Lesley C

Miss J, thanks for the information. Readers should keep in mind that the places you mentioned are all quite far from Tofino, which is a five hour drive from Victoria.

I've had caribou and it's amazing, a lot like deer. In fact recipes that call for deer can also be prepared with moose or caribou. I think caribou (also called woodland caribou) and reindeer are one and the same. Only the Inuit are allowed to sell it commercially in Canada.

I think Gill IS being paid to write about his personal life (or anything else he cares to ramble on about), not necessarily about restaurants. Also, it's wrong to assume he knows little about food. Gill knows plenty about food. Just read his early columns. He's obviously bored with the gig. Didn't he try to quit about two years ago? Now, could someone explain the Spectator’s restaurant reviewer, Deborah Ross, to me? She obviously doesn’t give a stuff about food. That column is sheer dreck.

I hear only great things about Ouest. If I remember correctly, Steven Shaw praised it highly in his piece in the National Post about Vancouver restaurants last year.

Thanks for all the replies. Steve W, yes there are rumours, but there were Loblaws rumours here for years before we ever saw a store. It sounds to me like Whole Foods works with the local grocery importers, which means in our case, the fresh produce would be just a step above the usual garbage (Montreal gets some of the worst fruit and vegetables in North America; we're the takers for all the stuff your cities reject). We pay about $5 (Cnd $$) for Tom's toothpaste up here, which in US$$ would come to about $8. Yikes!

There's a rumour going around that this American store may be coming to Montreal. Are any of you Whole Foods Market shoppers, and if so, what should we expect? Natural and organic foods at their best, or just another supermarket?

I tasted seal meat at a demonstration given by a seal specialist/chef who visits all the cooking schools in Montreal. I believe he was preparing the tenderloin, which was jet black. I hate to say this because I usually have a good memory for flavours, but I don’t remember the seal having much of a taste – more of a meaty texture really. In the book on Quebec game cookery I mentioned in my last post (Gibier a Poil et a Plume, by Quebec chef Jean-Paul Grappe) there’s a picture of all the seal meat cuts, which include the thighs for roasting and braising, the saddle for roasting, grilling or pan-frying, the ribs and rack for roasting, grilling or pan-frying, lower ribs (basses cotes) for grilling, frying or roasting, the flank for ragouts or boiling, and the shoulder for ragouts, sautés or braising. The recipes in the book (published this winter by Les Editions de l’Homme) include seal pavés with green peppercorns, minced seal meat with mustard sauce, seal osso-buco (made with cuts from either the thigh or shoulder), and seal tenderloin with lobster. It all looks quite delicious. About Quebec caviar: it comes from one producer in Abitibi-Témiscamingue and is apparently quite good. I have tasted it only as a garnish, not enough to make a lasting impression. For an interesting example of a Quebec chef’s (Daniel Vézina) use of local ingredients have a look at the menu of the Quebec city restaurant Laurie Raphael http://www.laurieraphael.com/Frame7.html.

Jinmyo, do you mean you've never heard of eating seal meat or tins of seal meat? Or that seal meat is a good choice for our aging population? Politically incorrect yes, but at least they aren't just using the pelts and throwing away the meat.

Cabrales, when it comes to Canadian Icewines there’s Inniskillin, which was awarded Le Grand Prix d'Honneur at Vinexpo, Bordeaux, in 1991. Also, Château des Charmes icewines are highly acclaimed. If you like sweet wines, you might be interested in trying iced cider if ever you come to Quebec – another product unique to our area (the temp has to hit something like -24˚ C before they can pick the apples). SteveW, the scallops served at Toqué! are from the Magdalen Islands. You could contact La Mer to see if they carry them. Degustation, aren’t butter tarts English? We also have caviar and cranberries (major Ocean Spray country) here in Quebec. There are also all sorts of wild mushrooms in B.C. I would think canned seal meat is another Newfoundland original. According to a chef I know who just completed a cookbook on Canadian wild meats, seal meat is the ideal protein for senior citizens. People are just turned off by the black colour of the flesh. The flavour isn’t all that bad.

