Bitoque

I did a summer internship in a '5 star' hotel kitchen in Corsica 4 years ago. It's hard to beat that summer: it rained a grand total of about 5 hours over 3 months. And I met Emy. Even if she is over 10 years younger than I am, her and I bonded and it was so much fun traveling with her to neighboring villages and what not. But enough about the best summer EVER, let's talk restaurant! Her and her boyfriend are in town for a couple weeks and after spending Sunday together perusing Montreal, I was looking for a good restaurant to eat at. In my hood (sud-ouest), not that many places are open on Sunday. Seriously, sometimes it seems like only a handful are open. We chose Bitoque for 3 reasons. 1- I LOVE Portuguese food. 2- It's BYOW 3- Well, it was open!

Bitoque is located right where every other restaurant in MTL is located. Living here, I can bet you that at least 1.2 (this is a very specific number, as you can tell) restaurants open every 1.4 weeks (again, very specific!). I don't even need to get out of my hood to go eat, and I could do so every day for a good 2 months. I swear.

The restaurant is actually quite big, way bigger than what you would think from the outside. Its décor is sort of mixed, which I wasn't too fond of: different artists painted different paintings and they did not match at all. Brick wall here, old booth there, it was a mix and match kind of situation.

We decided on only tapas, which suited me just well. I loves me many small dishes, so I can try lots of different dishes! The menu suggests (yes, the menu can talk) we have 2 per person so just to be sure, we ordered 7. Something that must (yes it MUST) be mentioned is that on their tapas menu, some items have * besides them and those aren't available on weekends. When we asked, we were told that yes, they were available on Sunday. This makes me rethink the whole concept of weekends. I mean, can we say that Friday and Saturday is the weekend? Why not Tuesday and Wednesday. You know, life is full of difficult dilemmas and questions. And THAT, kids, was my thought of the day.

We were absolutely and positively starving when we got there so imagine my face when they start us off with tiiiiny little olives. Well, I devoured them. It was like I was on a deserted island and I had just found a fruit or something. You know that feeling? :D I also devoured the warm bread they brought us. The loveliness of the warmth was somewhat ruined by the fact that they put it on the table with butter in a cup. Butta in a cup. Butta. Cup. Come ooon! In a cafeteria, yes. In a restaurant, no!

Grilled sardines. I used to loathe sardines. I remember, in grade 4, Ed used to bring a little box of sardines for lunch and whenever he would open it up, half the class would start gagging. But I've learned to know that those were tiny, insignificant. ugly, stinky sardines. When I visited Portugal, I ate real mamas. And dem mamas were good. Makes no sense but y'all know what I'm saying! These sardines were packed with lemon and pepper and were nice and crispy. They were a bit dry but I think the flavours made up for it.

Tapa do dia OR tapas of the day: shrimp and chorizo. We were three, there were two shrimp. Not cool man, not cool. The chorizo was amazeballs. A-MAZE-BALLZ. It was juicy, it was spicy, it was screaming to be eaten. And be eaten it was! The shrimp were of a disappointing size. I'm a shrimp girl (some would even call me Bubba... OK.. no one ever called me that) and I know good shrimp. There was also some pepper and onion that were perfectly cooked and quite garlicky which fits me just perfectly. I loves me some garlic and I loves me some onion! Basically, I love all the stuff that will make me stink. Maybe that's why I'm still single.

Cherry tomatoes with basil and goat cheese. First of all, hello lactose. Or more like hello indigestion. Let's just say I sacrifice my stomach's health a lot when I go out to eat in restaurants. The tomatoes were hot as f*ck, the basil obviously went well with them and the cheese was lovely and soft. It was good but it wasn't special. By that, I mean I could have cooked that exact dish at home. If I can say that, I usually don't order it.

Piri-Piri mussels. I love good mussels. I am a fan. These were OK. They weren't big enough and sometimes I'd have to look really hard to see if there was one in the shell. OR maybe I just need to get new glasses! The sauce was what I loved and the chorizo. Wow! Seriously, chorizo in all the dishes was BANG on. Totes. That spicy loveliness in a spicy sauce. Mmmmmm! My lips were screaming out but I did not care! In the end, I was just scooping up that sauce with an empty shell. F*ck the mussels, I want the sauce!

