CRUDESSENCE - VEGETARIAN (HELL HAS FROZEN OVER)

PIGS FLY, THE WORLD ENDS,  AND HELL FREEZES OVER - 

  I ATE AT A VEGETARIAN PLACE... AND LIKED IT?:  

CRUDESSENCE - MACKAY STREET

Their website:  http://www.crudessence.com/
2157 Mackay Montreal, QC, H3G2J2   Telephone: (514) 664-5188
Price Range:  ~$15-$30 per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip

Strangers blotted out. Or maybe my camera freaked out :P.

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As you can all probably tell from my other reviews, I'm a carnivore. I eat my fruits and veggies in massive quantities (like, a half-kilo or more per day) because they're good for me, not because they're good-tasting. And when I go to restaurants, I order things I don't prep at home. I indulge myself. So, when I go to a vegetarian place, I technically am doing the first part (i.e., get things I don't do at home). Is it an indulgence though? AW HELL NO.

But, never let it be said that I don't have an open mind. I try all kinds of dishes all the time. Because, now and again, experimenting yields interesting finds (like, for example, discovering that putting peanut butter on your hamburgers is AMAZING). And so, one of my cousins (among other people) convinced me to meet up with her at Crudessence, a vegetarian, RAW FOOD restaurant. This blog post now chronicles this rare event.

So, the place was well-lit and had a pretty warm, inviting atmosphere. Definitely not a bad start. Right inside the front door was a small grocery section where the restaurant sold a ton of its products:

MECHANT BOEUF - STEAKHOUSE

STUB REVIEW:  MECHANT BOEUF -

SOME SERIOUSLY GOOD TARTARE AND A DRINK THAT TASTES A LOT LIKE BLACK FOREST CAKE

Their website:  http://mechantboeuf.com/en/
124 Rue Saint Paul Ouest, Montreal, QC H2Y1Z3   
Telephone:  514-788-4020
Price Range:  ~$30-$60 per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip 




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Readers of this blog, if any, have probably come to realize that I'm a bit of a carnivore. If it weren't for issues of health, meat would probably constitute 90% of the food I eat, with desserts making up the remaining 10%. Setting aside my (admittedly silly) fears of getting scurvy, there is the very real fact that not balancing out meat consumption with the eating of fruits and veggies over the long-term will lead to all sorts of realistic and all-too-common nasty ailments such as heart disease and diabetes. And since I don't want nasty ailments, fruits and veggies I will eat. In great bulk. Sigh. Oh well. Such is my concession to reality and human biology. Damn you, frail crude human frame!

That said, I loooooooooove meat-centric restaurants. In fact, my grudging concession to healthy eating probably makes me love meat-centric restos even more! I especially love discovering fantastic ones. And that is exactly what happened recently. Immediately after her flight touched down from Toronto, a friend was seriously jonesing for Méchant Boeuf. Being a good host, I acquiesced to the request, and off we went. My WORD I was not disappointed.

As it turns out, Méchant Boeuf has a late-night menu that runs on the following special, one-size fits all pricing:  After 11pm, it costs $14 for one person and $23 for two people for everything on the planchette menu. Their late-night menu link:  http://www.mechantboeuf.com/images/MB_latenight-menu.pdf .

From the menu, we chose the "Tout Cru" ("Raw" in English).

Tiny, but positively bursting with flavor!

RESTAURANT RAPIDO DU PLATEAU - DINER

RAPIDO: 

UNEXCITING BUT FILLING

Their Urbanspoon page:

 http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/67/722744/restaurant/Montreal/Plateau-Mont-Royal/Restaurant-Rapido-Du-Plateau-Montreal

4494 St Denis St, Montreal, QC H2J 2K8  Telephone:(514) 284-2188 
Price Range:  $15 or less per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip 

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I had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to describe this place. I mean, I like the (rotating) staff, and the place has good opening hours. But... well, I guess the only real thing to do in this situation is to just jump right in and express how I'm feeling. 

