identifiler

sorry about that: And by the way, the web site Dave talks about has been designed in house and compared to a white elephant when put side by side with other shopping site. This is similar to Loto Quebec dropping a cool 100 million over three years to CGI for something that will never exist... the fact is most public entities would have lynched a CEO on daily SAQ decisions. I do however understand where you are coming from, most SAQ CEO's have had a good handle on marketing (if you like the smart approach of doing money hungry moves like dep wines for no real long term vision), yet a very poor one on management. You do have a point on the overall face lift of the last ten years, anything under that type of achievement would have been criminal in my books. Anybody wants to discuss biker's fondness for the SAQ's elite offers ?

Just to stay on thread, seems to me that most people at upper level of SAQ worry more about their benefit than the customer's benefit of getting a very average bottle of wine in a depanneur. I mean quite frankly, these wines are super scary, they are almost deliberately made to taste like tar, in fact for some folks, they are simply a health danger... Why don't they cut the fat and just have some bloody Gallo kiosque or something.

massive amount of revenus before massive amount of expenses never seen in other provinces. SAQ is run like CDP was in the golden years. Granted Roquet did cut some fat from his successor but people always forget the amazing severence packages these senior people get. Let's just take Jean Claude Gagnon for example, ex VP gone to take care of the Mario Dumont's campain, right sider of Frigon, he walked away with 226,000$ dollars of severance after 21 months on the job as VP (that's 18 months of pay after 21 month of work ???). Or what about Louis H Roy who went back and forth between SAQ and cabinet director of Landry (until he had to resing after calling half the public servants morons). SAQ is basically a hole for blood suckers, not business people... All these politcal gurus are the folks siting in chateaux's and enjoying wine for you...Anybody in political circles know exactly what I mean.

ABG, the only problem about the SAQ running a business with customer in mind is that it is not really a business, not one that needs to be competitive anyways. That is the problem with the SAQ, you could run it blindfolded and it would still operate with massive profit. But SAQ decided to take another route, the polictical one. Most VPs at SAQ are friends of power or old cabinet counsellors who are looking for their 6-7 trips as purchasers in the french vignobles. When it is not that, you get some rascal like Frigon who feels he can spend like no one is watching, renovate every single store, open a SAQ signature in le Chateau Frontenac, triple in one month the amount of VPs through an unseen expansion without any consent from any board. The reality is that if you scrutinise SAQ closely, you will see kickbacks and opportunities that pale in comparison to the "Commandite" scandal of the liberals and no one to tell the story (because most critic are on their knees in front of SAQ and I won't even get into the distributor's mini-monopole). At the end of the day, with all it's greatness, SAQ still will not give away one iota of power transfer to the grocery stores, it took them ages to recognise local products. It took them ages to re-arrange their stocks only to drastically cut everything down by 50% with fire sales and it takes them for ever to open up to other markets other than France. So I do agree with you that it's not run like a hospital or a CLSC or SAAQ, but the SAQ would never survive in an open market system... It takes more than lawyers and old press attachees with BA in sociology to run such an empire... This is why you have great service, because they have more staff that they care to deal with instead of diverting their market share to other players.

It was a nice confit classic show last night at Distasio. The last salad really had me salivating. http://www.telequebec.qc.ca/aladistasio/

Oh the cooking ios perfect, we are talking about one of the best meat chef in Canada. But, of course, Picard has to add his sense of personnality. Big ugly Pilon, perfect soft meat, very tasty. The outside is the only odd part, seems almost like a tastefull wink to the "Buffet chinois du quebec" Le VH sauce ! hahahaha. It's not that sweet. But quite more than I ever tasted.

I did not have time to run to Petit Plateau but after dinner at PdC, I decided to have 12 "pilon" of confit wrapped up. He also dumped a bucket of veggies, one of fat and one of potatoe puree... His confit is quite sweet, in fact I think there is either honey or maple sugar in it. Oddly enough, Picard suggested simply warm them up by dropping them in a tub of hot water, kosher style ! (but I won't do it)...

