U.S. Food Truck Laws to Follow Montreal's Lead?

The New York Times published a recent article, "Should Cities Drive Food Trucks Off the Streets?"

 With the Food Truck trend sweeping across the United States some cities are reacting. Restaurateurs are calling foul because the "competition [food trucks]literally drive up outside their windows."

Some of the proposed legislation is more moderate than banning the trucks all together and our city could get some ideas in regulating Food Trucks: designated parking areas or zones, specific distances from restaurants...

You can read the full article here

No Reservations in Montreal: Anthony Bourdain sightings

Anthony Bourdain was spotted this weekend in Montreal filming his TV show, No Reservations. Following Bourdain's Tweets we know that he was hanging out with Fred Morin and the Joe Beef gang. Bourdain also mentioned Schwartz's and of course we heard rumors that he was at his other regular haunt, Au Pied de Cochon.

We also have a confirmed sighting that he arrived, perhaps after a few libations, with his camera crew at Le Nouveau Palais (281 Bernard West) for late-night tacos. In case you did not know, the Green Taco food truck gang use, Le Nouveau Palais, Wednesday through Saturday from midnight to 3 a.m. for their food service. Shame Bourdain did not get to sample Chef and Co-Owner, Gita Seaton's regular menu.

We are also going to make the prediction, you read it here first, that Bourdain spent time with his camera crew and Montreal's Lardo Retardos, the dudes from Epic Meal Time.

Update (January 2012): The Capri Tavern as featured in Bourdain's episode of The Layover, was also featured in Montreal's dirty resto list with fines for rats and roaches.  Click here for more info.

Montreal Street Food: 3 Pig's and the NDG Sausage Party

What a summer for street food so far, the Balconville and rue Saint-Lauent sidewalk sales and now Monkland avenue in NDG. For a city that does not allow street food we sure have been enjoying ourselves eating in the sun. During the live blogging sessions of Top ChefCanada we discovered The 3 Pig's that serve street food every Saturday on the terrace of the The Italian Pantry (6132 Monkland Avenue). The pop up resto project is a joint venture between the owners of The Italian Pantry and Chef Shawn Dascal, a Cordon Bleu trained Chef that is part of the Epic Meal Time crew, who treated us to a gourmet hot-dog feast this weekend. 

Update November 2012: This page gets lots of traffic so we think it is worth mentioning that Chef Shawn Dascal is now full time at Cartel Street Food Bar on Fairmount Street. You can link to their website here.

The 3 Pig's menu changes every week, for updates and additional information you can follow the 3 Pig's on Twitter and "Like"their Facebook page "if you like pork."

Since street food is a rarity in Montreal it only makes sense that it requires some planning. This experience is the closest thing we have to a hunter-gatherer adventure in our concrete jungle. Besides food trucks another food trend right now is the pop up restaurant. Pop ups are restaurants that pop up anywhere and can take any form including street food. Remember Chef Ludo Lefebvre from Top Chef Masters? He is doing a pop up project called Ludo Bites. Lefebvre’s pop up project will appear on the television show Ludo Bites Back on the Sundance channel in the U.S. Ludo’s pop up caused protests in L.A., the capital of the food truck trend, when he featured foie-gras on one of his menus. Since street food is the a big thing in L.A., or is already so last year, it makes sense that people are taking it to the streets of Montreal despite the municipal sanctions. In the case of the 3 Pig's their food-service is carried out on the terrace of The Italian Pantry so they are not subject to the municipal by-law.

Korean Seoulfood: BBQ'd short ribs

We set out a few weeks ago (July 2nd) in search of The 3 Pig’s. Strolling down Monkland we had a stroke of good luck at the Korean restaurant 5000 Ans (5737 Monkland). A Korean church group was fundraising for a project in Africa and served us up a succulent platter of Korean Bar-B-Q'd short-ribs ($8). The restaurant was sponsoring the group and they cooked outside on their terrace. The rice served with our ribs was sweet and sticky and offered more comfort to the taste of our Korean Seoulfood. We found a different Korean church group earlier this summer at the Verdun sidewalk sale. The Verdun group had the best food on the block so we are more than happy to support these worthy causes.

The Italian Pantry: 2 words, Buffalo Mozzarella

No luck in finding the 3 Pig's this day, should have checked the Facebook page, but The Italian Pantry did come to our rescue with a table outside the store offering a variety of sandwiches. We were told to come back next week for The 3 Pig’s, there was supposed to be bad weather that day. We think they went to see Will and Kate who were at the I.T.HQ. that day. From the Italian pantry we enjoyed a tomato and buffalo mozzarella sandwich. We are very familiar with these ingredients but never thought about putting them on a sandwich because it is a really good idea. A nice, light, summery, refreshing, tasting sandwich. Despite not finding the 3 Pig’s we did find some street food so we left feeling satisfied mainly because we love Korean food.

