Gabriel Lewis

More pictures: Another of my favorite vendors. They have lots of lovely organic produce from quebec, and often have choice mushrooms, asparagus, garlic, etc. An alleyway inbetween the aisles of vendors. Another of my favorite vendors, can you guess why?

Next I made a circuit of the market, I'll mostly let the pictures speak for themselves save for a few notes. (Apologies for the blurry ones) If you need fish or seafood at the market, this is where I'd go. One of this chain bakeries outlets at the market. They're bread is very good. One of my favorite vendors. Why? They have a lot of chiles. Other good stuff too. JTM's other cheesemonger. Much bigger, more variety, if you're into cheese a must visit. The next two pictures of are of the two specialty greengrocers at the market. Personally I find their prices little short of gouging, and not all of their stuff to be that great. For some things though, they are quite good. Here we Le Capitaine, my egg guy. This is where I got the flat of eggs the other day. They are the best eggs I've found in montreal, and inexpensive to boot (2.75 for a dozen, 6$ for 30). Le Capitaine himself in action:

I should've mentioned that Porcmeilleur is in the new strip towards the top of the market, this was put in only a few years ago I think? The perimeter of the market is lined with butchers, cheesmongers, fruit stores, and other specialty stores, whereas the middle is lined with aisles of mostly produce vendors. If you think of the market as a square, then I consider this new strip the "top" of the square. Here is the middle of the new strip, where a lot of food vendors are gathered: Continuing along the strip we have Olive et Epices, one of my employers' stores. As you may have guessed from the name, this store specializes in spices and oils. The bulk of the spices I process are sold here, and they carry a huge variety of spices, oils, vinegars, mortar & pestles, and other things from around the world. This is where Philippe de Vienne can usually be found on the weekend. Next we have Qui lait Cru!? One of JTM's two cheesemongers. They also carry a lot of great quebec milk products, like low temperature pastuerized cow and goat's milk, artisanal butter, cream cheese, and yoghurt. This is where I get my milk most of the time; I have to be careful though, because it is minimally processed it only keeps for about a week, so I have to time my purchases carefully. Dairy products arrive on Thursdays. They also carry baked goods from le Fromentier, one of montreals better bakeries. Next we have Havre aux Glaces, an artisnal ice cream outfit. Run by two brothers, they have a sister shop at the Atwater market that is only open during the summer season. They make all sorts of interesting ice creams and sorbets out of mostly local products, and are always very busy. Next we have La Depense, my employers' second store. This store specializes more in non-fresh esoteric foodstuffs from around the world. They have all sorts of tea, rice, asian condiments & sauces, vinegars, chocolates, asian cooking tools, etc. It is a lovely little shop, and my favorite of the two. I like to go in every now and then and let my eyes run along the shelves, looking for new things. This is also where you can buy Bahjis, and likely find Ethne Devienne on the weekends. Some shots from inside the store:

Next I headed off to the JTM, which was decently busy on a friday afternoon. I dislike coming on weekends, as usually I like to make a full circuit of the market to see what's available, and this takes a long time on weekends. The only disadvantage to this, is that usually more stuff comes out on weekends. By now, I have the entire layout of the market memorized, and maximize the efficiency of my route from vendor to vendor, once I have made the circuit once and decided on what to buy. Here is the alleyway through which most busy traffic first enters the market: My first stop was Porcmeilleur, a small shop that sells pork directly from their farm. They are incredibly friendly, have fair prices, and are always very helpful. Occasionally I will get 20lbs of pork bones for them to make stock, free of charge. And if you need something special ordered, they will be happy to accomodate. Carswell got a suckling pig from them christmas last year, and spoke very highly it. When I asked to take photos, the cashier insisted I take a shot of the dancing pig: Some photos from inside the store:

My first stop was Marche Orientale: One of the best asian grocers in montreal, and conveniently located a few blocks from the JTM. They have a small bakery, roast pigs & roast ducks, good asian produce, lots of crazy fruit from all over asia, and overall good selection for all things pan asian. I am here about once a week atleast, and they have come to know me; I even get a smile out of the cashiers sometimes. The Aisles are a bit narrow here, but I did manage to take a few pictures. Produce section: Snacks: Teas:

