whitefish

Wow do you guys ever get off topic fast. The best terrace in Montreal - whether the food is craptacular or not - is at the St. Elizabeth. What is it, 6-story high walls covered in vines? Trees, lanterns, cobblestones and the chatter of patrons and hidden birds. There might not be any Ferrari's parked out front or hotties walking by it's a pretty magical place on a summer evening. Feels like something out of LOTR. The tiny terrace at Les Folies on Mont Royal is sweet too.

Best Espresso goes to Café Chivas, just outside Jean Talon market. They spent something like 6 years perfecting the blend. You'll want two in a row guaranteed. Best café au lait Café Olympico (Open da Night) in Mile End. Cheap, very fast and damn good. Not a caffeine freak but the "double" tastes even better and it's still just $2.75. Screw you Starbucks!

Beckta's definitely deserves to be there - though I don't trust enRoute's arbitrary selection process at all. It would be better to say "Hot new Canadian restaurants" instead of "Best" Interesting tidbit: Chef Stephen Vardy worked in Ottawa at Domus Café under John Taylor (one of Canada's most underrated chefs) and Café Henry Burger. He then went out east for a stint at the Inn at Bay Fortune with Michael Smith. I think he also worked at Bishop's too. He moved back to Ottawa a while ago and where did he worK? He replaced Joel Watanabe as the chef of Kinki, promptly changing the menu in the hot kitchen from asian to french with asian influences (I dare not call it fusion) with great success. Strangely enough he found the owners a major source of stress too and left for Beckta's after only 6 months. How stressed? He used his very first days off to get a fist-sized tattoo of a pineapple. ("I find getting a tattoo very relaxing" and "Because I f***ing love pineapples; they're beautiful" being the responses to the obvious questions). Weird? Maybe, but this is also a guy with a chinese cook's knife and a crazy red KitchenAid on his arm. Any chef with that kind of dedication is tops in my books... and he has the skill to match.