This weekend (July 9-10) was the Monkland sidewalk sale. I know what you are thinking but this is a real small potatoes event, the street is still open to traffic. We set off again in search of the 3 Pig's, after a few weeks anticipation we started to feel like the big bad wolf in pursuit of his prey. In honour of the sidewalk sale, Lucille's Oyster Dive (5626 Monkland) was serving up street food with hamburgers, sausages and pulled pork sandwiches. We decided to give Lucille a go and opted for the pulled pork sandwich ($6) that was really nothing worth mentioning. The bun was not not even toasted or warmed up on the grill. As we sat down to eat our sandwich we understood why our server seemed preoccupied. A less than flattering review had appeared about his restaurant that day in the Journal de Montréal. You can read the full review here.

We hate to kick someone when they are down but it is probably not a good idea to rant into your cell phone about your bad review in front of your customers. We would have probably never known about this review had it not been brought to our attention by the staff. It is even hard to find in Google. The burgers and sausages at Lucille's looked really unappetizing almost as if they had been kept warm on the grill for way too long. The unappetizing look of the food might have contributed to our lack of enjoyment of our sandwich.

We finally arrived at The Italian Pantry and found the Bar-B-Q set up on their terrace. This week the 3 Pig's menu featured gourmet hot-dogs. As we have often pointed out hamburgers and hot dogs are only as good as their individual components and in this case we appreciate the attention to detail. First the wieners, hot dogs tend to suffer from super size mania with jumbo being sold as a premium over taste. We were happy to find small dogs at 3 Pig's. We prefer small hot-dogs for a few simple reasons. First, if it is small it will leave you wanting more. Second the big dogs can be too much of a bad thing. The small wieners at 3 Pig's were more like knockwurst than hot dogs. They also had really nice snap when you bite into them giving them an almost addictive quality when combined with food opiates like truffle oil, cheese and Prosciutto.

3 Pig's: Say Cheese

We sampled two out of the three dogs on the menu. While waiting for our food we were offered a taste of some home made truffle potato chips. As owners of our own deep fryer you can trust us when we say that that nothing tastes better than fresh chips. A splash of truffle oil never hurts either. First, the truffle mac and cheese dog, a very nice and dry (in a good way) mac and cheese was placed on our sausage with just a splash of truffle oil.

Prosciutto: Better than Bacon

Feeling full from our pulled pork sandwich at Lucille's, ear of Mexican of corn from 3 Pig's (garlic mayo, lime & cheese) we still enjoyed our mac ‘n’ cheese dog so much that we decided to order another - smaller is better. This time we opted for what we were told was the best seller of the day, the Prosciutto dog. Besides the obvious use of Prosciutto there was a condiment with the taste of roasted red peppers. Chef Dascal told us that he uses herbs from the garden of the terrace at the Italian Pantry in his condiments. The combination of the salty Prosciutto and roasted peppers was a perfect combination. We skipped the Bolognese Chili Dog only for reasons of sanity but are sure that it was as good as the rest. Next week we have been told the 3 Pig’s will be doing Bar-B-Q.


Like at Lucille’s we could not resist eavesdropping on the conversation on the 3 Pig’s terrace. The discussion of course had to do with hot-dogs and the best in town. This time. One individual boasted about being a "hot-dog sommelier," in his youth. Our sommelier also recalled picking up a Montreal ex-pat at the airport who insisted they stop at the nearest steamy joint. Naturally the conversation progressed into a debate between toasted versus steamed hot-dogs. Orange Julep and Belle Pros came up as a few of the fan favourites.

Le Classique: Chien Chaud Chez Belle Pro

With the demise of our beloved hot-dog joints on the lower Main (Saint-Laurent south of Sainte-Catherine), the Montreal Pool Room has moved across the street, there is an obvious need to protect our historic greasy spoons and famous hot-dogs. The lower Main has been declared a heritage site by our government and as such certain guidelines are to be respected when making changes to these landmarks. In this case developers have been given carte blanche with regards to the area with no preservation of the neighborhood's history mainly because it falls in the new Quartier des Spectacles. Depsite the business Frites Dorées would have drawn being in the Quartier des Spectacles we seriously doubt they could afford the neighborhood's new rent. Also, we doubt the festival organizers want a greasy spoon dive in their clean and controlled, sanitized site. Festival organizers control the food concessions on the festival sight even though they fall on our public streets. First our food trucks are illegal and now they are taking away our greasy spoons. Oddly enough, because it was on the festival site (a food concession) and obviously approved by the organizers, the green taco truck was spotted at the Jazz Fest this summer.