I think I will have to try miso soup both with some niboshi, and with niboshi dashi. Sheena: Virtually all the asian pears here are the size a large apple or smaller, and I don't find eating their skin unpleasant in the least. Apparently we have a good climate for Asian pears here, I am hoping to get up to a farm that grows them, but they are quite far away. Hiroyuki Thanks for the link, don't know why I didn't think of that. As for Ichiyu Sansai, yes I am familiar. I have only been cooking Japanese foods for a little while though, and a soup and three side dishes can be hard to pull off. It is a lot of work (even if they are simple), but it isn't just that. I don't have a huge resevoir of recipes in my head, or even on my bookshelf, and coordinating three different side dishes that go well with each other can be difficult; it takes a lot of planning. As I familiarize myself more with the techniques and recipes, it'll be easier to pull it all together, but in the meantime coordinating the shopping, planning, cooking etc stumps me at times. Plus outside of this blog I sort of stick to japanese for a week or two, and then to sichuan, and then back. But I may be able to manage sansai ichiyu or even better this weekend, and it is definitely something I want to do more of in the future. So I woke up this morning to find I had a flat tire. I called in to work to let them know I would be a little late, little did I know. It turned out to be a very vexing flat a tire, and by the time I was finished there wasn't much point in going to work. I was so caught up in "winning" against my flat that I lost track of time. My supervisor was ok with it, she is pretty flexible, but I feel terrible. At one point I was ready to smash my tire to bits and give up in despair. However, on the plus side it gave me the afternoon free, and so I headed to the market early. Earlier I snacked/breakfasted on these and another asian pear. I love these chips; I can easily polish off a bag in one sitting. The ingredients don't seem very thai to me, but atleast they are all what I'd consider "food". I am really digging the increasing availability of pre-prepared foods that aren't chalk full of garbage. Here is what I picked up at the Market:

I don't think they have bialys here, atleast at the St-Viateur store anyway. You might be able to find them somewhere in Montreal, there are a lot of immigrants here. Dinner tonight was Japanese again, Miso soup: Steamed Salmon and Roe (Sake no Oyako-mushi), with Grilled eggplant w/ soy sauce & ginger (Yakinasu) Any of you out there who make Miso soup frequently, I'd love to hear some of your favorite versions. I am quite taken to miso soup, but haven't expanded much beyond a basic soup with either white or red miso, tofu, maybe some mushrooms, green onions, or sansho powder. I'd love to try some different versions, especially ones that highlight a particular kind of miso. The steamed salmon was excellent; rich flakes of salmon coated in a sour sauce, interspersed with bursts of savory flavor as the salmon eggs burst between your teeth. This is another dish with the whimsical "parent child" name (oya = parent(s), ko = child), similar to Oyako Donburi, a chicken & egg dish served over hot rice. The eggplant was also very tasty for such a simple preparation; I love the texture of smooth eggplant. We have some nice asian eggplants in season at the market right now; I am not too fond of the giant purple ones. For desert, I had a bit of vietnamese peanut brittle: I am quite partial to asian snacks and deserts, and often roam the isles of asian grocers in search of something new. Tommorow I work all day, but afterwards my friend Nathalie is coming over to cook Sichuan food with me. I'll need to go to the Jean Talon to pick up some ingredients, and I'll post a bunch of pictures after I get back from the market tommorow.

Yes Winnipeg is a great city; it takes a certain kind of person to appreciate it. As for Chinese in montreal, I can't say I think much of it. I've been to a few of the restaurant in Chinatown, and I wasn't particularly impressed by any of them. There is one Sichuan restaurant called Niu Kee on clark street that it quite good, although less so since a change of ownership I am told. Truth be told I am not a very good person to ask; I eat out very infrequently, and most of my restaurant knowledge is secondhand. I find it very hard to part with what little money I have for (usually) a meal I could easily outdo for far less money if I cooked it myself. When I do bother to eat out though, usually I turn to Endless Banquet, a food blog by a montreal couple. They have been blogging for years, have excellent taste, and have an enormous list of great montreal food spots. If you are planning a trip to montreal that is food centered, this is your best bet for recommendations. I do get back to Winnipeg, but not as much as I'd like. I don't have any family there, and its hard to find a reason to get out there when its so far from where I am. I left relatively young, so I don't know much about the food there, but I would be interested to see what it has to offer next time I get back.

Thank you! I don't know what bialys are, so I'm not sure I can help here. I might know them by apperance, if not by name if you can describe them. Or maybe someone can help me out here.