Three questions: Is this Coren fellow any worse than that chick, Deborah Ross, who writes about food for the Spectator? She appears to revel in her complete lack of interest in the subject. Do any English restaurant reviewers attempt to remain anonymous? Mr. Rayner, is your mug next to your column as well? Does a famous parent more or less guarantee you a cushy newspaper column in England? I hear that Camilla's son now writes about food as well. Wasn’t he planning a trip to New York to show Americans what food is all about?

Whenever I meet foreign food writers here in Montreal, I always make sure they get a taste of our best local ingredients and food stuffs. Quebec is know for its maple syrup, smoked meat, and bagels but people might not know that we are also renowned for our foie gras, raw milk cheeses, venison, veal, lamb, strawberries, scallops, apples and wild blueberries. Every province has a few famous ingredients: Nova Scotia lobsters, New Brunswick salmon, PEI potatoes, Ontario peaches and ice wine, Manitoba wild rice, Saskatchewan wheat, Alberta beef, BC salmon, cherries and seafood. Can anyone add to that list? What about Newfoundland?

Thank you Lizziee for your review. I was there in the summer of 1999 and, as I said before, my lunch -- the 800ff menu de degustation -- was a huge letdown. I remember an avocado puree topped with caviar served in a martini glass, a stuffed pepper, a foie gras spring roll, prawns with coconut, roasted pigeon with cherries, and a chocolate mousse with more cherries (cherries are Trama’s trademark no?) served in a chocolate tear shape (IMO a very dull and very passé dessert). The portions were tiny. The only highlights were the marinated cherries served with pigeon and the mignardises plate. Service was also superb. I found the modern dining room cold and the glass marbles set on the tables were pretentious enough to make me laugh out loud. The clincher came when I requested a copy of the menu (made of cardboard and paper) and, was actually charged 100 ff for it – shocking really, as we had just dropped close to $600 US for a lunch for three with only a half bottle of wine. Thank heavens Puymirol was so beautiful. The incredible views from the town square cheered us up immensely. Tell me, do you think Trama made more of a fuss for your group as you were visiting with the owner of a vineyard?

I think we had an Ottawa thread a while back. There are quite a few good French restaurants in Hull next to Ottawa and from what I hear, the restaurant in the Hull Casino, Le Baccarat, is excellent.

Lizziee, I would love to read your reports of meals at Trama. I had one of the most disappointing lunches of all time there: tiny portions, dull flavour combinations, passé desserts and chipped glasses and china -- traumatic to say the least!

I'll be spending a week in the area this summer and will report back then. Maybe someone else has been there recently?

Looking for flambéed desserts, fudgecicles, Black Forest cake, Cherries Jubilee, Baked Alaska (which is flambéed after it’s baked), sabayons made tableside, and dessert carts? Then come to Montreal. Our old French restaurants have all them and more. Almost every French restaurant in Old Montreal offers Crepes Suzette and they'll flambé a pepper steak for you as well. We locals see it as American Tourist food. Chaud Froid, however, appears to have bitten the dust.

The two things New York bistro/brasseries lack are the dogs under the tables and a couple of charming crusty French men at the bar. Pastis was full of Sex and the City types when I was there and the bartender didn't even know what a Vittel/menthe was. Tsk tsk. And the nicotine stains have nothing to do with cigarettes. It's all about age. You can put up old tiles but Pastis is still only two years old. I actually found the whole Balthazar/Pastis thing a little weird and over the top. It is a lot like a movie set, but the cast of characters is all wrong. You can put up French signs and have a French person leave a message on the answering machine but when everyone around you is speaking English, it just doesn’t feel like a bistro.

You boys can carry on about Marco Pierre White and Kensington Place but I'll tell you , when Marks & Spencers closed their Canadian stores, there was an outcry, not for the cheap cotton panties, but for the frozen food. I get ten letters a week from readers in desperate search of steak and kidney pies, sausage rolls, Welsh rarebit, Melton Mowbray pies, marmite, Cadbury flake bars and all those British delicacies. I had two dozen people looking for haggis this fall along with pork pies, and vacuum-packed kippers. At Christmas loads of people wanted plumb pudding, eccles cakes and mincemeat. We had to track down French butchers and bakers willing to make the stuff. I never knew these people existed until Marks & Sparks left town.

