RAPIDO:
UNEXCITING BUT FILLING
Their Urbanspoon page:
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
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.
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| Chicken noodle rice soup. It's okay... |
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| 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:
So here's a little test - just by glancing, can you even tell the difference between the two dishes? I certainly can't, and my perception is considerably better than most people's. Don't get me wrong: Each plate is solid enough on its own, and I have no objection at all to eating either one. But the presentation truly does tell you absolutely all you really need to know about the food and the restaurant. Very, very, very standard. The souvlaki is souvlaki, and the burger is burger.
Ugh - that's enough tautological phrasing for one day. Let's move along...
Non-table d'hote items include the usual diner fare. For illustration, here is a Mexican pizza:
The crust is okay - not thick or thin - and the "Mexican-"ness of the pizza is definitely there. There's a sharp tangy taste that comes from the hot peppers used, and it's not a bad depth of toppings either.
Here is a smoked meat poutine:
I can appreciate the nice, big chunks of smoked meat, and the nice, big size of the poutine - I am a perpetually hungry carnivore, after all. But, as with everything else here, there's just nothing special here. Still, a solid bet.
And in the end, that's it, really. I've been here enough times to know that it's a reliable spot with adequate serving sizes (even for me). In the end, it's unexciting but filling - kinda like getting full on a ton of white rice or a bunch of cold supermarket burger buns. It does the trick, but you're going to forget about it seconds after you're done. You trot on over to Rapido for late-night feedin', and that's about all. I don't think this restaurant has ever been my first port of call.
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Map of restaurants I have reviewed:
Mouthwatering Montreal - Rapido du Plateau is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Your article is really and has the great information about the scrumptious food, thank
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