Woke up late this morning, and rushed off to class. Had time to scarf down this, bot not to write about it: I work afternoons on tuesdays, and spent most of the afternoon doing something I'm not crazy about: pounding whole dried turmeric into small pieces. We get turmeric in these huge bags in whole dried form from India, and seeing as it is so hard that it breaks the blades of our grinders, we have to pound it by hand with a mortar and pestle to use in our spice blinds. This is hard work. Luckily I don't mind the physical part, as I am pretty well accustomed to hard work with a mortar from making curry pastes. But still, by the end I am sweat, sneezy, and very very yellow. I was in such a rush that I forgot to bring my camera, but we had leftovers for lunch. The pizza I made on tuesday, an eggplant/cauliflower curry of sorts based on roasted red peppers;cracked coriander; and black pepper (I made last week), and a jamaican style curry a coworker of mine made last week. Leftovers can be pretty good.

Tonight for dinner we had: Beaten egg soup (kakitama-jiru) Steak Teriyaki (Gyuuniku Teriyaki), Asparagus with mustard dressing (asupragasu karashi-Ae), and steamed rice (Gohan): Individual pictures Here are some of my comments on the dinner. I'm still very new to Japanese cooking, so if you see or read anything obviously out of place, or something I'm missing, feel free to enlighten me. The soup was very good; light, clean, and simple. The only thing that didn't seem to go as the recipe indicated was the egg turning into thin thread like filaments, as you can see. The steak was also quite good, but slightly overcooked as I overestimated the thickness. I also have to wonder why Shizuo specifies half inch slices. I found these a bit large to chew, and it would've been easier to plate thin slices better. The asparagus was so-so. The dressing consisted of 1 egg yolk, 2tsps mustard powder mixed 2tsps water, and 1tsp dark soy sauce. This was very mustardy and not much else; I can't figure out why he used so much mustard.

On my way home from school I stopped to get steaks, beer, and bagels. I also took a few photos in my neighbourhood. First stop was La Paradis des Bieres, a small specialty beer store that carries a lot of different beers, at excellent prices to boot: I opted for a six pack of Boreal Blonde. Boreal is a big Quebec brewery, but their beer is actually pretty good. I'm partial to the Blonde as it's clean, refreshing, and especially good very very cold. I've been meaning to branch out a bit more, but I hesistate at times; alcohol is expensive here, and if I'm going to pay good money for it, I'd like it to be good. Again any montreal beer experts, here is your chance to educate me. While in the neighbourohood, I took some photos of Laurier street restaurants. Laurier is a few blocks north of Mont Royal, and is a bit of a trendy street in the mile end/plateau neighbourhoods. There are tons of restaurants, bars, shops, cafes and generally a lot of activity. Any montrealers can feel free to correct me if I'm misstepping here; I haven't actually eaten at most of the places I'm about to describe. Here we have La Chronique, generally considered Montreal's number two restaurant behind Toque. My apologies for the glare, the sunlight and their sign made it difficult to take a clear picture. Chef Marc originally hails from belgium, and his food can be thought of as modern high end french, although my boss tells me it is somewhat rustic. I haven't eaten here yet, but would like to. A comprehensive meal with wine here would cover my food budget for a month. If you're on a budget, they have excellent 3 course meals for 25$. I'll take advantage of this eventually. Across the street from La Chronique (from left to right) are Bazaar (white sign), Bistro Bruno (black sign), and Raza (the red sign can barely be seen at the far right). Bazaar is chef Racha Bassoul's new venture, in the same locatio as her old Anise. When she closed Anise, she seemed to indicate that she was closing for good, but the new place opened only a few months afterwards. A lot of people think this was a rather clever ploy to pick up business. Her original venture Anise was higher end fine dining, but she toned this down for Bazaar. A number of people have speculated to me that the switch was made with a more profitable restaurant in mind. Bassoul tends to work with a lot of different flavors, but her foundation is persian/mediterrean and french, and all her food comes from this theoretical framework. Philippe deVienne speaks highly of Racha and her cooking. Bistro Bruno is a new french bistro that opened about a year ago? I don't know much about it, but supposedly they have some nice bistro classics for a good value. Restaurant Raza, headed by chef Mario Navarrette is a Nuevo Latino restaurant. Think french techniques and approach with latin flavors. I used to work here, and at his sister restaurant Madre over on Masson street. I learned a lot from Mario, but eventually felt the need to leave for personal reasons. Navarrete's cooking draws on influences from all over South and Latin America, with an emphasis on Peru where he hails from. Some of this combinations are delicious indeed, and if you do go to either restaurant I'd suggest the Ceviche as a starter. Here we have Les Touilleurs, a cooking equipment store, and Juni, a high end Sushi joint. Les touilleurs is a beautiful store, but a bit too yuppieish for my tastes. I prefer to shop at restaurant supply stores and the like, where I don't feel like I'm getting gouged for shopping in an elegant white setting. Juni is supposedly one of Montreal's better sushi places. They do a tasting many, and have some french influences too, but I'm told its best to stick to traditional options. Next I stopped at Chez Vito, my local neighbourhood butcher. They have good selection and prices, and are very friendly and helpful. The man behind the counter in the picture is Vito himself, the owner. He was in the process of breaking down a giant side of beef, and was kind enough to let me take a picture. Next I stopped at St-Viateur bagel, as I'm running low on supplies. Here is the storefront: The main counter: Another shot of the main counter, in the back you can see an employee who's just inserted a wooden board of bagels into the wood fired oven. To the side is the bagel dump, where hundreds of freshly made bagels sit. The ones higher up are still warm. Here's someone cutting out long strips from a massive block of dough, to be shaped by hand into bagels. Storage space, the sacks on the left are sesame seeds; as you can see, they go through a lot of sesame seeds here. After that was home, I'm off to prep for dinner here which will include steak teriyaki and egg drop soup.