Veal and pork meatballs with tomato sauce and parmesan. It was tasty and moist but nothing special and that salad... What in the holy hell was that salad doing there? I hate filler salads! And on top of the filler salad, a piece of caramelized apple. Why? Why I ask you.

Cod croquette on wakame with aioli. I need to know one thing: is wakame in any way Portuguese? Any way? That's what I thought. It was good, actually one of the best wakame I've tasted (I am not a fan) but why? The croquettes were a bit dry and I felt like there were still many fish bones in there which made it quite unpleasant to eat. It was like 'when will I choke?'

Pulled chicken poutine. See the fries? No? That's because there were 4. And they were old and soggy. I'm already not a poutine fan so giving me crappy fries really doesn't help here! The chicken was, AGAIN, on the dry side and the sauce reminded me way too much of the narsty brown sauce that is usually on that bad 'regular' very Québécois poutine. It was just not as good as expected. I'm kind of sad about it actually. Imma gonna go cry now.

Service was very good and efficient at first but as it always tends to do, became slower when more people came in. We had water on our table 3 seconds after sitting down and our wine bottle was uncorked 1 minute later. We were very warmly welcomed and our waiter was quite patient (we didn't know what we wanted to eat at first). He changed our plates many times throughout the meal and although he seemed new to the service world, he did a great job. Pat on back.

And now, the scores!

Food: 7
Service: 8

Imma gonna go ahead and say (again) that there are 8000 units of restaurants I need to try so I'll get back to Bitoque when those are done (and hopefully, sh*t won't be as dry).

Nozy

I go to restaurants a lot. Like, a LOT! With this blog and all, I feel like it's a second (unpaid) job. That I love. I usually try to go to budget friendly restos, but once in a blue moon, I wanna splurge. Splurging is good. It cleanses the soul. Or some shit.

Nozy had been on my radar for a little while so when Lea mentioned we should hit it up, I was totes down. BTW, for those of you wondering why it's called 'Nozy', it is for chef Nozomu Takeuchi. The restaurant is quite small with about 30 seats, and mostly everything is white. I kinda liked it, it looked very pure. White walls, white chairs and white pieces of cloth hanging from the ceiling made for a nice and calm ambiance. As a contrast, the tables were black and there were tiny wooden things hanging on the walls that kind of looked like pasta portioners. 

There were seats at the bar and a table located at the front of the restaurant that made for such a cute little nook. Jazz music was quietly playing, and at some point, it totally became awesome with some old 90's Janet Jackson! Hahaha! Weird, but awesome.

As per usual, I knew what I was having: the Omakase menu: a series of dishes selected by the chef. According to the internet (the whole internet, yes!), it was about 6 courses. We told the waitress we wanted it to be a surprise. On their FB page (side note: I'm not uber fond of the fact that many restaurants now don't have actual websites, only FB pages), it said that it was 50$ but when we got there, we noticed that it was 60$. OK, not a huge difference, but a difference nonetheless. I still had to go for it though. And Lea followed suit. Just a little note here: the drinks could be more original. I mean, litchi martini, cucumber cooler, bloody caesar? Been there, done that.

Miso soup. A nice little starter in any Japanese restaurant. This costs about minus 5$ to make. Seriously. It was good and simple and effin hot. I think I burnt my tongue to the second degree with this bad boy. Of course, Lea waited until it wasn't as hot. Wise girl.

The appetizer. It looked just beautiful and very colourful. I love colours on my plate. It makes me want to eat it more (the dish, not the plate!).  Fresh snapper sashimi. Get IN ma mouth! Now. It had finely shaved dikon, radish and ponzu sauce, which, for anyone interested, is a citrus-based sauce. Not a seafood based sauce like the waitress informed us. Citrus. Her brain may have made a wrong connection like ponzu-citrus-seafood... or something :) There was a hint of sesame oil in there, which was a bit too heavy for such a light dish. The ponzu was nice but there was a missing element, like salt perhaps. The fish was awesomely fresh though and absolutely and irrevocably melted in my mouth. 

Our waitress then arrived with 2 rectangular boxes, one on top of the other. I found that really cool. She placed them one in front of the other and opened the first one. A+ for presentation. My first thought was 'f*ck, I should've told them I am not a fan of wakame'. Shizzle. I just really am not fond of that texture. The taste is OK, but the texture is not. I know a lot of people like it. I am not one of those peeps. Anyway, I'm a good [food] sport, so I tasted it and apart from that stoopid texture, I can tell you for sure that this was one of the best wakame around. You know, around. It had a lovely sesame taste and wasn't as hard to chew than others (I REALLY have a problem with weird textures, I do realize this!). 