On another sad note, a few weeks ago we set off to Beaver Hall Hill to grab a hot-dog at Victoire as part of this article, remember the lineups out the door and up the street at lunchtime? Victoire is now closed and we have also been told that a 5-Guys burger chain has opened down the street. Are you starting to get the picture? Our hot-dogs are in danger of extinction. Next they will be taking away our foie-gras. Support your small locally owned food business. You can start next Saturday by visiting the Italian Pantry (6132 Monkland Avenue) and then stopping for a bite on the terrace with the 3 Pig’s.

TCC Finale: Tous Ensemble: Chef MacKay Blows the Competition Away

No surprise with this Monday's outcome, Dale MacKay took the title of Canada's Top Chef. We blogged this in May when Chef MacKay opened his restaurant Ensemble in Vancouver (BC). Dale also looked extremely determined from the get go of the series. Remember the first challenge? The opening of Ensemble immediately piqued our interest as it was a high profile opening that was riding on the thunder of Top Chef Canada.

Prior-to the opening of Ensemble, they Tweeted some "under construction" pics of the restaurant. We requested some pics of the kitchen. "I'll post a pic up tomorrow!" Ensemble replied. We were surprised with a response, considering they were opening a restaurant, but we never noticed any kitchen pics on Twitter. We of course hoping for a glimpse of some GE kitchen appliances that are awarded to the winning Chef. The opening of Chef MacKay's restaurant, immediately after the shuttering of Daniel Boulud's Vancouver resto, Lumière, where Dale was Executive Chef, was a big blip on the radar during the airing of Top Chef. We bet it was a lot easier getting a table at Ensemble a few weeks ago.

As previously mentioned on our blog, Chef Rob Rossi's recent announcement that he was leaving Mercatto caused us some doubt about our long standing prediction that Dale would take the title. We were sort of correct with this thought because Connie DeSousa took third instead of second as we had predicted. We did not see the humoristic Rossi making any jokes after finishing second and losing to Dale. We felt a bit sad for Rossi because we did see Dale and DeSousa hugging family members at end of the show but where was the love for Rossi? We hope the show's Producers brought in some family support for Rossi and that this scene only ended up on the cutting room floor otherwise talk about adding-insult to injury. Rossi has demonstrated that he is an incredibly talented Chef with an impressive repertoire of technique and knowledge at his disposal. 

It is interesting that the two finalists represent the two current, and opposing, culinary trends. Rossi is comfort food, classic-style dishes and flavours. Dale or "fancy pants" MacKay, as he was dubbed in the finale, does deconstructed dishes that are very modern looking. During the series the judges kept using the word precious in describing MacKay's food. The finale was really a battle between modern and classic cooking styles. As a Chef, Dale's dishes are out of the box, just compare them to someone like Rossi ans his classic style. 

Chef Mackay's win comes with a bit of controversy as one of his courses (it was a 3 course challenge) was served on two plates. The Dalegate, or rather Daleplate, controversy focuses on his Surf and Turf dish that was presented on two plates. If Mac and Cheese had been served with a cheese sauce on the side (probably the worst choice for a Top Chef finale but makes our point) count as two dishes? DeSousa's dessert had three separate and distinct components but was served on the same plate. We really think the Daleplate debate is about presentation and plating. MacKay chose Surf and Turf and served it on two plates. Dale the deconstructionist took the dish so far apart it had to be served on two plates. As the judges pointed out it was a gamble that paid off but it could have gone the other way if one of the dishes failed.

We have had fun following and blogging Top Chef Canada. Some of the best discoveries to come out of this experience involves ousted competitors. The purchase of Rebekah's Pearse's Sweet Seasonal Desserts (available here on Amazon) was an unexpected surprise. The cookbook teaches you how to make easy and delicious desserts (not cookies). This is a fun and welcome addition to anyone's cooking repertoire. It is also our suggested reading for any Top Chef Season 2 competitors that want to add a few desserts to their bag of tricks and help ensure their survival on the show. Another great discovery is the $35 Dinner menu at Derek Bocking's (he is Sous-Chef) restaurant, Beaver Hall. This is  great dining bargain, included in the price is an appetizer, main course and half a bottle of wine. We are of course looking forward to the next season and finding out who will be Canada's next Top Chef competitors.

Beaver Hall: Support Your Local Top Chef

Spoiler Alert! Coming soon to Jazz & Fuzy

Bulgogi Hot-Dogs

Top Chef Canada episode 12: Go Home Gallagher

We have reached a milestone in the Top Chef series because this Monday we will crowning Canada’s First Top Chef. 