As mentioned above, properly made ghee has almost all of the moisture cooked out of it, and the milk solids are evaporated; it is basically pure butter fat, and the conditions are too inhospitable for microbes to grow. That said, it is a fat, and as such is susceptible to picking up off flavors and rancidity. It will keep best stored in an opaque airtight container in a cool dark place. It is a bit hard to work with directly from the refrigerator or cooler temperatures, so I keep a small amount at room temperature, and my main supply in the pantry or fridge.

Breakfast: Today it was a banana, banana bread, and jasmine tea. The bread was a gift from my friend Nathalie at work last night; she's going to pastry school right now and this was from school earlier in the day. I often have tea in the morning, typically green or Oolong. I do like black tea too, but don't like to drink that much of it, I find it and coffee upset my stomach. With green or oolong it's easy to bring a thermos to school and sip my tea during lecture. I'm off to school for the afternoon, I'll be back later on. Tonight we switch to Japanese.

Burlington is quite close; my cousin often flies out of burlington as it is cheaper that way, in fact he'll be coming back from california through burlington tonight. Vermont is a state I'd love to get to a know a bit better, as I've heard the folks over at endless banquet praise it endlessly. As for the beer here, I've found some I like, but I spent a few years in the other Portland (OR), and the quality of beer there is pretty hard to match. Incidentally, any Montrealers with suggestions for great Quebec beer, feel free to jump in if you're reading this.

I am glad you are enjoying my blog Bruce, I have always felt we are kindred spirits of a sorts seeing as we seem to have very similar tastes as "white guys". I wasn't visiting egullet much when your blog aired, but I did read through the whole thing when I discovered it. Obviously my situation is a lot less constraining than your own, had I a family to cook for I would have to do a lot more juggling. I don't always have time for a comprehensive meal, but when I do this is my favorite way to cook. I am very lucky in that both my girlfriend, and my cousin (who is also my roomate) are very tolerant of my eccentricities. In my girlfriends case, she is originally from Sichuan province so she is always happy to have a chance to eat food from home. This works very well for me too, as I have the input of someone who knows what ti should actually taste like. In my cousin's case, he eats a lot and eats everything, so we get along well. As for your french, it wouldn't be necessary in the least. In fact, unless you get outside of the core area, most people probably wouldn't give you much of a chance to practice your french at all. It would help you read some things and appreciate aspects of the culture in montreal though. As for me, bien sur je parle francais. I was in french immersion until my family moved to the states when I was fifteen. I still understand very well, but I don't speak terribly well. Not that I can't manage a conversation or anything, but I am overly conscious about the quality of my own french and its hard for me to relax and just speak naturally.

