La Banquise

Ah, La Banquise. An establishment known for its many poutines and for the fact that its open ALL THE TIME!

I brought my French friend, Clem, because, well, he had neva eva tasted this Quebecois tradition. I gotta say I'm not a fan of the brown sauce/cheese curd poutine but I went along for the sake of showing him the place.

As per usual, the place was packed + a line up! Dsamn! And it was only 7 PM!!! But hey, I gotta face the fact that La Banquise must be busy around the clock!

We were greeted with all smiles by the cute little waitresses (it was funny: a friend of mine works there and she has a bunch of Banquise pics on FB so I actually recognized some and knew their names... haha) and were seated about 4 minutes later. Note: if you sit outside, you can't drink alcohol! Pop music was playing + a couple songs that made me think back to my high school days (yay!).

OK, food. Obviously we were there to eat poutine.

I had the Taquise: kind of a mexican-québécois mix :) OK, so it's fries (duh), cheese curds (duuuuh!), brown sauce (come ooon!), tomatoes, guacamole and sour cream. I have to mention that you can change your sauce for 1 $ or more and I should have done that. First off, i'm not a fan of the brown sauce. Secondly, I really don't think it fits with everything. Especially not tomato, avocado and sour cream. The cheese was, well, des crottes de fromage comme on dit si bien en bon québécois! It actually fit quite well with everything else and wasn't too salty. The fries were nice and hot, not smushy (technical word, don't worry 'bout it) but not too hard. The sour cream was perfectly smooth and so was the guacamole. Oh it was goohood. Just the right amount of silkiness, the right amount of salt. The tomatoes were a bit blend though.

Service was great throughout. You'd think that since they are so gosh darn busy, that the service would go to shit but nope! Our food arrived on our table 5 minutes after ordering it and our waitress came to check on us twice. OH, and they all have short shorts. WHAT??? :)

And now, the scores!

Food: 6

Service: 8.5 (she forgot our glasses of water)

I truly don't know if I'll go back. Mainly because I don't love poutine with ze brown sauce. But hey, who knows!?

Jardin de Panos

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack baby! Corsica was wonderful but more on that later :) First review: un resto où Isa et moi sommes allées pendant mon heure de lunch lundi passé (ah oui, l'école a recommencé!). Nous n'y avions pas vraiment pensé préalablement mais il n'y a vraiment pas beaucoup de restos ouverts le lundi midi. Alors notre philosophie s'est vite déclarée: let's find a resto that's opened and eat there.

So we found it: Le jardin de Panos... a greek(y) resto on Duluth between St-Denis and Parc Lafontaine. From outside, this place looks like a quaint little place but when you walk in, you discover that this place is HUGE! I mean about 250-300 seats huge! The decor is nothing special... kind of cheap looking and there are so many tables that you kind of get the cabane à sucre feel. There is a big terasse at the back holding up to about 80 to 100 seats (did I mention that this place was HUGE?).

Also good to know that it's a BYOW. Another thing that should be noted: no debit, only credit and cash).

Quaint looking resto!

We were, I believe, the first clients there for lunch (it was around 11h30!) and so obviously we got seats right away. It was a tad weird that we had to go through a portion of the kitchen to get to our section. Not sure how much I liked that! Également, la console proche de notre table était beaucoup trop grosse et beaucoup trop remplie! So many things were going on there!

We got our menus and it was a bit bizarre how, yes, there were greek dishes... but then a 'greek section'. Rapport! Why? We ARE in a greek resto, right? We got bread first and it was nicely warm, which I like. Anyhoot, we shared everything, as per usual. I had the lentil soup and the wife had tomato juice. Neither were good.... my soup resembled the one that you get dans une cabane a sucre (pour continuer le thème)... very thick and culinarily unsatisfying. We had the spanakopita as an entree: ok but lacking in taste. We then shared the moussaka and souvlaki. Those were the highlights of our meal. The souvlaki (not the sandwich, the plate) was nicely seasoned and, well, tasted like a souvlaki :) I had never tasted moussaka before... but the wife had and she said it was quite authentic. Good to know SOME things were authentic!

Desert: we had 4 or 5 choices and so picked the baklava and a chocolate cake. I THINK I can compare this cake to my 4th birthday choco cake: made of plastic chocolate. Seriously... vraiment pas bon. Needless to say, don't get the cake. The baklava was ok, but not great... again lacking a tad in taste.

By the end of our lunch, we didn't know who was serving us, I think we got 2 or 3 different servers. I'm NOT ok with that. One of the reasons being that communication then becomes messed up. Case in point, both came one after the other to ask us about coffee and desert...


And now, the scores:

Food: 6/10
Service: 6.5/10

I mean, this was pretty much the only resto opened on Duluth so we basically didn't have a choice. If you HAVE a choice, go to another resto.