Basically, this restaurant is not bad by any measure. It is, however, average. Formulaic. Boilerplate. A thoroughly competent diner, with no real defining feature outside of the fact that it's open late and is therefore accessible. And there is definitely a place for such places in the hearts and bellies of customers. Well, mainly bellies. Yes, the name of this blog is Mouthwatering Montreal, but I would be doing a disservice to seekers of reliable late night places if I didn't also talk about reliable stuff from time to time too. And so, away we go...

When I pay a visit to Rapido, I usually grab something off the table d'hote - it's typically a pretty good deal. Before 9pm, you get a soup, main meal, dessert, and coffee/tea for $14 or much, much less. Some of the table d'hote items are actually $9, if I recall correctly. There are also even cheaper combo options that aren't a part of the table d'hote. For example, you can get a sizable poutine and a bottle of beer for $8. Rapido certainly gets the pricing part right!

Let's get the bookend items of the table d'hote out of the way - soup and dessert.

Chicken noodle rice soup. It's okay...

And a bit of cake. Again:  It's okay...

There's really not too much to say about the soup and dessert. The soup is some variation on standards - chicken noodle or vegetable - and the dessert has been either brownies or chunks of cake. Nothing's ever stood out. The food is just competent and filling.

Things you find as main dishes in the table d'hote include souvlaki in pita and big burgers:

L'AMERE À BOIRE - MICROBREWERY

L'AMERE A BOIRE - 

LOTS OF GREAT MICROBREWED BEER

...PLUS RABBIT BURGER!

Their website (in French only): 
http://www.amereaboire.com/index.php?page=home&hl=fr_FR
2049 St Denis St, Montreal, H2X 3K8  Telephone:(514) 282-7448  
Price Range:  ~$15-$30 per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip 

*This restaurant is a Mouthwatering Favorite!


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Let me tell you about my first experience with drinking beer. So, as a child, I was endlessly curious. I used to drive my father crazy with questions. To his credit, he did his damndest to answer all my questions, no matter how inane or crazy they may have been. My father is also a bonafide, diehard, hardcore manly MAN. So, when the time came for me to ask about beer - specifically, the one he was having over supper, y'know what my father did? 

He let me have some.

Oof. Me, age seven - first sip of beer. Lemme tell ya, that was my LAST sip of beer for well over TEN YEARS. My child's tongue didn't know what precisely to think about beer, except that it was profoundly AWFUL. 

That was probably the smartest bit of parenting my father ever did - in my adolescence, while all the rest of my contemporaries were getting powerfully drunk in isolated parks or while their parents were away, I abstained. The memory of my first sip of beer was just. That. Visceral.

Well, those days have long since passed. And now, I do enjoy a pint with friends every week. Which brings us to my currently-favorite pub in Montreal:  L'Amère à Boire. This is evident from the fact that L'Amère à Boire is the first pub listed on my favorites list of pubs (http://mouthwateringmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/08/favorites-pubs-and-bars-part-1-update.html). This is a microbrewery on St-Denis, and it makes TONS of awesome beers. There's only one beer here that I find truly disappointing - everything else, I keep on comin' back for. So, let's begin, shall we? To properly describe their beers to all of y'all, I went and got me sample glasses of ALL of their beers:

Even at small sizes, this is enough beer to pack a wallop!

HURLEY'S IRISH PUB

  STUB REVIEW:  

HURLEY'S IRISH PUB - 

YOU REALLY WANT TO EAT HERE, GUYS!

Their website:  http://www.hurleysirishpub.com/

1225 Rue Crescent, Montréal, QC H3G 2B1   Telephone:  514.861.4111 
Price Range:  ~$15-$30 per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip 

 *This restaurant is a Mouthwatering Favorite!