Thanks for the tips Smithy. Dinner tonight was leftovers from last night. I am too tired to cook after a day like today's, and that's generally how I operate anyway. I probably make 4-5 meals a week and eat leftovers for lunch and dinner. I should mention at this point that when I said focus on a particular cuisine, this means I eat nothing but that cuisine for the duration of that period. I am not super strict about this. It doesn't generally apply to breakfast, or to restaurants I might visit, but I would say that about 80% of the food I'll consume over the next few months will be either Sichuanese or Japanese. I like doing it this way, because it makes it financially feasible to have a lot of specialized ingredients on hand. It also helps me get a feel for a particular style of cooking; its techniques, seasonings, emphases. I try to make as many different recipes as possible, and to cook freely once I feel I have a handle on the techniques and theory of a style of cooking. The ones I particularly like I will remake a number of times, and the ones I feel didn't turn out because of some mistake of mine I remake until I am satisfied with the result. Desert was sliced asian pear: I dabble a bit in deserts, and do enjoy well made ones, but I am often happiest with some good fruit after dinner. I am particularly partial to asian pears, the brown skinned ones being my favorite of the ones I've tried. The combination of texture and resfreshiveness just does it for me. I also tried a sorbet I've been meaning to make for a while, yellow watermelon: I've been picking up some lovely water melons at the JTM for a month or two now, I especially like the yellowones. They have such a clean refreshing flavor, I thought they'd be perfect for sorbet. This one seems good, though I may have to refreeze it. I may have overseasoned it as well, its only water, sugar, and lemon juice, but the clean flavor of the watermelon is affected so easily. Next time I might try neglecting water entirely, and going easier on the sugar and lemon juice. Sorbet has become something of an obsession of mine over the past few months. I love the clean flavors and refreshing qualities of sorbets, and the range of ingredients one has to work with. I like ice cream too, but don't make it as much because a lot of the ingredients I want to try frozen applications with don't work well with milk, and sorbet is generally a lot cheaper. My obsession began with the ice cream machine at a restaurant I used to work at. I would bring the chilled base to work, and freeze it about an hour before I got off; I lived close enough that I could rush home to my apartment to freeze it after work. I have since quit my job at the restaurant, but I recently bought a freezer compressor ice cream maker, and have been experimenting with it since. It's especially nice as it is convenient to simply respin my sorbets when they are getting old.

What happened to make them infamous? My sister went to McGill, and I visited a couple of times. I love Montreal for the food (but it's a bit too "big city" for this prairie girl). Are you going to take us to Schwartz's? Or any other Montreal institution? Do we get pictures of St. Viateur (sp?). They're the ones with the tiny store with the big oven (is it wood burning?)? I love them! ←

Did I miss it? What work do you do? In school for what? (Forgive me if I can't read...) But FWIW, this blog is coming along beautifully... you do Montreal a great service! ← Thanks. You didn't miss anything, I was just busy typing it up. They'll be more about work later this week though. I used to be in school for Neuroscience, but I'm in the process of switching to Food science, which I'll elaborate on later.

I arrived at work today around noon, and was immediately told by my supervisor that we had some pizza dough that needed to be used, and I was expected to make 5 pizzas to feed 9 people. This suited me fine. Remeber that this used to be a catering headquarters, so we have a well equipped professional kitchen onsite. So I looked in the fridge, and gathered my ingredients. On hand we had fresh tomatos, tomato sauce, poblano peppers, a german cured ham similar to prosciuotto, onions, belgian endives, parmesan, and a lot of spices. I ended up making 5 pizzas with these, with subtle variations on a few of them. With 5 pizzas to roll, top, and bake, I didn't have time to experiment. Here are the results: The first two, on the left is a vegetarian version for staff who don't eat pork. I used extra onions on this one, mixed with olive oil, some crushed coriander, and a little cider vinegar. The middle two, basically the same. The last one. This one had a generous coating of olive oil, pine nuts, and a lot of black pepper. I was also able to make it thinner, and I wasn't constrained by space as per the first two. It's too bad I made it last, as I liked this one the best. Another thing I make a lot of at work are Bahjis: These are Indian fried fritters, somewhat similar to pakoras. Ours are made with carrots and leeks, and the base is flour, lentil flour, salt, spices, and leavening. Properly fried and fresh with tamarind chutney on the side, these are damned good. We sell a lot of these; I've only been working here for a few months, but by my own rough estimate I've already made a half million or so.