In the middle, a trio of three sashimi: snapper, red tuna and white tuna or hamachi as it should also be called. All super duper uber fresh. I'm pretty sure they were caught out at sea about one hour before our arrival. It's possible, right? Right? They all just pretty much dissolved when they hit my tongue. Man, that was fresh fish. This may just have been THE freshest and best sashimi I've ever eva tasted. The white tuna was my favourite. Perhaps because i rarely have any. F*ck me that was good. I'm sorry about the cursing but this deserves it :) It was accompanied  by fresh wasabi from the freaking root. The rooooot! This is a very rare occurrence. And one I oh so appreciated. It was hot as all hell but a little bit on each piece of sashimi made it even better! Right under, there was a nice little not overly dressed salad with a great big shiso leaf. Mmmmmmshisooooo. If I'd be a Kung Fu master, my name would totes be Shiso. Oh wait, I just stole that from Kung Fu Panda, didn't I?

In the third bowl, beef tataki in ponzu sauce + secret ingredients. I like secret ingredients. It was so tasty, again with the raw meat just melting away on my palate. I thought that the use of ponzu was good here, but that it was a bit of a repeat from the appetizer and lacked seasoning. 

Yuk, bad lighting. Sorry.

Second box! This is exciting! Lets start on the right with the karaage chicken. I've had karaage before. Many a times, it can be dry and many a times it can have an amount of fat on there that is... unflattering AND many a times, it lacks in spices. Well, this one was purrrrfect. No, it's not a cat people, it's chicken. I'm getting off track here. First of all, usually (OK, MY 'usually'), you have white meat in there. This was brown meat. Much much moistier. Is that a word? I think SO. The spices were a mix of ginger, garlic and hot pepper. A winning team, I'd like to say. With a bit of soya sauce, that chicken won every chicken contest. Crunchy, moist, spiced just right, seasoned correctly. 

In the middle, mashed potatoes with pork. I like to say that it was a cloud of heaven, those potatoes. Wow! So soft, I think they put it through a fine sieve about 8 times. The dish kind of looked very Christmasy to me. Not Japanese. Christmas. Japanese Christmas? Anyway, the braised (I presume for many hours) pork needed no cutting because it broke down as soon as I touched it. So damn good. A bite of potato mousse + pork transported me back to, you guessed it, Christmas! i don't even know why. It was really tasty and well executed but I don't know how well it fit in with the other dishes.

Miso marinated salmon. Miso? Yes. Salmon? Yes. Put em' together man! The salmon was so tender and it was oozing miso. Yes, oozing. Just by looking at it, it was flaking off. Is that a thing? Anyway, it was simple, yet very tasty. Just like most things should be.

Salmon X 3. Salmon tataki, salmon sashimi and salmon tartare. On rice. Although the rice was perfectly cooked to perfection (did I say that twice?), I don't know how I feel about eating cold fish atop hot rice. I'm not sure I'm fond of it. It feels weird to me for some reason. The tartare had a miso and tomato sauce and was really spot on. The naked sashimi (hihi, naked) was as on the ball and as fresh as the ones we had in the first place and the tataki was tatakied (new verb guys!--put it in yo dictionary) with nanami, an Asian spice that is akin to chili powder but with sesame seeds and other spices in there. Iz hot yo. AND good. AND smoky. But again, it felt funny to eat warm tartare. No? 

After that, we really debated whether or not we should have dessert. After the waitress told us that the ice cream that was part of one of them was not homemade, I lost my dessert erection. 

Service was great throughout our meal. Our dishes were quick to arrive and our waitress answered my 600 questions. She knew I was writing an article (I never say it but this time, I asked her to explain our dishes 'slowly, so I could write it down') so I'm not sure if we got special treatment or not. Anyhoot, water was on the table right away and we could just serve ourselves which was nice. She was very attentive and checked many times throughout our meal to see if we were satisfied. 

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: the scores!

Food: 8

Service: 9.5

Will I go back you ask? Hells yes. I've already started putting money aside for it. True thang.