Episode 12 of Top Chef saw smilin’ Dustin Gallagher go home. The Judges thought his angel hair pasta was a bit clumpy, his fish overcooked nut it was his fruit platter (dessert) that seemed to be the final nail in his coffin. The Judges thought that a plate of fruit was a poor choice at this stage in the competition. 

Gallagher's Fruit Plate

As you may have noticed during any of the Top Chef series there is always a problem with the Chefs and the desserts. Chefs auditioning for the next season take note, practice your desserts. Dustin Gallagher did win an elimination challenge in a previous episode with a dessert when he served up his girlfriend's strawberry shortcake, she is also his pastry Chef.  We wonder if perhaps Gallagher had used up his bag of dessert tricks. On the other hand this was a family style service so the idea of a fruit platter for sharing does have some logic. Perhaps some cheese, jellies and bread would have added to the experience.

Gallagher's winning shortcake is currently a featured item on the menu at Milestones. Unfortunately, or is it fortunately, there are no Milestones in Quebec but as part of our ongoing Top Chef coverage we did sacrifice ourselves with a trip to Ontario where we sampled a few of the dishes featured on the show.

You're about to get warned: do not order the croquettes

The Top Chef Canada menu items at Milestones have been designed for preparation in their kitchen where massed produced food items and profit margins seem to be the key ingredients in determining how a dish is made. When we ordered DeSousa's pork croquettes the waiter inquired if we have ever tried them because they were really “not good.” In describing the dish the waiter said, "freezer burned meat." Despite our killjoy of a waiter we ventured on thinking how bad can it really be and that we did come all this way to not eat the Top Chef dishes. All we can say is that the in general the food is bad at Milestones so you can only imagine what something must taste like if the staff says it is no good. The taste of the croquettes was like eating dried up old meat but they were not the worst item on the plate. Each croquette sits in an onion ring. The batter on the onion rings was dry and hard. I have heard of crispy batter but we do not think that they be crunchy and snap like a twig. Did we mention flavourless? The onion rings also had this quality. We suppose the bacon ninja could use these rings as some sort of throwing weapon in the Top Chef Kitchen. In all seriousness, if this is how Milestones choses to present the Top Chef Canada dishes they might consider featuring the losing dishes as a more authentic experience. We also had the spinach artichoke dip (not a Top Chef menu item) that tasted like paste (glue).

Pork Croquettes: Note the shape of the onion things... er rings

We also tried Dustin Gallagher's strawberry shortcake, our waiter informed us that this was a good dish choice. The dish was more whipped cream than anything else. A bit of strawberry compote, a pastry that was more crunchy than anything like cake and also a tiny bit of lemon curd that is the the twist on this traditional dish. The strawberry shortcake is nothing more than a big mound of whipped cream with a few other bites floating around. With strawberry shortcake you should think strawberries not whipped cream but once-again why trouble yourself with things like costly fresh ingredients that require lengthy preparation?

Not enough strawberries were harmed in the making of this dish

We stayed away from Francois' dish mainly because the main courses seem grossly over priced at Milestones. We noticed a neighbouring table that had ordered the Steak Frites that goes for close to $28 bucks. The dish consisted of a steak about the size of your palm and a massive pile of frozen French fries. Are they for real in charging these rates for Frozen fries? To put things in perspective we looked up the menu at Au Pied de Cochon that also offers a Steak Frites. The dish costs less at Au Pied de Cochon ($23) and instead of beef you have the choice of venison or bison. The French fries are also fresh cut with a larger portion of meat. All this to say we do not mind paying for good quality food but a $30 plate of frozen French fries and small steak is beyond ridiculous. Since they use frozen fries at Milestones the profit margin for this dish must be legendary in the annals of restauration dishes.

Getting back to Top Chef Canada. The final three are Rob Rossi, Connie DeSousa and Dale MacKay. We predicted some time ago that Dale was going to be the winner and we are going to stick with our pick mainly because he recently opened his own restaurant. Watch the judges face, especially the guest Chefs and Mark McEwan, when they taste Dale's food. Last week Chef Rossi announced he was leaving his current post at Mercatto and the Toronto press got excited predicting this was a spoiler that the Chef takes the Top Chef title. We would not be surprised if this is the outcome only because, as we pointed out months ago with the selection of the Chefs, the series is very Toronto-centric.

In terms of other predictions it looks like they are bringing back some of the eliminated challengers to assist the Chefs in the kitchen. Once again we think the Chefs will be from Toronto. It also looks like the final takes place in Niagara wine country and will be somewhere like the Inniskillin vineyard.

Next Week: Meet Canada's Top Chef

Happy Canada Eh?

Insane Canadian Clown Posse in Ottawa 
Who says Canadians are not fashionable?