Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Aux Vivres


Last week, Isa asked me if I wanted to join her and some co-workers for dinner at Aux Vivres, this really cute vegan resto on St-Laurent. Without thinking about it, I said YES!! I used to eat at this place pretty regularly when I lived on le Plateau and well.. it had been a while.

It's a great place to eat some vegan food without being TOO vegan...if you know what I mean..., with a nice patio out back including a nice little garden (or from what I remember from a couple years back). They also have a take-out counter!

We were seated right away but waited quite a bit, I thought, for our food. I had the mumbai plate and Isa had the portobello burger. I LOVE this thing: chickpeas in a somewhat spicy sauce and coriander (!), salad, and refreshing chutney. mmmm...chutney. Isa's burger was nice but lacked a tiny bit in flavor and she had some fries with a marvellous spicy chipotle kinda mayo sauce. Yum yum YUM! And a bonus is that they always use very very fresh veggies and fruits :)

The two coworkers that were with us had sandwiches in a ciabatta and apparently they were tasty but full of lettuce (a little too much) and really HUGE...like enough for two meals... which usually isn't a bad thing per se but if you bring that shiz home, it'll be soggy the next day for lunch!

One thing that annoyed me was the fact that the waitress took away plates before everyone was done and that is against my service code... yes, i have a code :p

So for the scores (these will only be MY scores seeing as the wife is not home to tell me hers!) :

food: 8/10 loooove that chutney!
service: 7/10

As per usual, very pleasant, fun food experience! If you want vegan food and you are not a vegan, go to Aux Vivres! Also go if you ARE a vegan,of course, hehe.

Aux Vivres on Urbanspoon

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

St-Hub


I go out to lunch with my dad about twice a month to catch up and so yesterday we went to la gare Windsor. That's right, we went to St-Hubert! It had been years since I had eaten there so I said why not?!

I gotta say, it was nothing special... I guess it was to be expected...

It's HUGE. I don't even know how many seats there are in there... at least a couple hundred. We were seated right away and our sweaty waitress came as soon as we sat down to take our order. Very affordable: about 10 bucks for the meal plus a drink and a desert. We both took the chicken filets. I wasn't too pleased with the presentation... they were kinda plopped onto the plate with some fries and a piece of bread. Meh. I must also mention that the table was sticky. I HATE it when my table is sticky... it just shows that they don't clean that shiz after someone spills pop on it!

Anyhoot, a bit of history, yes? St-Hubert was the first restaurant to deliver in the 50's and also the first one to have recyclable boxes for take-out. It IS an institution. And let's face it, it's still working to this day so they must be doing something right!

Here are the scores:

Bouffe: 5/10 Not a great presentation and very VERY simple. The usual for St-Hubert: coleslaw, fries, sauce, bread, chicken

Service: 6/10 Took our waitress 10minutes to bring me water after I had asked for it. Comme mon père dirait, 'c'est pas mal ordinaire ça!'

All in all, a good ambiance, ok service, food not exceptional, would not go back in the next year or so.