Montreal is an exceptionally pretty city, one that lends itself quite well to meandering from street to street, without a clear sense of direction. It is not unlike New York in this respect. So for our last day, we opted to simply wander around and see what we could see.

There are many parks.

This is actually in Mont Royal, where we went with Alison the previous day. Fish live here.

And we discovered a secret path . . .

. . . which unfortunately did not lead to Narnia. (But neither was it filled with spiderwebs, so I’ll call it even.)

Saturday took us to more public parks, like Parc la Fontaine:

A park which enforces a most un-Canadian rule.

The houses surrounding the parks are beautiful. This is just off Saint Denis. (I think.)

A number of houses reminded us of Brooklyn brownstones, with a few differences — instead of stoops, there are beautiful, sometimes spirally ironwork staircases; and many houses have small and charming terraces on the second floor.

It was a beautiful day.

We capped our last day in Montreal with an excursion to a fancy sushi restaurant with Lee Ann and her family. I say fancy because we were seated in a private room with a sliding door. Well, semi-private. We shared the room with a bachelorette party — strange, but they weren’t too WOOOOOOOO! I don’t have pictures of the sushi, but it was delicious.

I’m already looking forward to going back.

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When last we saw our intrepid travelers, they were strolling down Rue Saint Paul in Vieux-Montréal, admiring the view and discussing lunch options, lamenting their missed poutine opportunity from the night before. They’d passed a pedestrian mall with several restaurants, and though it looked kinda touristy, they agreed to grab a quick bite before heading back to their hotel.

And then Michelle spotted a sign on a side street that read, simply, “MONTREAL POUTINE.”

“Let’s go there,” she said. It wasn’t so much a suggestion as an imperative.

Classic poutine is a dish of french fries topped with cheese curds and covered in a chicken-based sauce. There are at least two places in Brooklyn that offer poutine on the menu, and I’ve had one, and was disappointed in it. The cheese wasn’t curdy. And disco fries are delicious, but use shredded cheese — so not the same thing.

The place we were at offered a few varieties on the classic dish, and we opted to split one that added smoked meat — another food item for which Montreal is famous. We’d hoped to get to Schwartz’s at some point on our trip, but in the event we didn’t (SPOILER: we didn’t), we figured poutine with smoked meat was a two birds/one stone opportunity.

It was delicious. If, you know, you’re into this sort of thing. The fries were crispy, the curds were squeaky, the meat, as advertised, smoked. Wins all around.

And what is poutine without beer? This one, Trois Pistoles, from Unibroue, was our favorite. A number of Unibroue beers are named after or for Quebec legends, and this is the Legend of the Black Horse. The priest of the city of Trois Pistoles needed help to build a new church, and in a moment of desperation summoned the devil, who appeared as a black horse and transported all of the heavy foundation stones — all except one. (That’s what you get when you ask the devil for help. Fair’s fair.) This was a deliciously malty, dark, strong beer.

Fortified with our new favorite comfort food, we walked back to the hotel and waited for Alison to pick us up. Very excited to spend the day with her! She drove us to the Mile End neighborhood and we walked around for a bit, noting that it had a Williamsburgian vibe to it, only — dare I say this? — nicer. Maybe I’m just saying that because I so thoroughly enjoyed Montreal in general, but I didn’t get any sort of hipper-than-thou ironic detachment attitude. We stopped for coffee, where I took this picture primarily to find it days later and say, “Oh, right! We were there!” But I kind of like it on its own.

Alison pointed out the Ukranian church where she saw Arcade Fire play a secret concert (in the basement!):

And showed us where the bagels come from:

OK. We didn’t seize this opportunity to go in and get a bagel because we’d already just eaten and we did not, unfortunately, have time to go back to St-Viateur, so to weigh in on this Montreal vs. New York bagel issue I can only go by the bagels supplied by our hotel. But even going on that (and for all I know, they WERE St-Viateur bagels), I would have to say that, were I forced to choose only one bagel to have for the rest of my life, it would be the Montreal bagel. They taste the way I imagine bagels from the Old World would taste, as though that recipe had never been altered and newfangled technology never put to bagel-making use.