I read half of Gopnik's (a Montrealer , well at least a former Montrealer) book before someone lifted it from my night table, but will run out and buy another copy immediately to read the bit about Aux Fins Gourmets. It may look a bit dreary from the outside and it is a bit dreary on the inside (full of local lawyers, politicians and writers) but of the many bistros I've frequented, this is the one that makes me feel most like I’m in Paris (another is this little place called Au Bon Saint Pourcain in the 6th, but the food isn't half as good). The owner, Michel Dupleix told me his parents, originally from Béarn, opened the place in the 50's and he remembers as a child when his mother had the room painted white (the walls are now a deep shade of nicotine yellow). There are holes and cracks in the walls and a well-worn cement-tile floor (look up and you’ll see an old – very old – ham hanging from the ceiling) but they resist renovating because the customers wouldn’t be happy. It’s all quite rétro français but it’s also authentic. I always order celery rave, roast chicken or cassoulet and the pear feuilletée, real bistro food.

L'Epi Dupin is a bit disappointing. It's very small, the chef is incredibly nice, and the atmosphere is electric but the food is a bit dull by Paris standards (two of our dishes featured filo dough -- need I say more). Also, it's pretty tough to get a reservation and God forbid you show up five minutes early, they'll ask you to wait outside. I'm surprised no one here has yet recommended Aux Fins Gourmets (213, Blvd. Saint-Germain, Tel: 01 42 22 06 57) a true neighborhood bistro with the requisite southwestern menu, a solid wine list, tobacco-stained walls, and desserts from the local Peltier. I have never had a bad meal here or seen a tourist in the place. I was shocked to see it mentioned in Regina Shrambling's recent Paris story in the Times. I'm sure the owner was mortified (he told me they really only like to see locals in the place).

I once worked with French chef Jacques Maniere (author of Cuisine a la Vapeur) and watched him steam beef tenderloin and rack of lamb. He then sprinkled them with icing sugar and browned them under the salamandre. Believe it or not, it was delicious and cooked to the perfect (sorry Steven) medium-rare. Maniere only started cooking in his mid-thirties and started life as, if I recall correctly, a chemist. He steamed absolutely everything (rabbit, game meats, vegetables, creme caramels).

In the freezer right now: all nuts and nut powders, pizza dough, homemade chicken and veal stock, store-bought duck stock, rhubarb, pumpkin puree, organic bread flour, organic cornmeal, organic grits, peas, pesto, vanilla ice cream, 5 individual raw flourless chocolate cakes, a bottle of vodka, and about 10 babkas from a babka story I did two years ago. A word of advice from someone who lived through a vile African meal worm infestation a few years ago: keep all organic flours -- especially cornmeal (they usually arrive in the cornmeal) -- in the freezer. Those little buggers ate their way through everything but the sugar.

Simon, terrific post – made me rethink my outing. I'm sure your take on Zaika's weaknesses would go for many restaurants shooting for a Michelin star yet compromising much of the cuisine's integrity in the process. I’m quite interested this nouvelle Indian bent because we just don’t have any restaurants of that genre here in Montreal. But after reading your post, I realize that I do in fact care about authenticity (just not obsessed like so many food writers) and I’d like to avoid the large white plates, stacked portions, and predictable pappadam tuiles and mango crème brulées. I’m now leaning towards The Bombay Brasserie (I quite like their cookbook) buffet or Mela. Thank you all for such excellent advice.

What about grease-free? Steven you're right about perfect. When I'm really desperate I'll use "textbook perfect." Of course that sucks but I'd rather descibe the creme caramel as textbook perfect than silky or very good. Actually, when I use perfect I don't mean very good, I mean that it's technically 100% correct. There is such a thing as perfection in cooking, I believe. There's a famous French food writer here in Montreal who writes, " the creme caramel was a real creme caramel," or the tarte Tatin was a real tarte Tatin." She has been writing for about 20 years and it shows. T I R E D.

I disagree with you Steven about perfect. I have had a perfect crème caramel and a perfect beurre blanc. I wonder, though, if the reader understands the word perfect or if it's one of those cheffy terms. Watch any cooking show and you'll hear perfect time and time again. Nigella says her stuff is perfect, Martha says her stuff is perfect, Bobby Flay says his stuff is perfect -- now that is barf-making. I think the overused words are tender (meat) and flavourful (everything). I should know, I overuse them every day. Oh, and then there's “delicious” (or, God forbid, “tasty”).