The last photo in the series above is of the main entrance of my workplace, the headquarters of the Epices de Cru brand of spices, on rue de la Savane in ville St. Laurent, a subcity in Montreal northwest downtown. This is where most of the products of the now infamous Olive et Epices and La depense stores of the Jean-Talon market. The building and business belong to Philippe and Ethné Devienne, who joined the ranks of the spice business a few years ago after decades as Caterers. This used to be their catering headquarters, and old restaurant that they purchased a while back to head their catering operations. When they switched over to spices, it became their packing/distribution center for the spices and prepared foods they sell at their stores. This unassuming building is the foundation of their two stores at the Jean-Talon market, stores I think Montreal is very luck to have. As of today we have somewhere around 200 different kinds of spices at de la Savane, most of which are shipped to us directly from small suppliers in their country of origin. Philippe and Ethné have traveled the globe in search of the most amazing spices. We have all the standard issue spices, 30 or so different kinds of dried chiles, dried Kombu help from Hokkaido, 6 or 7 kinds of vanilla beans, and so so much more that I'm only beginning to keep track of it all. I love this place. This is where my Sichuan peppercorns are from Peter. Philippe and Ethné recently established a relationship directly with a grower in China. We have three different kinds. Normal red, green, and special grade "imperial". The smell you meet when opening a giant bag of Sichuan peppercorns is heady. Were out of green at the moment, but last we heard from the supplier they were frantically harvesting the crop before monsoon season, meaning we should get some more soon. Philippe and Ethné are in China on vacation right now, and unfortunately I forgot to ask them permission to take photos before they left. I've sent them an e-mail though, and hopefully I'll be able to show you some of the inner workings of de la Savane towards the end of the week.

Tuesdays are a bit of a long day for me, as I have class from 10 to 11:30, head straight to work for noon, and then work from noon to 8. Here are some photos I took on the way to school and work. The statue at the crest of park in park Jeanne-Mance on the side of Mount Royal. Mont Royal is located roughly in the center of montreal, and puts the "Mont" in montreal. This statue has been under repairs since before I moved here, a little over two years ago. Traditionally it was the site where all the drum players gathered to play drums on Sundays (Tams Tams). Approaching the famous Parc and des Pins intersection. It's a little up ahead of the photo here, and is one of the bigger interesections in montreal not far from downtown. They were fixing this for what felt like forever, and now its a lot easier to get around this part of town. Corner of Dr. Penfield and des Pins. Downtown is in the distance, and the building in the forefront overlooks the Mcgill campus. The Mcintyre Medical building. This is mcgill's health sciences building at the top of des Pins on the side of Mont Royal. I spend most of my time here puzzling out signal transduction and enzyme pathways. Not much to be said for the cafeteria. This photo looks down Cote-des-Neiges, one of montreals major streets near downtown. It is quite a bustling street with lots of traffic, restaurants, little shops, and other things to explore. There are a lot of streets like this in Montreal, and they are one of the things I love about Montreal. I enjoy just walking up and down them when I have time, because you never know what you'll stumble on. One of the many churches I passed on the way to work. There is a lot of truth to Mark Twains quote "You can't throw a rock in montreal without hitting a church window". They are all quite beautiful though. My work.

Wattacetti nailed it. I haven't had any encounters with skunks, but I have been within a few feet from raccoon near Mcgill many a time. Mcgill is only a block or two from busy downtown, and the raccoons I've met barely even take notice of you. They walk around like they own the place.

Dunlops marinade was pretty standard: shao hsing, corn starch, salt, soy. She didn't make any mention of any sort of enzyme based tenderizer, are you sure this is for Gong Bao chicken? Chicken is pretty tender to start with, so I'm not sure why it would need tenderizing. As for my peppercorns, I think you'd be hard pressed to find better in North America, or even in China. You'll see why in a bit. I'll be doing some more shopping at some of my favorite markets as the week goes on, and I'm sure I'll manage to get some good pictures.

No, never had one. Have attempted unsuccessfully to have visiting friends bring me back a sample though. I did know about them though, I made my statement based on what I've heard from what I consider very reliable sources. I think there is a quote from carswell kicking around on egullet somewhere along the lines of "you can call them different animals, but faced to choose most people would choose montreal". "What you grow up with" is pretty much impossible to beat though.