HA HA ! It was found...The e-mail you snet me did not make it. I make it you wanted to let me know of this. It's all good, I will stop there before my trip to Charlevoix.

Ever since reading Tony Bourdain, I can never get myslef to think normally about Hollandaise.

yes I know, I didn't have extra fat available. I just find that this specific confit is a bit harder to crisp than others.

Your A Bleanger description was dead on. No need to repeat myslef, the only wish I have is for the skin to be less limpy out of the oven. I'm getting more for the ski trip next week.

sf&m, I find the ones at passe partout bakery on Decarie street (NDG gold coast, east of decarie hwy) to be one of the most buttered croissant out there.

from the name I am guessing you are in San Fran ? Call me mister San Mateo-Montreal too... saturday 12 o clock return flight all the time.

This is the church where the statue of Dante and his bronze books were stolen and returned 25 years later ? This is why they took the returned material and housed it in the middle of the park... I like this park. Great spot for a picninc on lunch break.

Although I cannot confirm this explanation, there is definitely a difference at the cellular level between sudden slaughter and hunting. Basically an animal that is hunted will find itslef into the flight segment of it's physiology, that is it will fly until it has zero fuel to fight, that means that cellular degradation, including self digestion of tissues such as muscle does occur, lactic acid does form, pH changes, so on so on. Personnaly, I have always associated gamy taste with grassy taste... and as such have always thought of diet as being the biggest factor (foie gras would be an example). Another spooky example comes from one of my customers doing some genetic linkage analysis in suicides, he basically gets fresh blood samples from the coroner and I tell you, from blood sample to blood sample, you can definitely tell who had a violent death... Spooky !

I miss lux too, the rolling paper selections the late night drinks upstairs, ya that was a great place. I also miss seeing people line up in front of what was the original shed... People were lining up for boring cheese sandwiches, I never got that...

chicken lady, we don't do very well for tex or mexican ingredients but I think you could find everything, it's scattered all over the place... (for example, I get all my smoked chile Ancho from Marche de savuer at Atwater).

marche adonis for sure (anything arabic/greek/eastern) ! For Indian I use Nouveau Madina super market on 17, rue Ontario, est or Marché Victoria oriental 6324 Ave. Victoria

carswell, you are correct. The coral lentils where on the shopping list but it would be redundant to use them the way we do, which is as a fried vegetable cake over a bed of arugula. It would be redundant to have a lightly fired ball with confit. Therefore, I check out something else. These days we puree a lot for one of the kid, a nice little celeriac puree with drops of ahzelnut oil should do, we'll have to make a last minute decision with the amount of duck fat rendered, none of it will be loss...

I got two legs form Belanger waiting for this week. Will probably serve with some coral lentils. The confit are made by one of the sons of the place. Will report for any discreptencies.

And if you want to come back to something slightly more modern (but still in the dark ages of Quebec social scene), I suggest you read La Cuisine Raisonnee and maybe even try a couple of recipees. There are a few pictures too, if you like pictures.

Oh god, I think I'm reading some kind of Bon Appetit fake articles again... the stuff we read...

pharmaceutical sales, the restaurant expenses are there to counter act all the dreadfull waiting rooms and free samples lugging in the taurus... Now it all makes sense to me.

Speaking of dollars, I am guessing everyone read the crackdown that is going on today in the offices of Le Globe, le Buena Notte, le Shed Café, le Café République et le Cafeteria Concept Stuart... There is apparently a really nioce software on the cash machine...6 million has been erased according to La Presse. Shed I am not very suprised, the others I dunno, are they all owned by the same folks ? Let the drama begin...

That is a very imperialistic view on food and it is, in my books, one of the worst offense a foodie can make... This thread is so funny, I think someone confused their wallets for a super size wopper...