 2012 is the date set for the wildest night of the year!"... Maybe next year a US holiday will fall around Nuit blanche so I can make it up here then ... :-)

Some video snippets:
À propos de Stern - Snippet 1
À propos de Stern - Snippet 2

Just in case some links above stop working, here's the writeup from the High Lights web site:

KanBai - Fish in Fiery Hot Sauce

KanBai - Fish in Fiery Hot Sauce

Small Restaurant KanBai, at 1813 Ste. Catherine St. W. (near St. Mathieu St., Guy Metro). Phone: 514-933-6699

This is an amazing fish dish. Poached fish filet in hot chili soup is what it is called in the menu, basically fish in fiery hot sauce with lots of Sichuan peppercorns, and buried in the bottom layer and not visible in the picture is a layer of sprouts.
Healthy, and hot!

The portion as shown is huge - more than enough for two people. To be eaten with rice. (If one person eats all that, bound to make you feel sick! Starts off great, then the tongue numbs and eating this loses all pleasure.)

As mentioned in the Restaurants & Food Markets - Montréal page, this is a somewhat strange place with Japanese-sounding name and decor, but totally authentic Chinese food. The menu is also not explicit about Sichuan - many dishes are the real thing, not the fake Szechuan Chicken found in North American restaurants. Dishes here contain real hot red and green pepper, with generous amounts of the Sichuan peppercorn. So you have read the descriptions to recognize dishes - for example there is nothing called Dan-Dan noodles, but it is present - just named something like "Noodles with minced pork and hot chilli sauce"!

Unknown Singer in 59th St Subway NYC

Unknown Singer in 59th St Subway NYC

Picture from the video of a singer in the NYC Subway. More details at Unknown Singer in 59th St Subway NYC

2011 Systema Solara (video)

2011 Systema Solara (video)

Video snippets from the 2011-July-03 10PM show:
Systema Solar (1)
Systema Solar (2)
Systema Solar (3)

From the Jazz Fest site:
"Systema Solar is a musical and visual collective from Colombia that was created in 2006. Made up of rappers, techno DJs, percussionists and a video artist, they call their shows "Berbenautika", inspired by the "pikos" - large mobile sound systems - and "la verbena" or traditional fiesta popular in Colombia. They aim to project joy and freedom in a time of injustice and political corruption, and to revitalize Afro-Colombian roots music, such as cumbia, champeta, and bellerengue, by mixing in elements of hip hop, house, break beats, scratching and live video. In 2010 they played festivals in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and France, which led to a second European tour in 2011. They released a self-titled debut disc in 2010."

La Cantine - Poutine - Closed

La Cantine - Poutine - Closed

Unfortunately, this place closed in 2012.

La Cantine - Bistro Boutique - 212 Mont-Royal Est +1.514.750.9800.
Even at the last bite , the fries stayed crispy.
Small "jar" is for $7.50, with an extra $10 for foie gras (shown in the picture). For me, the foie gras was a bit too much, does not add anything to already excellent poutine. They use sichuan pepper, which adds a nice zing.
[2010 prices]

2011 Novalima (video)

2011 Novalima (video)

2011-July-2 at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

See a Novalima video snippet

2011 Main Stage (and videos)

2011 Main Stage (and videos)

A street section was paved over to make a permanent viewing area. So now this new main stage can hold even larger crowds...

Some video snippets from performances at this and different venues at the festival:
2011-July-4 performances:

The main event of the whole concert, originally formed in Athens, Georgia, USA - the B-52s:
B-52s Rock Lobster
Fireworks after B-52s
From Jazz Fest blurb: "Over close to 30 years of funky existence, they've sold more than 20 million albums to wigged-out fans and laced the culture with plenty of hits including global smashes Rock Lobster, Planet Claire and Love Shack. They've stamped their musical signature, idiosyncratic style and beehive hairdos in every corner of alternative pop-rock, from post-punk to dance, from garage rock to new wave. They've got a reputation as the world's greatest party band."

And at 11PM, the last performance of entire festival:
Nina Attal (1)
Nina Attal (2)
Nina Attal (10 min clip)
From Jazz Fest blurb: "Now blazing across Festival radar, this blueswoman sings, slings guitar like a rock goddess and writes her own songs… at the tender age of 19! One smokin’ solo is enough to convince anyone of this young lady’s incredible talent!"

2011-July-2 performances:

Alex Wilson (1)
Alex Wilson (2)
Alex Wilson (3)
"Alex Wilson: Fusion of blues and rock"

Side performace - a seesaw

Cheese Tasting - Board 2

Cheese Tasting - Board 2

Budgeting amounts for cheese varies a lot with the type of cheese, and whether there is food before or after the tasting.

Given all that, some numbers that might work: around 18-20 grams/person/cheese, and a total of around 180-200 gms/person, followed by a small dinner. The higher numbers will most likely result in some left-overs. Other sources have suggested 10-40 gms/person/cheese, and 75-200 gms/person total, so this might depend on group appetites.

So, for creamy, soft cheeses, the higher amounts are appropriate, while the lower amounts should be applied to firmer, more intense cheeses. For 10 people, this means a total of 2 kilos will provide a good buffer, with some left-overs. Six different cheese would offer a good variety, which means around 300 to 400 gms of each cheese. For the board below of 7 cheeses, 250-350 gms per cheese would be appropriate.

1: Le Fleurmier de Charlevoix
2: Belle de Jersey - Saguenay

3: Tomme du Maréchal - Buckland
4: Le Cendrillon - St-Raymond-de-Portneuf
5: Barre a Boulard - St-Raymond-de-Portneuf

6: Bleu d'Élizabeth
7: Bleu Bénédictin - St-Benoit-du-Lac

[Dec 2009]

Cheese Tasting - Board 1

Cheese Tasting - Board 1

1: Belle de Jersey - Saguenay
2: Jersey du Fjord - Saguenay

3: Baluchon Biologique - Ste-Anne-de-la-Perade

4: Tomme du Maréchal - Buckland
5: Le Cendrillon - St-Raymond-de-Portneuf
6: Barre a Boulard - St-Raymond-de-Portneuf

7: Bleu d'Élizabeth
8: Bleu Bénédictin - St-Benoit-du-Lac

9: Fromage en Grains - St-Guillaume (to be eaten within 2 days of purchase).
This is a snacking cheese, can start with this, end with this, and nibble at any time.

See Cheese Tasting - Board 2 for how much amounts to budget for cheese tastings.

Fromage en grains - plain, tomato, pesto.

Fromage en grains - plain, tomato, pesto.

Plain, dried tomato (tomate sècheés), and pesto flavored cheese curds (fromage en grains). From La Maison du Cheddar. They also sell them in a cone for snacking, and by the kilo. Best eaten when fresh.