So there. Sorry, New York.

And then Alison took us to a giant orange.

The Gibeau Orange Julep restaurant is a happy place. It is three stories high — according to its Wiki page, its original proprietor, Hermas Gibeau, intended to live upstairs from the restaurant with his family. Can. You. Imagine. It’s also close to 80 years old. Alison said that normally the parking lot is full of these greaser dudes with their classic cars, but sadly they weren’t there. But we were treated to 60s music blaring from two speakers on either side of the parking lot as we sipped at our orange juleps — as you might have guessed, they’re a little like an Orange Julius, only better. Tastier and possibly healthier. The eagle-eyed among you might be able to spot the sign advertising Nathan’s hot dogs. I know!

We rounded out the day with a barbecue back at Alison’s. Longtime readers of her blog are familiar with and fans of Mookie the cat — I was exceedingly honored to finally meet him.

And exceedingly honored to spend this time with Alison and Bill. Our food was delicious and our conversation delightful. I hope we get the chance to repay their hospitality soon. (*cough*)

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Crossing the border into Canada, we were asked the purpose of our visit: “Vacation,” replied Dan. “Visiting with friends.”

Crossing the border into the United States three days later, we were again asked the purpose of our visit. “We basically just ate and drank our way through the city,” said Dan.

Montreal's flag, rendered in landscaped vegetation

I’d never been to Montreal before. In fact, I hadn’t been to Canada at all since I was a kid and my father took us to Winnipeg (a mere two hours from his home in Grand Forks, ND) for the day. I remember the zoo, vaguely. And going to an Italian restaurant, maybe? And then there was the time I canoed to the Canadian side of Rainy Lake. Other than that, Canada was that friendly neighbor with whom I would occasionally chat, but not hang out. (Not because I didn’t want to! Just because our schedules never aligned.)

There were a few things I was especially looking forward to on our trip: visiting with friends topped the list; it had been a few years since I’d seen either Alison or Lee Ann. I was also excited to finally have a taste of authentic poutine, determine for myself whether Montreal bagels were really ALL THAT, and to sample the local beer. As for touristy things, both Dan and I enjoy just wandering around quasi-aimlessly, but I was curious about Old Montreal because I like learning the history of places.

Notre Dame Basilica in Old Montreal

On our first night we wound up at a place on Rue Saint Denis, not too far from our hotel. We’d wanted to go to la Banquise, a place that Alison had recommended specifically for their poutine, but the line to get in was out the door and into the street. (La Banquise: the Grimaldi’s of Montreal?) We wandered around for a while looking for a suitable restaurant for our first night and wound up at Bières et Compagnie, a decision that went something like this:

“What about this place?”
“Beer and Company? I like where this is going.”

Whereas la Banquise has 30 or so different kinds of poutine, Bières et Compagnie appeared to be a mussels place. And the mussels looked good, but as they’re not really in season yet I opted to go with one of the special dishes: Assiette de raclette a la bière griffon (I might be missing an accent or two but I just copied that from Evernote), which was a bed of melted raclette cheese served with potatoes, beer-braised beef tips, and pheasant sausage. I figured it would be like an upscale “deconstructed” poutine. I’ve since learned (thanks, Internet!) that raclette served with dry meats, potatoes, gherkins and pickled onions (which were also on my plate) is a traditional French-Swiss dish. And it was good.

The beer was better. We started off with a La Fin du Monde and thoroughly enjoyed it. But the St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout was my favorite. It has a pronounced espresso flavor, hints of chocolate and a little bit of spice but it’s not too sweet, and though it pours heavy it both tasted and felt light. Just delicious, and quite possibly my favorite beer of the whole trip.

And thanks to BeerMenus, I know where to get it in New York. Draft Barn, I am coming for you.

Up next: Old Montreal, where I finally get my poutine fix.

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