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Ah, Hurley's. One of the pubs I go to for food rather than for drink. I mean, I do buy drinks here, but it's not the primary purpose for the visit. There's just nothing special about their alcohol, in the end. What IS special though? Their sandwiches and their savory pies!

As I've said on my list of favorite pubs (http://mouthwateringmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/08/favorites-pubs-and-bars-part-1-update.html), my favorite thing here is the steak and kidney pie. Basically, it's huge, tender chunks of both steak and kidney cooked in a wonderfully savory gravy baked right inside a thick, chewy crust. It's all served next to a bed of salad and is just the thing to hit the spot on a cold winter's night (uh, the steak and kidney pie and not the salad, folks). Sadly, it's only available on Wednesdays. Even more sadly, because the pie is made to order, the moment they run out, they've run OUT. So, after a certain point, like say, after 8pm on Wednesday, you really do have to call ahead to make sure that they still have some. When they say, "Yes", you GO. You only live once, people! Make the most of it! Now, sadly, my cameraphone ran out of battery just before I could take some pictures last time; I will post some up the next time I get one.

Other things that are great here are their sandwiches. In fact, that's what got me to start coming here in the first place. They are all good bets, but the one that stands above the rest is the beef dip sandwich ($11.50).

Beef. Beef drippings. Curry mayo. How does one STOP eating this? It's impossible, I tell you!

MON NAN VILLAGE - CHINESE FOOD

  MON NAN VILLAGE:

AKA, ONE OF MY MOTHER'S FAVORITES

Their website:  http://www.restaurantmonnan.com/

43 Rue De La Gauchetiere E., Montreal, QC H2Z1J4  
Telephone: 514-866-7123
Price Range:  ~$15-$30 per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip 

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Ah, Mom. One half of the reason why I can't ever seem to stop eating. Or stop thinking about eating. You see, Mom is a tiny woman - all of 5'2" tall and 120 lbs - but she is an eating MACHINE. She loves to eat, but never gets fat, is never out of shape, and could probably devour the planet, given enough time. Oddly enough, my love of cooking does not come from her - that's from Dad. My Mom, if anything, HATES cooking. No, seriously, she does. She's really, really, REALLY good at cooking, but she hates doing it. She still does it every day, out of habit and tradition, but she's already told me that if ever I win the lottery or otherwise strike it rich, I'd better be hiring her a personal chef very next day. 

I'll see what I can do, Mom :P.

So, anyway, every year around Mother's Day and her birthday, we spend a number of days eating out, or buying awesome takeout to eat at Mom and Dad's. Typically, if we buy something, it would include a little something called wor sue gai - otherwise known as almond boneless chicken - from Mon Nan Village, a Chinese restaurant tucked away in a small corner in Chinatown.  Wor sue gai is a North American Chinese invention, wherein you mix together minced skinless deboned chicken, pork, and shrimp into a huge patty, bread it, deep fry it, and serve it over lettuce topped with Chinese gravy. When we don't buy that take out, we just go to this restaurant (among several). This past weekend, we went to Mon Nan Village for her birthday - wor sue gai next year, I guess!

So, what did we have? Three glorious fried dishes, and a vegetable dish that somehow managed to be pleasant (by my standards, of course). The first to arrive was goo loo pork - sweet and sour battered pork nuggets with peppers and pineapple:

This dish is why my uncle is fat. No, seriously - the man almost can't go a day without eating this dish. Remember children:  Moderation is key!

HAKATA RAMEN - JAPANESE FOOD

HAKATA RAMEN:

FANTASTIC NOODLES, 

 FANTASTIC-IER EEL

 

Their website:  http://www.hakataramen.ca/

1216 Stanley St, Montreal, QC H3B  Telephone:(514) 759-6688 
Price Range:  ~$15-$30 per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip 

*This restaurant is a Mouthwatering Favorite!

