Saturday, December 29, 2012

Mâche

I met ze wife and her bro there after school one day. It's a new resto located right at the corner of Emery on St-Denis. I thought Mâche was a weird name for a restaurant and I STILL think it's weird. Mâche. Why? There's a pig on their sign out front. Pig... mâche...? There's a kind of lettuce named mâche...
Anyhoot, shouldn't look too deeply into it I guess!They have a pig on their sign because they use pork a lot. Clever.

This restaurant has about 40 seats, kind of cafeteria like... I don't know why I got that feeling... maybe because of the cement floors and the rows of seats. Actually, they're stools, not seats. Maybe that's where I got the caf thing. I loved the music that was playing... some classics like Les Cowboys Fringuants were very welcomed! Loved it! We were seated at the extreme end of the resto, yet when someone would open the door, the cold would be, well, very noticeable. Quite unfortunate. I really HATE it when that happens. Quite unpleasant, really. There was a tv, just hanging out there, that no one was watching and so I didn't really see the point of purchasing a tv that no one would watch. On the walls, there were stripes of colored lights and I also didn't know what they were doing there. And by that, I mean that they did not match the restaurant or the vibe.

The waiters were cute in their little plaid shirts and jeans. Kinda hip and 'cabane à sucre' at the same time (or a hip cabane à sucre?).

The menu is very simple: about 20 choices in all, most being either sandwiches, poutines or shepherd's pies. The prices were very affordable too, which I obviously like! No wait... love! For me, the menu gave me comforting choices: comforting poutines with meat, comforting shepherd's pies. A play on the classique québécois: there were many kinds of 'pâté chinois'! I love that! They sold wine by the glass and it was either white or red... nothing complicated. 6$ per glass. Mmmmgood, very affordable. 

I had pâté chinois with leeks, corn, meat and sweet potatoes. A classic! Well, not a classic per se but one of ours anyway: we always make pâté chinois with sweet potatoes. But not with leeks. And I won't start. That was my least favorite part of my meal. In the leeks' defense, ze wife loved that. The potatoes were so good and silky, the meat was very tasty and well seasoned and the whole was an all-around great mix.     Two things though: the portion was way too big and it was way too hot.

Now, the scores!

Food: 7/10 Good enough food but nothing to write home about! Especially not to yo mama who makes pâté chinois twice a month.

Service: 7.5 It was good but not the best. First waiter we got was very nice but the second one... smiles could have been more present :) :) :) !

All in all, a good place to go hang out with your buddies, not very much of a date kinda place. You certainly don't want to spend hours there but it's enjoyable nevertheless. 


Mâche on Urbanspoon









Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Cacao 70

I love eating breakfast in a warm cozy restraurant. And that's just what we did last Saturday. We decided to try a new place so we picked Cacao 70, a relatively new spot on Ste-Catherine between Guy and Atwater. It was a tad funny to be stuck between a korean store and a ghetto bar, but anyhoot...Urbanspoon.ca informed us that 91% of the users liked this chocolaty restaurant so we went for it. We were meeting two of the wife's friends to celebrate her birthday but we ended up being 6 with a baby.

The place itself has very high ceilings, and it was nice how vibrant it was with all the hustle and bustle of coffee and hot chocolate (they have over 50 different hot chocolate recipes, including an 'international collection') being made and the waiters/waitresses running about. It was very busy, we got there at around 11:30 am and we were lucky to get a table in this resto that has around 100 seats. It's funny but I got the impression that we were kind of in a farm. Well for one thing, there was hay with cocoa bags put on wooden shelves everywhere. It was movember friendly...:) They had some stashes drawn on a board! Cute! We were seated right at the window so we could see all the french mistakes they made on their window signs. Great! I felt like telling them about it but didn't bother. I'll give them another month to change it or I'm calling the french police :p Loi 101!!

So, the menu is huge. No, sorry, it's mother freaking HUGE! On top of it, there are two! The regular menu and the brunch menu. The brunch menu has about 15 items on it so it ain't that bad but the other one, man!!! It has, i'd say, about 100 items, in very tiny writing that only people with 20/20 vision can read. Yep. Anyway, we just had the impression that they were repeating themselves a lot. It's as if they went like: 'how many dishes can we make with spinach? how bout eggs? how bout ham? how bout that God awful sausage(more on that later)? I think it took us at LEAST half an hour to choose what we wanted to order. They did have some crazy good ideas, especially with the chocolate items on the menu. 

Ze wife took this ke-ra-zy chocolate dish (meant for two) with this ginormous waffle, strawberries, bananas, super thick yummy hot chocolate, chocolate beads, chocolate fondue, and to top it all off, and THIS is the ke-ra-zy part, this tiny burner for your marshmallows!! OH and ice cream with melted chocolate on top. Dsamn! It was excellent! 