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I have to admit:  I wasn't always sold on the notion of eel as food. I mean, I wasn't grossed out by it at all; I just didn't see any extra appeal of eel that regular workaday fish would not have. And then, I discovered Japanese grilled eel. That first time, it was like an atom bomb of goodness had gone off in my mouth.  So now, years later, Japanese grilled eel is among my favorite dishes. Done right, it's mildly sweet and loaded with flavor, and the texture of the eel is a near-perfect mix of fatty and meaty. In effect, it has the just-right type of eating sensation that I'm looking for in cooked fish. And one place that I think really grills its eel well is Hakata Ramen. That's why I get the following dish often:

Bowl of goodness, oh yessss...

FAVORITE PUBS & BARS, PART 1

FAVORITES! 

PUBS AND BARS PART 1

Update August 9, 2013:  This list was originally part of a two-part favorites post, along with Japanese food. It now has its own page. The link is here:  http://mouthwateringmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/07/favorites-part-2.html . Maps and more places have been added. Don't say I never do anything for you guys!

PUBS AND BARS

1)L'Amère à Boire - Microbrewery and Pub - Quartier Latin

Their website:

http://www.amereaboire.com/index.php?page=stout-imperial&hl=fr_FR 

2049 Rue Saint-Denis, Montréal, QC H2X 3K8   
Telephone:(514) 282-7448

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Oh, how I do love this place. They make a collection of their own beers (in fact, they don't serve anything they don't make, as far as I know), and they serve some pretty delectable food to go with it.  A perpetual favorite combo of mine there is the rabbit burger with a pint of Cerna or a pint of Imperial Stout. But really, try all the beers - they offer them all in convenient, inexpensive sampling sizes (but which are still fairly substantial for a sample). Or, go hog wild and order pitchers if you're with friends. My blog post on it: http://mouthwateringmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/08/lamere-boire-microbrewery.html

FAVORITE HAMBURGER JOINTS!

FAVORITES:  HAMBURGERS (YOU WILL NOT FIND FAST FOOD CHAINS ON THIS LIST, LEMME TELL YA)

I have this friend who, by all appearances, cares a little too much about his appearance at times. His hair's pretty obviously very coiffed (with nary a single hair out of place or yielding to the blowing wind), he takes care to always dress in clothes that highlight his trim physique, and he maintains a pretty careful diet. I mean, seriously, at one point the boy knew the calorie count of orange juice, ferchrissake. Yeesh.

That said, he does have at least one weekly indulgence - hamburgers and french fries. The problem? He used to get this fix at McDonald's. UGH. I had to re-educate the boy, post-haste. The following list was basically what I threw at him, just before I started dragging him by the ear to get some real fast food (seriously, if you're going to indulge, why would you indulge in McDonald's of all things? The stuff's terrible. Are their french fries even organic anymore? Morgan Spurlock left his fries out for two and a half months and the stuff didn't even show a single speck of mold. There's something seriously wrong with food that refuses to decompose - if even mold, nature's eaters of the dead, won't touch your food, why in the HELL are YOU touching it, idiot? I mean, just look at this! http://youtu.be/4wmac-INoXg

*ahem* Sorry, that paragraph kinda ran away from me there.

So, with that out of my system, here are my favorite hamburger spots in the city.

L'Anecdote - Plateau Mont-Royal
Their Urbanspoon website: http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/67/722607/restaurant/Montreal/Plateau-Mont-Royal/Restaurant-LAnecdote-Montreal
801 Rue Rachel East, Montreal, QC H2J 2H6  Telephone: (514) 526-7967


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I've already done a review on this place (see http://mouthwateringmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/07/stub-review-lanecdote-excellent.html ), but this definitely bears mentioning:  EAT THEIR HAMBURGERS AND DO IT NOW. Especially, their venison burger. This is a tiny diner with fantastic burgers and fries cooked in peanut oil. Their burgers are nice and thick and served in nice, chewy buns. They do have other food, but I can't comment on those items because I can never resist their burgers. So, uh, go. Now. Don't walk. Run!