What was cute was that every brunch started with a plate of fruit and melted chocolate. Mmmmm mini fondue! I liked that. 

 


I was true to myself and took the piggiest (it's a word, I swear!) on the menu. It was called the Lazy breakfast. The works: eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, potatoes, beans and bread. LOTS of bread. A whole field of wheat in my plate :p i think I had about 6 slices of bread on there. I have to give them props for the presentation! It came in a metal skillet (which kept my food really hot)! I was pleasantly surprised and satisfied. Unfortunately, it was probably the best thing about my meal. The eggs were dry, there were too few beans (and I looooves my beans!), the ham was meh and the sausage, oh the sausage. I LOVE sausage. OK, stop laughing... I know that sounded weird and stuff since I love me some girl (for the record, the wife does not find this funny... but I am not going to yield! therefore, I'm not taking the sausage joke out :). It was so bad I couldn't eat the whole thing. I can't really explain it. It was even worse than that tiny sausage you get at cheap diners. 

As for the service, it was OK. The many waiters seemed to always be running around. And when we asked to join tables because we were going to have 2 more people comng and a baby, it was the end of the world. That kind of sucked. Although, I will give it to them; we were 3 at a table waiting for someone else for about 45 minutes without ordering, with people waiting to get seated.

So for the scores:

Service: 6.5/10
Food: 6/10 (for my plate), the wife gives hers 8/10 (props for originality!!)

Basically, they have good, original ideas but they have to work at it. It doesn't mean your restaurant will be good as soon as you open it: it takes time! I feel so wise.  

Here's the website! It's very new so it is not complete yet.

Cacao 70 on Urbanspoon
















Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Les Tontons Flingueurs

After a loooong day at school last week, I got home to ze wife who said 'we're going out'. I was MORE than happy to oblige! We decided to go to a new restaurant (about 6 months) in Côte-des-Neiges, Les Tontons Flingueurs. In the hot summer days, there was always a bunch of people on the terasse, on Côte-des-Neiges and it seemed quite 'happenin'. Therefore, Tontons Flingueurs it was!!

The atmosphere itself was chill, with a nice vibe with jazz music playing. The actual place seems really big for the seats: there are about 70 seats and there should be more like 100. Hello profit? Mirors adorned the walls and there were a few chalk boards amongst the wooden panneling. Don't get me wrong, usually, I dson't like panneling, but it gave the place somewhat of a charm and kind of a cottage feel. Oh, also, the banquettes were church benches, which I found cool.

We got seated right away and our funky waiter (man, the afro on that guy was spectacular!) brought us paper menus (the menus were getting a makeover apparently). He told us about the specials that day. There were three and all seemed fancy and way more expansive than what was on the actual menu. On the menu, you could have believed that you were in somewhat of a somewhat fancy snack bar.

We ordered a bottle of Pinot grigio for 25$. As the waiter was bringing it to our table, I could see it was Barefoot, the 9,90$ wine at the SAQ. Man it really fizzles my dizzle (yes, it's an expression!) when restaurateurs sell a cheap SAQ wine for 2.5 its price! grrrrr! Nevertheless, it was served well, selon les standards de l'ITHQ, so that made me happy ;p

Ze wife ordered l'agneau et j'ai commandé la surlonge. We had the vegetable soup: somewhat of a puree of veggies, nicely seasoned, very comforting. La soupe était servie avec des croutons et du beurre. Twas quite nice.

About 15 minutes later, the waiter comes back and announces to ze wife that there is no more lamb. Hum, il est 6:30 et déjà, tu raye un plat de ta table d'hôte? She said she would take the surlonge instead and guess what? 10 minutes later, he was back telling her that was out too! Il lui a dit qu'ils allaient lui donner de la bavette à la place ('qui coûte plus cher en passant'). Fun. So now they've changed her options TWICE. BEFORE 7. By the way, we weren't even 10 in the restaurant. What the hell?

The food turned out to be just OK, nothing special, too many peppercorns on the meat. On a cold plate :( Grrrrr! The waiter could have asked us how we wanted our meat because it turned out to be a tad overcooked, which just added to all the shiz. Anyway, for 22$, not worth it! En plus, dans notre petite salade, il y avait des betteraves à la cuisson douteuse... elles étaient trop dures. Yet another dissapointment.

To add to all of this, the waiter took Isa's plate when she was done and I wasn't. I really hate it when waiters don't follow the protocole!

SO, next time, we won't pick 'the new place'... we'll just go back to Olivieri, right in front, which we are 100% that it will be worth our money.

Scores:

Food:5.5
Service: 6

And I'm being nice. If you want to try a new place, try another one.

Les Tontons Flingueurs - Bistro-Crêperie on Urbanspoon